Hart had built himself a native house on the extreme edge of British Guiana
Hart and his Macuxy Indian helpers
It was five o’clock when we reached the first inhabited house, that of a Brazilian family on a bank of the Takutú. The usual formalities included insistence that we wait for coffee, and as Hart did not care to risk making an enemy, we complied. These people assured us that all the igarapés were so swollen from the recent rains that it would be impossible to get to Melville’s at this season. Not far beyond we came to a stream which Hart had easily forded the week before. I drove my horse in, expecting the water to come at most to his belly, when the animal suddenly dropped and took to swimming, with the water about my waist. There was no way of getting our pack-animal across without ruining everything. We returned to the Brazilian hut, and while I took such measures as my soaking and that of the saddle-gear demanded, Hart stripped, tied his clothes around his head with a strap under his chin to hold them, and swam the igarapé to an Indian hovel where he arranged for a canoe and two paddlers. These dropped down the stream to us, and having hobbled the horses and put the saddles astride a pole always provided for such purposes under the eaves of rural Brazilian huts, we and the Indians lugged our baggage to the canoe and finally set out in pitch darkness to paddle up the river to what Hart called the “padre’s house.”
Like the one in which I had entered the colony, the canoe was a leaky old dugout with rotting boards nailed along the sunken gunwale, through which water gushed almost in streams. I had to hug the two bags on the seat beside me and at the same time bail water incessantly, while the Indian boys shoveled water at the bow and Hart made a poor job of steering in the stern, because it was impossible to tell the shadows from the tops of the trees under water near the bank, which we were compelled to follow closely in order to make any progress against the swift current. Even there and with the utmost effort we made barely a mile an hour, and every loss of a stroke for any reason left us so much farther down stream. The Takutú was about four times as deep as when I had last left it, and was now a real river. Several times I was nearly knocked off, bags and all, by unexpected branches of trees; then suddenly I discovered that the boat was filling faster than I could bail it out, the water quickly reaching my ankles and then my calves. It wouldn’t matter so much to Hart, who had brought only a few tramping necessities, but it was only a question of a very short time before all my South American possessions, including even my money in the valise, would be at the bottom of the Takutú, while I struggled ashore in my heavy brogans with only my hat and my reputation. I shouted to the Indians, who looked around and saw the water which they, being high in the bow, had not felt, and by sheer luck they managed in the darkness to tear a way through tree-tops and bushes to a spot on the bank with bare land enough to hold our baggage. Here we found that a snag had kicked a large hole in the stern of the rotten old craft and that water was pouring in as from a faucet. This repaired as best we could, we bailed out the boat and pushed on. For what seemed hours we fought against the current and bailed incessantly before a faint light far away in the night announced that we were approaching the mission. We could not seem to bring the light nearer, but finally managed to land in the mouth of a tributary, and, tearing through the jungle and stumbling over stony ground in the black night, lugging our baggage, we at last ended at nine o’clock the “easy four hours’ ride” from Hart’s ranch by entering the mission of an English Jesuit, Father Ignatius Cary-Elwess.
It was a big, two-story, thatched building on the bank of the upper Takutú, just across from Brazil. Indian men and boys, chiefly in loin-cloths, though some wore a shirt and some the remnants of trousers, swarmed about the place with perfect freedom, as the “padre” seemed to have an easy-going way that had weakened his control over them. He was a small, wiry man of middle age, dressed in an old soutane, quite English, yet also quite Jesuit, which made a curious combination. Eleven years before he had come out entirely alone and lived in their huts with the Indians, under exactly the same conditions as they, until he had learned the Macuxy tongue—at least as well as the average Englishman ever learns a foreign language. He knew no Portuguese, and the naked Indian youths spoke an amusing mixture of English and Macuxy, the former chiefly represented by “Fader, yes,” with which all statements began, usually continuing in the native tongue. The priest was “one of the boys” in the stories he told, but he often drifted away into dreams. After nearly four years in Latin-America it seemed strange to hear the English names of things I had only known in Spanish, Portuguese, or Quichua,—“bush” for sertão, “Savannah” for pampa or campo, “’gator” for jacaré. It was sixty-three days since the padre had last heard a word of the world’s news, and the long time which elapsed before our generous supper was ready we spent in bringing him up to date, getting out of our soaked garments, oiling our revolvers, and swinging our hammocks.
