Working North from Patagonia / Being the Narrative of a Journey, Earned on the Way, Through Southern and Eastern South America

by Harry Alverson Franck

The gorge promised to be at its worst that day, for most of the streams we had passed were near their high-water mark. Yet the Suwara-auru was not. When we finally came to it I shouted above the storm to ask Hart if this almost placid stream, which barely reached the lower branches of the trees, was the mighty obstacle about which I had been hearing for days. But such is the tenacity of a bad reputation that my companion, never attempting to cross it as we had many others, tore his way upstream with great difficulty, gashing his feet and tearing his clothing in his fight with the jungle, to a half-submerged tree-trunk that offered a possible but precarious crossing. Meanwhile I, skeptic from birth, had thrown off revolver and kodak, waded in—and crossed with the water barely to my armpits! Before Hart could fight his way back I had taken the Indian youth over twice, with all my belongings on his head, though he was so much shorter that the water came to his nostrils and I had to walk close to him on the downstream side to keep him and, what was more important, my possessions from being washed away. Then, with my help, he carried his father’s load across, and the old man managed to cross “empty.” Through it all it kept raining as I had never seen it rain before, except once in the jungles of the Far East. Perhaps the most surprising part of the whole episode was the much greater fear of the elements shown by these children of the wilderness than was our own. The superiority of savages in struggles with nature, as compared with civilized man, is all very well in popular novels, but my own experience has been that in real life the balance tips the other way.

Evidently the sources of the Suwara-auru were so far up in the mountains that it did not respond to the rains as quickly as the other streams; and a day or two later it might have been quite as impassable as it is by reputation.

On the opposite bank was an immense rock with a sheer side up which we could never have pulled the horses, even had we succeeded in getting that far with them. Yet their loss on the trail would not have made Hart any poorer, for when he returned one had died of snake-bite and the other had injured itself so badly that it had to be killed. We coaxed the worn and frightened Indians under their packs again and pushed on in the drenching roar. For an hour or more we plunged on through dense forest; then, as the nose of the mountain we were flanking receded, the rain decreased and at length subsided almost to a drizzle, though the rest of the day was bathed in successive showers. Having flanked the range, our trail now turned more to the east and came out on swampy scrub savannah again. All day it had been barely a foot wide, and so seldom was it traveled, even by animals, perhaps not in months by a human being, as to be almost invisible, except where it was deep enough to be filled with water. But that was not the worst of it. Lack of travel had let the long, sharp prairie-grass grow out over the path from both sides so as almost to cover it, and the saw- and razor-edges of this cut and gashed my bare feet until the tops of them were a mosquito-net of bleeding scratches.

We expected to get a welcome and a plentiful meal that evening in “George’s Village,” a small settlement since the oldest foreign resident could remember, of which “George” was the Indian chief. Life itself depended on the food and supplies we were to get there. Our feelings may easily be imagined, therefore, when we came in sight of the village and found it only half a dozen patches of charred timbers and broken pots, even the heavy red-wood uprights that would not burn having been cut down. It turned out that “George” had recently died, though news is so sluggish in this region that few knew it. In much of tropical South America it is the custom, upon the death of a chief, to burn down his house, or even the whole village, after burying him in and under the hammock in which he has died, and then to abandon the locality to escape the “evil spirit” that has killed him. For no Indian of these regions ever dies a natural death. He is always killed by some supernatural spirit. “Did the spirit hurt him much?” the civilized man will ask the Indian informant. “Why, he broke every bone in his body,” the Indian will answer—no doubt because of the limpness of the corpse.

