Though it stands by itself as a single entity, the present volume is a continuation and the conclusion of a four-year journey through Latin-America, and a companion-piece to my “Vagabonding Down the Andes.” The entrance of the United States into the World War made it impossible until the present time to continue that narrative from the point where the story above mentioned left it; but though several years have elapsed since the journey herein chronicled was made, the conditions encountered are, with minor exceptions, those which still prevail. South American society moves with far more inertia than our own, and while the war brought a certain new prosperity to parts of that continent and a tendency to become, by force of necessity, somewhat more self-supporting in industry and less dependent upon the outside world for most manufactured necessities, the countries herein visited remain for the most part what they were when the journey was made.

Readers of books of travel have been known to question the wisdom of including foreign words in the text. A certain number of these, however, are almost indispensable; without them not only would there be a considerable loss in atmosphere, but often only laborious circumlocutions could take their place. Every foreign word in this volume has been included for one of three reasons, because there is no English equivalent; because the nearest English word would be at best a poor translation; or because the foreign word is of intrinsic interest, for its origin, its musical cadence, picturesqueness, conciseness, or for some similar cause. In every case its meaning has been given at least the first time it is introduced; the pronunciation requires little more than giving the Latin value to vowels and enunciating every letter; and the slight trouble of articulating such terms correctly instead of slurring over them cannot but add to the rhythm, as well as to the understanding, of those sentences in which they occur.

Harry A. Franck.

CONTENTS

CHAPTER PAGE
IThe South American Metropolis[3]
IIOn the Streets of Buenos Aires[24]
IIIFar and Wide on the Argentine Pampas[38]
IVOver the Andes to Chile[64]
VChilean Landscapes[82]
VIHealthy Little Uruguay[111]
VIIBumping Up to Rio[138]
VIIIAt Large in Rio de Janeiro[173]
IXBrazil Past and Present[193]
XManners and Customs of the Cariocas[215]
XIStranded in Rio[242]
XIIA Showman in Brazil[270]
XIIIAdventures of an Advance Agent[295]
XIVWandering in Minas Geraes[315]
XVNorthward to Bahia[342]
XVIEasternmost America[372]
XVIIThirsty North Brazil[399]
XVIIITaking Edison to the Amazon[430]
XIXUp the Amazon to British Guiana[456]
XXStruggling Down to Georgetown[502]
XXIRoaming the Three Guianas[554]
XXIIThe Trackless Llanos of Venezuela[610]

