The road made a sudden double turn to reach a lower level by the side of the river, and then became a low-roofed passage cut beneath an immense wall of overhanging rock, open and unsupported on the river side, and in plain view of the turbulent stream below. The softest and most luxuriant vegetation covers this rock, and it is overhung in many places with the graceful tape fern, and the snakelike roots of trees. Here I saw a large toucan fly across the ravine and its brilliant plumage of scarlet and black added a still further charm to the scene. The next view after passing beneath the rocky projection is one which can never fail to arrest the attention. At a distance ahead, sufficient to enable one to take in the whole picture, rises the Pan de Azucar (Sugar Loaf), a mountain in the middle of the now broadened river bed. Its marvelous shape and mantle of green forest trees, which extend to its summit, remind one of the Pitons at Castries, St. Lucia, although on a much smaller scale. We came to a place where there used to be a swinging bridge but which was some time ago abandoned because the road crosses the river by a new stone one farther down. Here on turning around in our saddles is a view different in character but equally impressive and grand. This is a great perpendicular patch of white rock regularly stratified but wrinkled and most strangely contorted into the form of an elliptical curve.
The bridges over the river which we had to cross at different stages of the journey deserve a word of praise for their construction, combining lightness with strength. They are of the suspension type, built of strong cables with plank footboards, and sufficient to meet the needs of the present light and limited mule traffic. When crossing, it is advisable to dismount and walk, because they sway considerably and are open at the sides. One such bridge some twelve miles below Huacapistana leads to the hacienda of Naranjal, a sugar plantation. The only bridge that I know of in North America similar to these swinging bridges of Peru spans Capilano Canyon near North Vancouver, in British Columbia. Naranjal has an old-fashioned garden with a fountain surrounded with mango and orange trees, the latter giving the name to the place. Three miles below Naranjal is the ranch house of Milagro, belonging to a man named Horquiera.
San Ramon is a little village situated in the heart of the Chanchamayo district. The country is here more open and is surrounded at varying distances by undulations and rounded hills, thickly covered with virgin forest; their lower slopes were, however, cleared for sugar, coffee, and cocoa plantations. After the mist had cleared in the early morning, the day had been hot, but full of novel interest, and although we had made an early start we had progressed at a speed not exceeding three miles an hour and had now only completed fifteen miles. The settlement of San Ramon although somewhat scattered consists chiefly of one street, the houses on which are no more than huts. They are built of wood and have thatched roofs, the latter slanting downward in front from the ridge of the pole. The hotel is the only substantial building of the village. It is a two-story stone and adobe building set back from the road in a field which is somewhat overrun with castor beans.
The six miles between San Ramon and La Merced was over fairly level ground and through less imposing scenery. On the way we passed through several hamlets inhabited by Chinamen and cholos, and small chacras on which grew papayas and other fruits. All the buildings were of mud or cane, thatched and of that rustic and simple character which not only harmonizes with a natural environment, but suits the country and climate and seems in every way to meet the needs of a primitive population. Over the door of one such edifice was the sign which denoted that it was used as a school. At the time of our passing, the only scholars visible were a boy and a girl, who with their backs to the open door, sat at a desk gazing at a monstrous colored diagram demonstrating the evil effects of alcohol upon the human system. We crossed the very fine Herreria suspension bridge and two hours after leaving San Ramon entered La Merced.
La Merced is situated on a flat-topped eminence and commands a good view of the surrounding country, but in itself it does not seem to possess any characteristics of special interest. It is merely a small country town with typical parish church and plaza and is in telegraphic communication with the outside world. The inhabitants of the town have suffered considerably from malaria which is visible on their wasted and parchment-colored countenances. Leaving La Merced it took us three hours to reach the Peruvian Corporation's headquarters. This is located at the junction of the rivers Paucartambo and Chanchamayo, the combined river taking the name of Perené. The road, which was fair, wound around the left bank of the Chanchamayo, now a river of considerable breadth, and the scenery once more became increasingly beautiful. Tree ferns and tree palms of different kinds were again abundant; from one of these species, fanlike in leaf, is made the local straw hat, but little inferior to the so-called Panama variety. Butterflies, both large and small, were omnipresent. The whole distance from La Merced to the Peruvian Corporation's headquarters is about fifteen miles. The bridge over the Colorado River, a tributary stream, was under repair, so leaving the path we saved time and distance by fording it. In the rainy season this would have been an impossibility, for it becomes a raging torrent, as evidenced by the huge rounded boulders, and width of its bed, along which we had to ride. This part, bordered by tall reeds, towering above our heads, was now dry and led us to another arm of the river, where a fairly strong flow of water wet our mules up to their bellies. Regaining our path, we eventually regained the Paucartambo, which we crossed by the means of a primitive log raft, while the guide took the mules across by a bridge a mile down the river.
