In the Wilds of South America

by Leo E. Miller

Our next halt was forty kilometres farther down-stream at a rubber-camp known as Urupá. There were several palm-leaf huts standing on a slight elevation, so we took our hammocks and mosquito-nets and spent the night ashore. Travelling eighty kilometres the next day, we reached another rubber-camp called La Pena. The surrounding forest appeared most attractive, and it was said that a footpath led far into the interior to the side of an old Indian village, so I decided to remain at this point a few days to collect. However, a short walk down the trail soon showed that this plan was not feasible; the whole country was inundated to a depth of several feet, and there were so many fallen trees and clumps of thorny undergrowth that hunting was out of the question.

A rubber-camp on the Rio Gy-Paraná.

A rubber-camp on the Lower Gy-Paraná.

The next day we reached Monte Christo, the depot of a large rubber concern which has its headquarters on the Madeira; about one hundred men had congregated here to await the coming of the dry season, when they would begin collecting rubber-latex from the hevea-trees which abound in the forest. Several long, thatched sheds housed the waiting crowd; hammocks were strung from every available post and rafter, giving the interior a cobwebby appearance, and around the edges of the huts, protected from the rain by the low, ragged roof of grass and leaves, numerous small fires smouldered, over which the men boiled their rations of beans or farinha. There were pure blacks, descendants of slaves who had been imported into Brazil from Africa many years before; also Indians, Portuguese, and men in whose veins flowed the blood of all three of these races. Many of them were ill with fever, and had large, vile-looking ulcers or “jungle” sores, which were said to result from the bite of a small fly. This was not surprising, as the place was entirely surrounded by pools of black, stagnant water in which clouds of mosquitoes hatched, and no sanitary precautions whatever were taken against infection.

The natives are very fond of pets, and numbers of animals taken from the forest while young were enjoying their full liberty, but never ventured far from the houses. There was a collared peccary, full grown and very amiable, which liked to be petted, and emitted short, low moans and grunts when any one was near it; three curassows, dignified but restless, spent much of their time preening their feathers on a half-submerged log. They were beautiful creatures of a deep blue-black color, with white under parts and a wonderful curled crest. A pair of trumpeters strutted about the camp; monkeys of the Cebus family and parrots of several species climbed about in the network of hammocks and added their chorus of screams and squawks to the general confusion.

We had to leave the batelão at Monte Christo on account of the cataract which obstructs the river at this point, and carry our luggage around for a distance of half a mile. Below the rapid we found another craft similar to the one we had just left—perhaps a trifle larger—and towed by a small wood-burning launch. On the 18th of March all our things, and the sick men, several of whom were in a serious condition, were carried aboard the waiting batelão, and the next morning again found us on our way. The Gy-Paraná was rapidly becoming a vast, muddy sea, comparing favorably in size to some of the larger affluents of the Orinoco, such as the Caura and the Ventuari. The character of the vegetation remained essentially the same, but some of the creepers that drooped from the tall trees and trailed in the water were covered with clusters of yellow, pink, and pale-blue flowers. We saw and heard little of the animal life, as we travelled too far from the banks. In the afternoon a violent wind-storm blew up the river, accompanied by a terrific downpour.

Soon after the storm cleared we reached São João, another rubber-camp, not unlike Monte Christo. The water was so high at this station that we had to use a canoe in going from one hut to another, and the whole place reeked with pestilence. It is infinitely more dangerous to traverse country of this kind than to pass through an entirely uninhabited region; the huts are fertile propagators and harborers of contagion of all kinds, to say nothing of the danger to which one is exposed on account of the more or less constant mingling with the natives. Just below São João the river is again broken by rapids; we rowed down to the beginning of the turbulent water in a canoe and then carried around to the foot of the falls. The distance is not great, but we had to cross a high, rocky hill, so that we were delayed a day in making this portage. The rapids are called São Feliz and are of a formidable character, as the bed of the river is dotted with huge granite boulders over and among which the water rushes with a roar that can be heard half a mile away. During the dry season these rocks are exposed by the receding water and left covered with a thin scum of mud impregnated with salt; it is said that parrots, parrakeets, and macaws then come in thousands to eat of the saline deposit, and that they become so tame great numbers of them are killed with sticks and eaten by the rubber-collectors. I saw two macaws nearly three feet in length, and of a blood-red color with blue-and-golden wings, that had been caught the previous year; they were beautiful creatures, but had the curious habit of spending the entire day squatting in a dark hole under the floor of their owner’s hut, coming out only when hungry and at night, when they climbed to a perch above the door to sleep.

After dark our men indulged in a curious native dance which I had never seen before in South America; they collected a great heap of wood and soon after supper had a roaring bonfire going; then they formed a circle, with one man in the centre who began to sing in a high, strained voice, and after each line the whole chorus answered with a wail that sounded something like “oh-tee-oh-tee-ah.” The centre man bowed and hopped about on one foot in a most ridiculous manner and made frequent sudden charges into the surrounding company, and if he succeeded in knocking one of them down that man took his place in the middle of the ring. The whole performance looked very much like an imitation of a cock-fight. Some of the onlookers had rattles made of small calabashes full of pebbles stuck on a short piece of bamboo, which they shook in rhythm with the singing; they seemed perfectly insatiable of this form of amusement, and the dancing and howling lasted far into the night.