Miles farther on, across another thigh-wearying swamp, we sighted a cluster of huts, and our spirits rose, only to fall again, for these, too, had been abandoned, though not burned. There were half a dozen of them, including two large ones of oval shape made entirely of thatch palm, except the rounded ends, which had been plastered with mud. I arrived with a tooth-rattling chill, but our Indians had faded away behind us and we had no dry clothing. I stripped naked and rubbed down with my wet garments, that being at least preferable to standing in them in the penetrating chill of evening. We forced the door of the largest hut, which was no great task, and found it a single room large enough for fifty men, but chiefly full of emptiness. The only things left were some cracked water-gourds and a few woven palm-leaf fire-fans, scattered over a broad expanse of hard, uneven earth floor. When the carriers at last arrived, we built a fagot fire inside, swung our hammocks, and made tea of swamp- and rain-water with which to wash down our dry farinha, wondering the while what we would live on ahead. The old man was shivering with fever, and we feared he would not last much longer, even if both did not refuse to go any farther. They swung their hammocks side by side at some distance from ours and built another fire between them, which the youth kept going all night. Whenever they had occasion to go outside they went only in close company, like children afraid of the dark. The hut had no windows, and both doors were closed against insects, night air, and evil spirits. Yet the mosquitoes and gnats were so numerous that I used my mosquitero for the first time since buying it in Manaos. Also the tiny mucuim, or “red bug,” crawled up from the floor and bit our legs fiercely.

The moment I saw the darkness begin to gray through the many lapses in the grass wall I tumbled out and aroused the others. Hart and I had tea and dry farinha, but the carriers only the latter, for they did not “know” tea and preferred to breakfast on mandioca meal alone. Our great difficulty now was to get them not to abandon us. They had agreed to carry our stuff only to “George’s Village,” and now insisted on returning. They were at the outskirts of the Macuxy tribe, and to go farther was to run the risk that their enemies, the Wapushanas, would “blow on them”—not in the Bowery sense, but in correct English—and thereby cast a spell over or an evil spirit into them which would cause them to die soon after they reached home. It is likely that the superstition comes from the former custom of using blow-guns with poisoned arrows. The Wapushanas take up all the southern end of British Guiana and once fiercely warred against the neighboring tribes; and though they rarely resort to violence now, the younger generation, being meek and unwarlike, thanks largely to the man we were trying to reach, the ancient enmities remain and members of one tribe rarely enter the territory of the other for fear of being “blown on.” We had the one weapon of refusing to pay them anything if they left us in the lurch, which was not a particularly powerful one. Luckily, the youth had made one trip to Manaos and had not only learned enough Portuguese so that I could talk to him, but had dulled the edge of his superstitions, which eventually brought him on our side against his father. But all this would have been inadequate without the most powerful aid of all, the white man’s will-power, which, when brought into conflict with that of the aborigines, will almost always win out, if one has patience. For will-power, whether over fear or in argument, is rarely strong among savages.

Having lost two hours in discussion, therefore, our caravan got under way again, Hart and I, knowing a long and hungry day was before us, setting a sharp pace. Swamps began again at once, and more than half the day’s walk was under water, from ankle- to chest-deep. In time this weighed so heavily on the thighs and the small of the back that they ached severely. The razor-like prairie-grass was almost incessant, even under water, and a tiny twig, thorny and sharp as a keyhole saw, hung everywhere across the faint path. In consequence, the tops of my feet were virtually flayed and every step was more painful than the last. Yet we could not have worn our shoes, for that would have been to lift some twenty pounds of water with every step. Rain began again almost as soon as we started, and kept up all the morning. The worry about my baggage was constant, for in it was nearly all I possessed, including twenty pounds in gold, and the will-power by which we had forced the Indians to continue might lose its strength, once they were out of our sight. Yet they could or would not keep up with us. If we waited for them, they grew slower and slower; if we took our own pace, we were soon out of sight of them, and I at least expected them to drop the stuff in the trail and flee from the “blowing” Wapushanas. Yet as between having to sleep out here on the flooded savannahs without food and losing a few paltry possessions, there was only one choice. So after several delays on a day when delay might be serious, until we caught another glimpse of two specks crawling along across the vast, scrub-wooded plains behind, as hard to see as an animal of protective coloring, we strode unhesitatingly on. By and by we came to some of the undulations of the Kanukus, hard and stony ridges that were torture to our feet, yet these were now so swollen that it would have been worse torture to put on our shoes. Down in a rocky hollow called the “Point of the Mountains” we managed to build a fire of wet wood, but waited in vain for our Indians. When we felt sure for the tenth time that they had abandoned us, they came snailing over the rise behind us and dropped down as if utterly exhausted. We divided with them the handful of farinha left, and took a long time to coax them to their feet again. Swamps disagreeably alternated with stony patches. A hill in the blue distance was still three miles short of our goal. The sun came out for the first time in three days and quickly added sunburn and stiffness to our other troubles. The country was faintly rolling in places, and on the tops of slight ridges between lake-like swamps we glanced back, but though our carriers had disappeared from the landscape, we dared not halt. Hart assured me they would not abandon the stuff, and that if they did, it would sit safely on the trail, even in the unlikely event of anyone else traveling this route at this season, until other Indians were sent for it; but I had not so high a faith in human virtue.