Here among the clean-washed stones of the river bed, I got my first view of the uncivilized Indian. This was a male Chuncho native, rifle in hand, returning from an unsuccessful hunt. At first he hid behind some brushwood but was finally induced to come out. He was a well-built, sturdy fellow of medium height, attired in a loose brown robe of native manufacture. His skin was of the same hue, and his head of thick black hair was encircled and held in place by a plain band of cane. Sunday is a market day at the Peruvian Corporation's camp; it was then that I saw more of these Indians. From them I obtained for a few centavos several of their chains of colored seeds, and monkey teeth, and ultimately procured a complete outfit, headband, more aboriginal ornamental finery, parrots' wings with feathers attached which serve as a loin cloth, bows and arrows. They are painted with a facial adornment of vermilion, with the occasional addition of grease to keep the flies and insects off. This red paint is found ready made in the seeds of the achote, a bush of two varieties which produces maroon-colored pods and which grows wild in the chacra clearings. These Indians who live in the neighborhood of the settlements are mild, peaceful, and intelligent, skilled in domestic industries which is the manufacture of bows and arrows. They are excellent marksmen. They are somewhat small in stature but well built. They take readily to the water and learn to swim, and are cleaner in their habits and customs than the cholos and mountain Indians. Filial affection is a not deeply implanted instinct with them, and among them human life is but lightly esteemed. While few serious crimes are committed among them, murder is accounted as nothing. If a widow with a young family remarries, it is the all but universal practice for the second husband to kill her children by a previous marriage. It is also a common occurrence for a family to throw their parents into the river when, through the infirmity of advancing years, life becomes a burden, either to themselves, or to those on whom they should look for support. The manager of the Peruvian Corporation's headquarters told me that on one occasion he had the greatest difficulty in restraining some Chunchos from throwing into the Perené, a man who was suffering from a bad abscess, and who was eventually cured by having it lanced. This is the fate they mete out to all members of their tribe who are suffering from diseases which they consider incurable.
Eighty miles below the camp, where the rivers Perené and Ené unite to form the Tambo, dwell a colony of Campas Indians known as the Ungoninos. Owing to the outrages perpetrated upon them by the rubber gatherers, they offer a stout resistance to the approach of a stranger, for they have learned not to trust the white man. Though they are not cannibals, it is impossible to enter their territory, and in making the cross-country journey to Iquitos, it is necessary to go by the way of Puerto Jessup and Puerto Bermudez if one wishes to escape with one's life. The Cashibos, on the other hand, are a distinct race of Indians who inhabit the plains on the left bank of the Pachitea. They are cannibals. These people wear no clothes, shave their heads, and wage continual warfare on all the surrounding tribes. Their cannibalistic propensities have been explained in the attempt on the part of the Cashibo to absorb into his system qualities of the white man which he considers to be superior to his own. They, like other tribes, have undoubtedly been made worse by the shocking treatment they have received at the hands of the caucheros (rubber gatherers), some of whom are the lawless descendants of European immigrants whose ostensible occupation is the gathering of rubber, but who, at the same time, carry on a lucrative trade in the sale of human beings. From what I have heard, there prevails a state of affairs which in its recorded and unrecorded atrocities, falls nothing short of the darkest page of slavery practiced in the days of Leopold II. in Belgian Congo. The Cashibos have been a fierce and warlike tribe; now they have learned what the crack of the carbine means and quickly get out of the way when they hear it. They are, however, very treacherous, and a small party traveling through their country would run a great risk of serving as a banquet for them. They kill off all the men of the other tribes down the Ucayali and sell the women and children whenever they can get a market for them. The method may not be humanitarian but it is at least practical and remunerative to them.
Coffee does not grow at the Peruvian Corporation's headquarters camp but at a half-dozen different chacras some distance from it. This plan was adopted to obviate the possible exigencies of blight, but it is an unfortunate one, because not only does it augment the difficulties of transport but militates against anything like direct personal supervision. These haciendas, which produce the most excellent coffee and cocoa, are known as La Magdalena, La Margarita, and San Juan. These are the largest and most important as well as being the farthest away. The difficulties of intercommunication are increased by the character of the roads which in the rainy season are nearly impassable on account of the mud. The road to La Magdalena needs constant clearing to prevent it from becoming an overgrown track; those leading to La Margarita and to San Juan are toilsome zigzagging ascents which after heavy rains furnish stretches of mire and clay knee deep. In addition to this, streams cross the road in many places, and when swollen frequently wash it entirely away. All the haciendas are in the Perené division of the country, bounded on the south by the main river and on the west separated from the Chanchamayo region by the Paucartambo. From here eastward stretches two hundred miles of hilly land before the general level of the Brazilian plains is reached, and the whole is covered with a dense forest, uninhabited excepting by wild Indians. It is a wonderful country, stored with natural wealth and capable of immense development when it will be opened up. Its climate and general conditions are, with the exception of malaria and blackwater fever, healthy, and there are but few drawbacks in the way of insect pests.