When I rose in the early morning a cold wind was blowing across the open country. About the mission building was a cluster of huts for the converts, and many cattle were grazing nearby—for the good padre did not neglect the practical things of life. He was already saying mass before an outdoor altar set in the side of a mud house, assisted in his formalities by otherwise naked Indian acolytes in red robes. A creek near the mission, which one could generally step across, was so swollen that we had to borrow a canoe, and the top branches of high trees just peered out of the water. We soon came to another—whereupon Hart decided that we were sure to lose the horses if we tried to continue the trip with them. The only animal which can endure travel under such conditions is man, and we concluded to resort to the only means of locomotion left us. When we returned to the mission, the padre, who had been a famous athlete in his younger days, left off a cricket game he was playing in his flowing soutane with the Indian boys, and went with me to find us Indian carriers. His rule was too lenient, however, and the day drifted on without anyone offering to go. He would not order anyone to do so, as most of the Indians had come for some Catholic celebration and the padre felt that they could not be spared. “Anyway,” he mused, “by far the best carriers are the women—women”—his eyes fell suddenly on Hart, conspicuously masculine in his splendid frame and perfect condition—“we—er—well, I’ll send for the chief and see if he can’t get you two men”—the accent on the last word was probably unconscious.
It was afternoon before a father and his son were finally prevailed upon to make the one-day journey to the next village, and at two we were off across country. The man, about thirty-five in years, but already old for his race, was as ill-fitted for his task as the average white man of sixty, and was constantly being favored by his son of eighteen, in the prime of life. We were soon stripping to wade a stream neck-deep, clothes, revolver, kodak, and other odds and ends on our heads, and had barely dressed again when we came to a swamp of such extent that we swung our shoes over our shoulders for the rest of the day. It was stony here and there, but more often swampy, with bogs in which we sank to the knees and several streams waist or chest deep; but the water was lukewarm and the going almost pleasant, though we envied the Indians their natural leather soles. That evening we reached an Indian hut made entirely of palm-leaves, and swung our hammocks from poles with the family. Our carriers chattered long in the native tongue with our otherwise taciturn hosts, using the word “fader” in nearly every sentence. We made our own tea and ate our own farinha and rather green bananas, to which the Indians added a square foot or more of mandioca bread, here called “cassava.” Gnats made life miserable for me, but Hart and the Indians took turns snoring all night, while the wife of our host stood or squatted in a far corner of the hut, stirring the fagot fire every half hour or so, darkness evidently being a cause for fear, and gently punching her fat husband every time his snoring grew uproarious. Not only the men and children, but cur dogs and fowls slept in the comfortable hammocks; but either it is immoral, by their tribal laws, for a woman to lie down while there is a stranger in the house, or it is the admirable custom for the woman to sit up all night and keep her lord’s fire burning. Yet there is a vast difference in the comfort of life between these tropical Indians and those of the Andes, a difference due mainly to one thing,—the hammock. Their floors may be as hard and as filthy, even as cold at times, but swinging above it in a soft, native-woven hammock is like living in another sphere. The hammock is the most important thing in the life of the Indian of this region, as, indeed, of all residents. He is conceived in a hammock, born in a hammock; a hammock is his chair, sofa, and place of siesta, it is his bridal bed and his death bed, and usually it is his shroud, for it is the custom to bury him in the hammock in which he dies. If he travels in light marching order, the Indian may leave everything else behind, except his loin-cloth, but he carries his hammock.
Rain fell heavily most of the night, and we did not once put on our shoes during the next day. Our feet were under water certainly half the time. Barely had we started when we had to wade a deep, muddy creek, followed by a long swamp; and similar experiences continued in swift succession. The vast savannah was dotted with scrub trees, but there was no sign of life except occasional birds. The Kanuku Mountains, everywhere heavily wooded and blue with the mist and rain that always hangs about them, drew slowly nearer on our left. This region might be dubbed the “Land of Uncertainty,” for one never knew what might be waiting a mile ahead, whether we would have to come all the way back, after struggling through most of the trip, because of some impassable obstacle. Particularly the Suwara-auru, a branch of the Takutú which foams down from the Kanuku range, was likely to prove such a barrier.