ILLUSTRATIONS

Bush Negroes of Dutch Guiana[Frontispiece]
FACING PAGE
In Buenos Aires I became “office-boy” to the American consul general[32]
The new Argentine capitol building in Buenos Aires[32]
A Patagonian landscape[33]
The government ferry to Choele Choel Island, in the Rio Negro of southern Argentine[33]
A rural policeman of the Argentine[48]
My travels in Patagonia were by rail and in what the Argentino calls a “soolky”[48]
A typical “boliche” town of the Argentine pampa, and some of its inhabitants[49]
A family of Santiago del Estero[49]
A woman of Córdoba, mate bowl in hand[64]
Even a lady would not look unladylike in the bombachas of southeastern South America[64]
The highway over the Andes into Chile was filled with snow[65]
A bit of the transandean highway in the wintry month of May[65]
At last I came out high above the famous “Christ of the Andes” in a bleak and arid setting[80]
The “Lake of the Inca” just over the crest in Chile[80]
On the way down I passed many little dwellings tucked in among the boulders[81]
The stream that had trickled from under the snows at the summit had grown to a considerable river, watering a fertile valley[81]
The street cars of Chile are of two stories and have women conductors[96]
Talcahuano, the second harbor of Chile, is only a bit less picturesque than Valparaiso[96]
The central plaza of Concepción, third city of Chile[97]
Valdivia, in far southern Chile, is one of the few South American cities built of wood, even the streets being paved with planks[97]
Countrymen of southern Chile in May to September garb[112]
A woman of the Araucanians, the aborigines of southern Chile[112]
A monument in the cemetery of Montevideo[113]
A gentleman of Montevideo depicts in stone his grief at the loss of his life’s companion[113]
A rural railway station in Uruguay[128]
The fertile Uruguayan plains in the Cerro Chato (Flat Hills) district[128]
“Pirirín” and his cowboys at an estancia round-up in northern Uruguay[129]
Freighting across the gentle rolling plains of the “Purple Land”[129]
A gaucho of Uruguay[132]
A rural Uruguayan in full Sunday regalia[133]
An ox-driver of southern Brazil, smeared with the blood-red mud of his native heath[133]
The parasol pine-trees of southern Brazil[140]
Dinner time at a railway construction camp in Rio Grande do Sul[140]
A horse ran for seven miles along the track in front of us and made our train half an hour late[141]
A cowboy of southern Brazil[141]
The admirable Municipal Theater of São Paulo[160]
Santos, the Brazilian coffee port[160]
A glimpse of the Rio sky-line from across the bay in Nictheroy[161]
The slums of Rio de Janeiro are on the tops of her rock hills[161]
An employee of the “Snake Farm” of São Paulo[176]
Residents of Rio’s hilltop slums, in a chosen pose[176]
The heart of Rio, with its Municipal Theater, the National Library, the old Portuguese aqueduct, and, on the left, a shack-built hilltop[177]
A news-stand on the mosaic sidewalk of the Avenida Rio Branco[224]
A hawker of Rio, with his license and his distinctive noise-producer[224]
The brush-and-broom man on his daily round through the Brazilian capital[225]
The sweetmeat seller announces himself with a distinctive whistle[240]
The opening of the “Kinetophone” in Brazil[240]
The ruins of an old plantation house on the way to Petropolis, backed by the pilgrimage church of Penha[241]
At a suburban cinema of São Paulo the colored youth charged with the advertising painted his own portrait of Edison. He may be made out leaning affectionately on the right shoulder of his masterpiece[288]
The central praça of Campinas[288]
Catalão and the plains of Goyaz, from the ruined church above the town[289]
Amparo, like many another town of São Paulo, is surrounded on all sides by coffee plantations[289]
Itajubá, state of Minas Geraes, the home of a former Brazilian president[304]
Ouro Preto, former capital of Minas Geraes[305]
The walls of many a residence in the new capital, Bello Horizonte, are decorated with paintings[305]
Diamantina spills down into the stream in which are found some of its gold and diamonds[320]
A hydraulic diamond-cutting establishment of Diamantina[320]
In the diamond fields of Brazil[321]
Diamond diggers do not resemble those who wear them[321]
Victoria, capital of the state of Espiritu Sancto, is a tiny edition of picturesque Rio[352]
Bahia from the top of the old “Theatro São João”[352]
Beggars of Bahia, backed by some of our advertisements[353]
A family of Bahia, and a familiar domestic chore[353]
The site on which Bahia was founded[368]
Not much is left of the clothes that have gone through a steam laundry of Bahia[368]
Taking a jack-fruit to market[369]
The favorite Sunday diversion of rural northern Brazil[372]
The waterworks of a Brazilian city of some 15,000 inhabitants[372]
A Brazilian laundry[373]
Brazilian milkmen announcing their arrival[373]
The mailboat leaves Aracajú for the towns across the bay[380]
Another Brazilian milkman[380]
Carnival costumes representing “A Crise,” or hard times[381]
A Brazilian piano van needs neither axle-grease nor gasoline[381]
Ladies of Pernambuco[384]
A minstrel of Pernambuco—and a Portuguese shopkeeper[384]
Advertising the Kinetophone in Pernambuco, with a monk and a dancing girl. “Tut” on the extreme left, Carlos behind the drummer[385]
The pungent odor of crude sugar is characteristic of downtown Recife[400]
In the dry states north of Pernambuco cotton is the most important crop[400]
Walking up a cocoanut palm to get a cool drink[401]
Wherever a train halts long enough in Brazil the passengers rush out to have a cup of coffee[401]
The houses of northeastern Brazil are often made entirely of palm leaves[416]
Transportation in the interior of Brazil is primitive—and noisy[416]
Our advertising matter parading the streets of a Brazilian town off the main trail of travel[417]
The carnauba palm of Ceará, celebrated for its utility as well as its beauty[417]
Rural policemen of Ceará, in the heavy leather hats of the region[432]
From town to port in São Luis de Maranhão—and a street car[433]
A street of São Luis de Maranhão[433]
My baggage on its way to the hotel in Natal. At every station of northern Brazil may be seen happy-go-lucky negroes with nothing on their minds but a couple of trunks[448]
Dolce far niente between shows in Pará[448]
The cathedral of Pará[449]
Pará has been called the “City of beautiful Trees”[449]
Ice on the equator. It is sent out from the factory in Pará to the neighboring towns in schooners of varicolored sails, a veritable fog rising from it under the equatorial sun[464]