For four solid days, after arriving at the headquarters' camp, it rained, which kept us indoors or near the shelter of the buildings. The fifth day broke cloudless with the sun shining, and as we had spent enough time loafing about the buildings of the Peruvian Corporation, we decided to start out, and try to make the mission station of Jesus Maria at the junction of the Perené and the Pangoa Rivers in three days' time. From there we could hire some natives to take us in a canoe in three more days to Puerto Raimondi, a settlement on the Ucayali River at which place we thought it would be possible to board a steam launch to take us down the stream to Iquitos. We later on discovered that we were wrong because we had to canoe down the Ucayali as far as Cumaria a distance of one hundred miles below Puerto Raimondi. The trail down the Perené lay through level country, the mountains having somewhat receded from the river. Sometimes a spur would extend to the banks, but after the first day out they were for the most part several miles off to the north. They were diminishing in height, and those to the north were called the Cerros de la Sal. The guide that had come with us from Oroya returned home from the Perené Colony, but the manager at headquarters' camp, Señor Villalta, provided us with horses, and sent along with us as far as Jesus Maria, a half-breed and two native Indians. He did this because these Indians belonged to the tribe that lives beyond Jesus Maria, and through them we would be able to continue our journey in safety since they would procure for us at the mission station an escort which would see us through to the place where we were to board the launch. There were quite a few small chacras on the first two days' trip and both nights we managed to find lodging at one of them. The first night out, I noticed that the bag of Ica beans and most of the canned stuff which Sansoni had bought for us in Lima was missing. I spoke to Prat about this because he had carried the sack of beans with him on his mount. He professed surprise and gave out his theory that the cholo guide from Oroya had stolen them and had gone back home with them. I had my doubts about this because the Spaniard had been complaining a dozen times every day about the load that he had to lug along with him. I said nothing about it until five weeks later when we were in the hotel in Manaos awaiting a Brazilian Lloyd steamer to take us to Para. Prat was in the barroom slightly under the influence of vermouth and bitters, relating to Colonel Constantino Nery, governor of the State of Amazonas, our adventures in crossing the continent. The governor asked him how we had fared for food, to which Prat answered that we had done well considering that we were obliged to eat Indian concoctions that the ordinary white man would not sniff at. I added that we might have lived better if Prat had not left behind at the Perené Colony the sack of beans and the canned goods. The latter then went on to relate that the cholo guide from Oroya stole them. I interrupted saying that since the trip was now over and we had reached civilization safely that it did not matter what had become of them, but that I believed Prat had left them behind because he did not want to be bothered with them. The Spaniard called for another vermouth and then laughingly owned up that he had left them behind saying that the temperature was hot enough the way it was without being hampered with any burdens. Nery told him that he was quite right and that he would have done the same had he been there. This trick of leaving our provisions behind has always since appealed to Prat as a huge joke.
Our water trip from Jesus Maria to Para, thence to Cayenne, Paramaribo, Georgetown, Bridgetown, Willemstedt, and to Colon is full of enough material to fill another book which will appear in the near future. This book is only meant to deal with the southern countries of South America such as Chile, Argentina, and Paraguay. I have added to it a few chapters not dealing on the original subject, but which I refrained from leaving out as they were a series of consecutive travel. At Jesus Maria we hired a canoe which took us down the Rio Tambo to Puerto Raimondi which is situated on the west bank of that stream at its junction with the Urubamba which here forms the Ucayali. Behind us inland was the Cashobi country so in continuing our canoe trip to Cumaria we always camped on the right bank of the river. It took us one week of stiff paddling to reach Cumaria. One day our canoe capsized, making us lose everything we had with us, necessitating us to partake of such delicacies as stewed monkey and parrot which the Indian stomach craves for and which are nearly always to be purchased at the Indian encampments on the right bank of the Ucayali. Cumaria is the head of river navigation. It is an Indian settlement at which a few caucheros, or rubber gatherers, live. Here we were fortunate enough to become passengers of a gasoline launch which took us in a week to Contamana. We had been told at Jesus Maria that the launches were steam power, but were surprised when we arrived at Cumaria to find that they were gasoline ones, and this in the wilderness, many hundred miles from civilization. At Contamana we changed into another gasoline launch. Here we entered that part of the river which is called the Bajo or Lower Ucayali. It differs much from the Alto or Upper Ucayali in so far that the distant mountains have altogether disappeared, the stream is much broader, has many channels, and is filled with large islands some of them being fifty miles long. Also settlements are more plentiful, and at the docks near the hamlets crude rubber in balls is waiting for exportation. Two days before reaching Iquitos the Bajo Ucayali is joined by the Maranon and the Amazon itself is entered.