Our errand was not allowed to interfere with household duties, so while “Harris” lolled in his hammock and the rest of us squatted on stumps and stones in the shade of his roof, the woman peeled the mandioca-roots, washed them, grated them on a native implement, and ran the mash into the open end of a snake-like matapi, or press made of woven flat fibers. This she hung by the upper loop from a beam-end and attached a weight to the lower end, thus squeezing out a yellowish juice that is deadly poison. This is carefully guarded from children and dogs, but, being volatile, is easily eliminated by boiling. The residue is then dried, sifted through basket sieves, and finally baked into cassava bread, the most horrible imitation of food extant, great pancake-like sheets of which were even then spread about the thatch roofs. Though similar in origin, cassava is far more trying to the civilized stomach than the bran-like farinha of Brazil.
Negotiations were opened again in due season. I agreed to the princely price of ten dollars, food down and back for the whole party, even including the wife, and promised of my own free will a premium of a dollar for each day gained over the usual time for the trip. But here we struck another snag. The only paddlers available were the three I had brought with me; and they absolutely refused to go. They insisted that the Reverend White had told them to come straight back from “The Stores,” and that he was a man to be obeyed. I knew it; yet I was not going to be held a prisoner in the jungle for months to suit the convenience of three Indians, even with a parson thrown in. I put it to them strongly. If they would go down to Potaro mouth with me, I would pay them good wages and give them good food for both the down and the up trip and write a letter of explanation for them to carry back to the missionary. If they did not go, they could sit here twirling their thumbs without food, for I would not let them have the dugout until I was done with it. They had a gun and bows and arrows with them, and no doubt other Indians would not let them starve and might even lend them a boat; yet I felt that if I made my bluff strong enough, the pressure of the white man’s will would win in the end, barring some untoward incident. So I assured “Harris” that I could get plenty of paddlers, if these wished to starve, assuming great indifference, though fearing all the time that I might not be able to coerce them, and told him that it would save me paying what I owed them, though of course I should have given them what I had agreed upon with the parson. Leaving that bug in their ears, we finally ended our long and leisurely diplomatic conference, “Harris” agreeing to come down to “The Stores” next morning with his neighbor’s new boat, his own wife, and one man, while I was to furnish four paddlers, including Langrey, to provide all supplies, and to advance him five dollars upon his arrival.
All the way back I let the paddlers stew in their own thoughts, purposely saying nothing and reading a novel, as if my mind were at peace. Like all children, whether of the wilderness or merely in age, coaxing, I felt sure, would be far less effective with them than moral pressure. Time, patience, and, above all, propinquity would eventually cause their primitive wills to yield to mine. As we passed one of the huts along the bank, they shouted a conversation in Macuxy at those about it, perhaps getting some promise that a boat would be sent for them. Ignoring this and their former vociferous refusal, however, I called “Vincent” aside when we landed and said, in the tone one might use to a pouting child, “You talk it over with the other boys, and when you have made up your minds, come and tell me and I will get you food to cook.” As they had not eaten at all that day and were, if my own appetite was any gauge, half-starved, I depended on hunger as my most important ally.
The Scotch-Irish native, who addressed his negroes as “Mister,” and was chary of running foul of the official “Protector of the Indians,” as well as having the Englishman’s fear, several times multiplied, of the unprecedented, could not for a long time be talked over. Finally he agreed mildly to lend his aid, and sitting down on his doorstep, like a justice holding court, he called the three boys before him and addressed them in laborious pidgin-English. “Now can’t leave gentleman here, you see. Me going supply provisions. You paddle he down ...” and so on; after all of which they mumbled and went back to the bank of the river. But my most powerful ally eventually got in its work, and about sunset, having meanwhile visibly wept, they came to me and said they had decided to go—whereupon I gave them a meal that left “Vincent’s” little paunch protruding like a chicken’s crop. Then they came again, in a far more cheerful mood, and wanted a pair of trousers, a shirt, and a belt respectively, whether to gloat over them or merely to see the color of my coin I do not know. These things I gave them on account from the storehouse, and they were soon beaming and gay as happy children.
But I was not yet done. The law required a certified bowman and more paddlers. “Had you not been recommended to me by Melville, I could not let you go on without a permit from the Protector of the Indians,”—who never stirs out of Georgetown—added my charming host, much impressed with himself as an officer of the law, like all wooden-headed authorities. We debated another hour or more before he agreed, with the air of doing my whole nation an extraordinary favor, to consider me one of the paddlers and my best boy an experienced bowman. Then, out of the kindness of his heart, he permitted me to buy from his store—at prices I found later to be between five and six times those of Georgetown—the rations required by law,—seven days’ supplies for seven people, or forty-nine rations, each of which must include a pound of flour, half a pound of rice, two ounces of pork, ditto of beef, twice that of fish, two ounces of sugar, and so on through about twenty items, not to mention milk and cocoa and many other extras for “the captain, Harris” and myself. The fact that the manager himself gets twenty per cent. on all sales from the store may or may not have made him so insistent on full compliance with the law. When the list was completed he handed me a bill for $22.71, and then growled because I paid him with a five-pound note, instead of in gold.
When I fancied everything settled at last, Langrey came to me with tears struggling over his eyelids and said, “So sorry, sir. I was so interested in this trip. But I can’t go.”
“Why not?” I asked.
“Because, sir, I have not the passage money from Potaro mouth down to Georgetown.”
“How much will that be?”
“$2.08, second-class, sir.”