In the afternoon we came to the Suriname River again, here far narrower, but swift and deep. The buttresses of a bridge had been built, but the few remaining passengers crossed in a cable-car, like that to the top of the “Sugar Loaf” in Rio, a hundred feet or more above the water. Naturally, a weekly schedule that requires two trains and a cable station to make its run must charge fabulous passenger and freight rates. We spent more than an hour getting our cargo—largely oil products and flour from the United States—into the little three-car train on the other side; then the conductor put on a new kind of cap, and we were off again. Here the soil was reddish and looked more fertile, and we seemed to have risen to a slight savannah with a cooler wind, though for the most part we were surrounded by the same monotonous jungle that had hemmed me in almost incessantly for weeks past. But here it was enlivened by what to me was the most interesting of the many races that inhabit the Guianas,—the Boschneger, or “Bush Negroes.”
In the early history of the colony her African slaves, said to have come from more warlike tribes than most of those brought to the New World, revolted and, but for the help of the Caribs and a patched-up truce, would undoubtedly have driven the white planters into the sea. In British Guiana they were eventually conquered and driven out. The Dutch, on the other hand, made peace with them, not only acknowledging their independence, but promising to pay them tribute, which they do to this day. The descendants of these black insurgents, unlike the “maroons” of Jamaica, have gone completely back to savagery and live like wild Indians, or like their ancestors in the African bush, wearing only a loin-cloth, dwelling in grass huts, eating cassava and other jungle products, and talking a corruption of Dutch and several other languages with which they have come in contact, which the Dutch themselves cannot understand. It is estimated that there are eight thousand of these wild negroes in Dutch Guiana, divided into three principal tribes, Saramacca, Becoe, and Djoeka, each ruled over by its “gran man” (“a” always as in “far”), and its tribal elders, while several thousand more, known as “bonis,” inhabit French Guiana.
A few of these black children of nature had appeared before we crossed the Suriname; now they burst forth frequently from the surrounding bush. The only evidence of humanity, except the railroad, was an occasional sheet-iron station building; yet we halted now and then where the dark mouth of a path broke the dense wall of forest-jungle on either side to unload rice, flour, and oil for the placer miners and “balata bleeders” back in the bush. In some places wild negroes had come down to act as carriers. They were splendid physical specimens, tall and more magnificently built than any race I had yet seen in South America, fit to arouse the envy of any white Sandow—except that, being paddlers of dugouts rather than walkers, their shoulders and arms were overdeveloped in proportion to their legs. Erect and haughty as Indians, without a hint of the servility we commonly associate with negroes, they were proof that the African who has returned to his natural state in the wilderness is preferable to the negro who has reverted to his natural state in the cesspools of cities and the rags of civilization. Though noticeably smaller, the women and girls—naked except from waist to thighs—who came down to peer out of the forest and see the train pass were equally fine specimens of the human animal, the young ones with plump, protruding breasts, shapely waists, and more often than not a naked baby astride one hip. The men had earrings, bracelets, rings even on their forefingers, charms of shells and the like about the ankles, and so many adornments, in contrast to the females, as to suggest that they forcibly took them away from their weaker sisters. Such cloth as they wore was of gayest color and crazy-quilt pattern; their short hair was done up in “Topsy” braids sticking out in all directions and tied with many-colored ribbons; about arms and legs, just below the knees and above the elbows, they wore tight rings or cords, evidently believing, like the Indians of Amazonia, that these protect them from the ravenous piranha; and the abdomens of both men and women were tattooed, or, more exactly, pricked into relief figures resembling countless black warts. More superstitious than the wild Indians, and just wise enough to know a kodak by sight, they were not to be caught unawares for a “por-trait´,” as the word remains even in “taki-taki.”
Dam is most succinctly described by adding an “n” and an exclamation point. It consists of the end of the railroad line, which some day in the distant future hopes to go on to the Brazilian border. The only white men left since crossing the river were the little Dutch engineer and myself. I went with him and the rest of the train crew to a clean, well-screened little bungalow, where we pooled our lunches, but the assertion of the dusky conductor, whose English was “picked up,” that he was “snorking too much” proved only too true, and I soon carried my hammock out into the night. After some search I swung it from the switch-post to the back end of our first-class car, diagonally across the track, and turned in again. There was, of course, the danger that another train might dash around the curve into me, but as the company would have had to order it made in Holland, carry it piecemeal across the river by cable, set it up, and run the thirty miles from the cable station, the risk was not great.
At least there was a fine collection of “Bush Negroes” in Dam. A hundred or more of them, including whole families among whom there was not cloth enough for a single garment, had come down the river, which here forms a rocky falls, to carry back into the bush in their canoes the supplies brought by the weekly train, and they had hung their hammocks under a long sheet-iron roof on poles provided by the government. All of them had the air of being as ready to fight as Indians on the war-path; yet they were childish in many ways, too, jumping upon the train every time it moved a foot in switching and acting in general like boys of ten. They were the exact antithesis of Indians in showing, rather than hiding, their feelings, and had all the African’s gaiety and boisterous laughter. In their encampment now feebly lighted by weird torches, they were indulging in music, chatter, and apparently in dancing, until one might have fancied oneself in the heart of Africa. They seemed to be more contented with their lot than the Indians, as if they still had memories of the slave days of their ancestors and realized that much more fully what freedom means.
On the return trip we picked up much gold. At every station, and at some mere stops, negroes, clothed and usually English-speaking, handed the conductor small packages wrapped in scraps of paper, but sealed with a red seal, the name of the owner crudely written on each. I soon learned that these contained gold-dust, and for every one of them the conductor had to make out a report, which the negro certified with a seal he carried, after which the conductor put the package in his tin box. Some of them weighed several pounds. Before we were halfway in the conductor had more than $12,000 worth of gold, for all of which he was responsible, though he received not a cent extra for the trouble above his scanty wage of thirty dollars a month and a gulden as expense money on each trip. No wonder he said something about “one hand washing the other” and gave me no receipt for the fare I paid from Dam back to the cable-station.
When we came to Kwakoegron every person on the train had to get off to be searched for gold. All passengers and employees, carrying their hand-baggage, were herded into a big chicken-wire cage, where they were examined one by one by black policemen. Personally, whether out of respect for my nationality or because I looked too simple to think of smuggling, the officer who stepped with me into one of the alcove closets opening off the enclosure was satisfied with patting my pockets and making me open my kodak; but many travelers are compelled to strip naked while black policemen examine even the seams of their garments. There is a negress on hand for similar examinations of her own sex, and several times I heard of an English woman resident who, having once been caught smuggling gold, was forced to strip every time she passed through Kwakoegron on her way to town. Even minor surgical operations are sometimes performed on suspects, not always without results. Not merely the passengers and their bags, but the entire train from end to end was examined with meticulous care. Gold has been discovered hidden away in every imaginable place on the cars, even stuck on the trucks or inside the wheels. The packages in charge of the conductor are also examined, and if a seal is found broken he is held in jail until it is proved that none of the gold is missing. The negro policemen get a percentage and promotion for finding stolen gold, or for detecting attempts to smuggle it, and are said to be so proud of their jobs that they seldom succumb to temptation.
Javanese women tapping rubber trees after the fashion of the Far East
