One of my Indians shooting fish from our dugout
“Harris,” my “certified steersman” on the Essequibo
It began to rain the instant we set off, but this time I could crawl under the edge of the tarpaulin, though huddled and cramped as I had not been since I hoboed under the hinged platform over Pullman steps. The Indians, of course, got wet, but having stripped to their red breech-clouts as soon as they were out of sight of the mission, this seemed to trouble them little. Notwithstanding their rounded stomachs, full to capacity of that miserable hunger antidote made of the mandioca, they showed some energy. It is a fallacy, however, that wilderness people are necessarily robust because they lead simple lives. They are patient and enduring, but exposure and alternate stuffing and fasting are not conducive to robust health. Sunshine and showers alternated throughout the day. Here and there were patches of savannah, but most of the time we were surrounded by endless forest walls and utter solitude. When I felt it must be near noon, I gave orders to land at the next opportunity and start a fire. We were doing so when I heard curious mutterings and stealthy movements among the Indians and to my question “Vincent” replied in a low voice, “Black men.” The story of the “Ocean Shark” still fresh in memory, I at once buckled on my revolver and took the direction indicated, only to find a group of negroes of the West Indian type, who rose to their feet as I approached and addressed me as “sir.” They were part of the crew of Melville’s long expected boat, which had left Georgetown three weeks before, and they were waiting for the black policeman in charge, who had gone up an estuary with twelve paddlers to arrest a native. We boiled some beef, which my boys ate with dry farinha, refusing beef-broth, and pushed on.
During the day we thoroughly boxed the compass, running to every point of it with the winding river. It was broader and more placid down here, though still swift and reaching to the tops of many good-sized trees. Hour after hour the steady, rhythmic thump of the paddles against the boat continued with the glinting lift of the gleaming blades as the two boys in the bow shoveled water behind them. Their idea of good paddling appeared to be to throw as much water into the air with each stroke as possible, and this sort of “grandstand play” and the constant monotonous scrape of the paddles on the edge of the boat seemed much wasted effort. Yet we bowled along much faster than the swift current. I paddled considerably myself, but though I was visibly much stronger than the Indian youths, and gave much more powerful strokes, I could not hold their pace. They were remarkably constant in keeping it up, going faster and faster until the bowman gave a signal by throwing water higher than usual, whereupon they started anew with a deeper and more measured stroke, which in a few minutes became fast and forceless again. They did very little talking, though they were natural and unembarrassed enough. “Soldiering,” such as letting go the paddle to feel of a toe or caress a scratch, never brought protest from the others, as it would under like circumstances from civilized workmen. Clothing was still largely ornamental and a fad with them, and their wrecks of shirts and trousers were more often discarded than worn, except in the case of “Vincent,” with whom they seemed to be a sign of his higher social standing. But under the useless garments forced upon them by the missionaries each wore a bright-red loin-cloth always kept carefully in place by a stout white cord about the waist. Like most savages, though they were indifferent to the lack of other clothes, they were far more careful not to show complete nakedness than are most civilized men.
I had planned to camp at dark, but to my surprise the Indians preferred to go on, saying that the mosquitoes and gnats were too thick to make sleep possible. Near sunset, therefore, we stopped to cook, and were off again at dark. The deadly stillness of night at times was not broken even by the faintest sound from the floating boat, but only by the occasional howling of some animal, evidently a “tiger,” off somewhere in the jungle. It was too cold to sleep; besides, my back ached with much sitting and there was not room to stretch out. Hour after hour the boys went on, sometimes paddling, sometimes floating and talking. Then the clear sky grew overcast, distant lightning flashed, and the rain began again. I crawled under cover, though too cramped to sleep. It must have been at least midnight when I heard the Indians snatching at bushes while it still rained, and peered out to find them on land looking for a place to sling my tarpaulin. They got it up after a fashion in the dense darkness and constant drizzle, though with barely room under it for my hammock and net. Then they swung their own hammocks outside and dug good clothes and blankets from their bags; but though they had made their own hammocks, insect pests did not seem to trouble them enough to induce them to make themselves nets.
I was aroused by the bashful, girl-of-twelve voice of “Vincent,” whose English was probably similar to the soft language the Indians use to one another in their own tongue, in which there never seems to be a harsh word, telling me that it would soon be daylight. We bailed out the boat and reloaded it, all in wet weeds, sore feet, and constant drizzle, and were off in the phantom of false morning. The soft, velvety tropical dawn came quickly, as if fleeing before the mammoth red ball that pursued it up over the horizon. Pairs and trios of parrots flew by in the fresh morning, chattering cheerily to one another. Chirruping black birds with long queenly tails were the most conspicuous of many little singing birds; a big white or gray, ponderously moving bird, like a heron, was the largest of many species. Trees and bushes of innumerable kinds were interwoven into solid walls along either bank, “monkey ropes” galore swinging down the face of it, but they were peopled with none of the playful creatures of our school geographies. I gave the boys a big dinner, which was unwise, for feast or famine is their natural way of life and, like hunting dogs, they were of little use when gorged. The river was lower and had turned far more sluggish for lack of fall, and our speed depended mainly on paddling. I ached from head to foot from sitting cramped for four days, particularly from the “jiggers” that had burrowed into my bare feet on the tramp to Melville’s, a tiny insect which lays its eggs under the skin and especially under the edges of the nails, where they begin to swell and produce acute pain until they are cut open and squeezed out. No one had any notion where we were or whether we would get anywhere that day; but it was evident that we could not make the mouth of the Rupununi, and at dusk we pitched camp in a site cleared by other travelers in the edge of the sloping woods, where the mosquitoes and gnats were so numerous that I took refuge under my net while supper was cooking.
Monotonously the wide river, now placid and mirror-like, with very little current, slipped slowly along into the vista of endless forest walls. The sun poured down like molten iron. In mid-morning we passed the only boat we had thus far met on the trip, carrying an Indian family, the woman steering, two full-grown girls with no visible clothes, and several men paddling, a cur dog gazing over the gunwale. They, too, tossed water high in the air with every stroke. I alternated between paddling, bailing the boat, soaking salt meat for the meal ahead, reading, writing, and sitting stooped forward or leaning back to ease the cramp of my position. At least one did not need to go hungry on such a trip, as does frequently the traveler on foot through the wild places of the earth. Not half an hour below where we stopped to cook dinner beneath a majestic tree in the cathedral woods we passed the first human habitation I had sighted from the river since leaving Melville’s, though I had expected to see scores. It was an Indian hut, or rather shelter, for it had no walls; and close beyond were two or three more, one of two stories, though consisting merely of thatched roofs on poles. The women were naked as the men, except for bead bracelets and anklets, and sometimes an old skirt, though more often they had only a beaded apron a foot or more square in lieu of the fig-leaf. Little girls wore the same ornaments, including a smaller apron, as they began to approach puberty. Formerly all the native women confined themselves to this costume, but the advent of missionaries and ranchers, with their “civilizing” influence and the payment of everything in cloth, has begun to breed an unnatural prudery.
It was perhaps two o’clock in the afternoon when the Chinese wall of forest was broken, or rather spotted, by a large, rough wooden building with a sheet-iron roof, a cluster of smaller ones about it. This was “The Stores,” headquarters of three rival “balata” companies, and the only place, except Boa Vista, on the journey from Manaos where goods are professionally for sale or buildings are made of imported material. We halted at the third and last among many canoes and “perlite” negroes, just before the Rupununi flows into the Essequibo.