Two Indians of the Island of Marajó, the one a native, the other imported from India to improve the native stock[464]
A family dispute on the Amazon[465]
The captain and mate of our gaiola were both Brazilians of the north[465]
An Amazonian landscape[480]
A boatload of “Brazil nuts.” The Amazonian paddle is round[480]
An inter-state customhouse at the boundary of Pará and Manaos, and the Brazilian flag[481]
A lace maker on the Amazon[496]
The Municipal Theater of Manaos[496]
Here and there our batelão stopped to pick up a few balls of rubber[497]
Now and then we halted to land something at one of the isolated huts along the Rio Branco[497]
Our batelão loaded cattle at sunrise from the corrals on the banks[500]
The captain of my last Brazilian batelão, and his wife[500]
Though families are rare, there is no race suicide along the Rio Branco[501]
Dom Antonito and one of the ant-hills that dot the open campo of the upper Rio Branco[508]
I crossed the boundary between Brazil and British Guiana in a leaky craft belonging to Ben Hart, who lived on the further bank of the Mahú[508]
Hart had built himself a native house on the extreme edge of British Guiana[509]
Hart and his Macuxy Indian helpers[509]
Fortunately Hart was a generous six feet or my baggage might not have got across what had been trickling streams a few days before[512]
We impressed an Indian father and son into service as carriers[512]
Macuxy Indians with teeth filed or chipped to points[513]
An Indian village along the Rupununi[513]
The father and son turned boatmen, against their wills, and paddled us down the Rupununi[528]
Two of my second crew of paddlers[528]
One of my Indians shooting fish from our dugout[529]
“Harris,” my “certified steersman” on the Essequibo[529]
We set off down the Essequibo in the same worm-eaten old dugout[532]
“Harris” and his wife at one of their evening campfires[533]
Battling with the Essequibo[533]
More trouble on the Essequibo[540]
High Street, Georgetown, capital of British Guiana[540]
Cayenne, capital of French Guiana, from the sea[541]
The “trusties” among the French prisoners of Cayenne have soft jobs and often wear shoes[541]
A former Paris lawyer digging sewers in Cayenne, under a negro boss[560]
Schoelcher, author of the act of emancipation of the negroes of the French possessions in America[560]
The human scavengers of Cayenne are ably assisted by the vultures[561]
In the market-place of Cayenne. The chief stock is cassava bread wrapped in banana leaves[561]
A market woman of Cayenne, and a stack of cassava bread[576]
Homeward bound from market[576]
French officers in charge of the prisoners of Cayenne[577]
White French convicts who would like to go to France, rowing out to our ship black French conscripts who would rather stay at home[577]
Along the road in Dutch Guiana[580]
A Mohammedan Hindu of Dutch Guiana[580]
A Chinese woman of Surinam who has adopted the native headdress[581]
A lady of Paramaribo[581]
Javanese women tapping rubber trees after the fashion of the Far East[588]
Javanese and East Indian women clearing up a cacao plantation in Dutch Guiana[588]
Javanese celebrating the week-end holiday with their native musical instruments[589]
Wash-day in Dutch Guiana[589]
An East Indian woman of Surinam[592]
A Javanese woman of the Surinam plantations[592]
A gold mining camp in the interior of Dutch Guiana[593]
Pouring out the sap of the bullet-tree into the pans in which it hardens into “balata,” an inferior kind of rubber[593]
A ferry across the Surinam River, joining two sections of the railroad to the interior[596]
A Bush negro family on its travels. Less than half the dugout is shown[596]
A Bush negro watching me photograph our engine[597]
A “gran man,” or chieftain of the Bush negroes, returning from his yearly visit to the Dutch governor of Surinam, with his “commission” from Queen Wilhelmina, and followed by his obsequious and footsore valet[597]
The main street of Paramaribo, capital of Dutch Guiana, with its row of often mortgaged mahogany trees in the background[604]
An East Indian and an escaped Madagascar prisoner from Cayenne cutting down a “back dam” on a Surinam plantation in order to kill the ants that would destroy it[604]
Javanese workmen opening pods of cacao that will eventually appear in our markets as chocolate and cocoa[605]
A landscape in Hindu-inhabited British Guiana[608]
Indentured East Indians enjoying a Saturday half-holiday before one of their barrack villages[608]
Prisoners at work on a leaking dam in Ciudad Bolívar on the Orinoco[609]
The trackless llanos of Venezuela[609]
An Indian family of eastern Venezuela[612]
Lopez, the hammock-buyer, and the charm he always wears on his travels[612]
A Venezuelan landscape[613]
Hammock-makers at home[620]
The palm-leaf threads of the hammocks are made pliable by rubbing them on a bare leg in the early morning before the dew has dried[620]
Lopez buying hammocks[621]
We were delighted to find a rare water-hole in which to quench our raging thirst[621]
Lopez uncovers as he passes the last resting-place of a fellow-traveler[624]
Dinner time in rural Venezuela[624]
Lopez enters his native village in style[625]
The hammock-buyer in the bosom of his family[628]
Policemen of Barcelona, and a part of the city waterworks[628]
A glimpse of the Venezuelan capital[629]
The statue of Simón Bolívar in the central plaza of Caracas[629]
A bread-seller of Caracas[636]
The birthplace of Simón Bolívar of Caracas, the “Washington of South America”[636]
A street in Caracas[637]
The Municipal Theater of Caracas[637]

WORKING NORTH FROM PATAGONIA

CHAPTER I
THE SOUTH AMERICAN METROPOLIS

In Buenos Aires I became what a local newspaper called “office boy” to the American consul general. The latter had turned out to be a vicarious friend of long standing; his overworked staff was sadly in need of an American assistant familiar with Spanish, the one sent down from Washington months before having been lost in transit. Moreover, being a discerning as well as a kind-hearted man, the consul knew that even a rolling stone requires an occasional handful of moss. The salary was sufficient to sustain life just inside what another consular protégé called the “pale of respectability,” and my duties as “outside man” brought me into daily contact with all classes of Porteños, as natives of what was reputed the most expensive city in the world are known in their own habitat.