In mid-afternoon we sighted the Rupununi, a branch of the Essequibo River that is the chief outlet to the coast; but Melville lived ten miles upstream, and the trail was almost completely lost on these deeply flooded savannahs. This greatly increased the chances of losing our baggage, for the carriers, being in enemy territory where they had never ventured before, could only guess at the road, while their fear of being “blown on” would be greatly increased by our absence. We struggled on through swamps and rocky spurs of hills, straining our thighs and backs against water made doubly burdensome in many places by bogs and mud. I seemed to be lifting a ton with every step, yet we were forced to make wide detours. Several times I reached what I thought was the point of exhaustion, yet kept on by force of will, that determination which Indians and other primitive peoples lack in comparison with the white man, because it is allied to reason. Toward sunset we came upon the first footprints we had seen in two days, during which the only signs of life had been the birds and a scattered herd of half-wild cattle. A line of trees ahead showed the edge of the Rupununi, which we could not pass, even in a boat, if we arrived there after dark. Just at dusk we reached an Indian hut on the bank, and even before we asked for it a woman brought us a bowl of farinha wet with cold water, which we gulped down like starved savages. This quickly put new kick into our legs. But there was no boat on this side of the river, now miles wide and covering a large forest. An Indian youth climbed to the top of a tree and hallooed a peculiar musical call and the most pleasant sound I had heard in a long time was a faint answering hail. I fired my revolver to suggest the presence of white men, and by and by, after we had several times given up hope, there grew out of the night the peculiar thump-thump of paddles against a boat, common to all Amazonia, and then the voices of the paddlers fighting against the forest. At last there crept out of the flooded tree-tops a large canoe manned by four Indians, with a negro boy of West Indian speech in the stern. His was the first native English I had heard in the colony. We had crossed the divide between the Brazilian and the Guianese river systems.

The paddlers were a long hour fighting the trees and recrossing the swift river, born barely thirty miles above in the high forest and rising and falling many feet in a single day; but we were finally welcomed by Commissioner Melville in the best house I had seen since leaving Manaos, and I dropped into my first “Berbice chair,” joyfully stretching my weary legs out on the long folding arms of it. Two-story houses are rare sights in these parts, but here was one with good hardwood floors and all reasonable conveniences, of open bungalow build and covered with “shacks”—that is, un-tapered singles split with a “cutlass,” or machete—the servant quarters, kitchen, dining- and store-rooms below, and a real white-man’s home above. We were loaned dry clothing and given a mammoth supper, which left me highly contented with life, even though all I had left in South America was a soaked revolver and kodak and thirty pounds in five-pound bank-notes in an oilcloth pouch about my neck. I painted my feet with iodine, but could not wash them, though they were grimy and black as those of any Indian who had never known shoes. Then we swung our hammocks in the “guest-house,” a bungalow on stilts a few yards from the main building, and were heard no more until late the next morning.

All that day I hobbled about barefoot, as was every person in the region. To my astonishment and delight our Indians walked in toward noon with our baggage, though most of it was dripping, and even my indispensable kodak-tank, made of flimsy materials evidently stuck together with flour paste, after the hasty American manner, had fallen apart and warped out of shape. The bank-notes about my neck had been soaked, too, and had run with color until they were all but illegible. I spread them out in the sun to dry with the rest of my belongings, much more pleased to have water-soaked possessions than none at all. To the Indians I gave a gold sovereign, an exceedingly high reward for the region, where the white settlers pay native carriers three or four shillings for such a trip; but my generosity did them little good, for Melville’s half-Indian son took the coin, to which the Indians seemed to attach little value, and gave them each five yards of cotton cloth for it. The unadvised traveler cannot know until he gets there that what he should have brought to interior British Guiana is not money but goods.