The Indians shivered. “Have you never heard of 232 water-boas? The Paraguay is full of them; by day they rarely come up; but at night! Come; our fire is big now; we are going to moor the boat and land.”
When he got ashore, the traveller found that a whole bush formed the substance of the fire; a little dry grass had been laid to the windward side of it, and the bush, being of a resinous nature, soon flared up like an oil-barrel. The fire-maker was returning from collecting fuel, and had both arms full of fallen wood, with which he banked up a solid fire before the bush could roar itself out. The Englishman had his own opinion on the wisdom of lighting fires in such overgrown spots, and was not surprised when, during that river journey, they passed many patches—some over a hundred acres in extent—where almost every tree had been consumed by some recent conflagration.
“So there are water-serpents here, are there?” he asked as they seated themselves as near to the fire as was consistent with comfort.
“Yes; some of them thirty feet long, or even forty. They will sometimes upset a whole canoe, or will lift a man out of his seat and drag him to the bottom.” This may or may not be an Indian exaggeration, but it is certainly a fact that the anaconda and his many brethren in the Paraguay make no trouble of carrying off a calf or small deer that has come down to drink.
“To-morrow we must kill something,” said another Indian as he unwrapped a slab of carne seca, or dried beef, from a strip of grass matting. “This is all that is left. See after the water, one of you.”
A redskin had brought a great pot full of water from the river, and this he wedged nicely on the fire where 233 the ashes were the most solid. Mansfield sighed; were they going to make chocolate, a drink which he loathed? By the time the beef was eaten, together with the French bread which the explorer had brought as a special luxury for his guides, the water boiled; and it transpired that they were not going to drink chocolate, for one of the men produced from a bag a great handful of dry, curled leaves, whipped the pot off the fire and dropped the leaves into it, stirring the whole vigorously with a stick.
The leaves were the yerba maté—generally abbreviated to maté—or Paraguay ilex; a sort of holly which occupies exactly the same position among the South Americans as tea does with the Chinese. Another Indian cut five hollow stalks of a plant that looked to the scientist suspiciously like hemlock; but he supposed the man knew what he was doing, and accepted the one that was offered to him. As soon as the decoction was sufficiently stirred, the redskins thrust their stalks into the almost boiling liquid and began to suck greedily at it. Mansfield took his place in the circle round the pot when its contents had cooled somewhat, and found it exceedingly refreshing, though rank and bitter to anyone not used to it. But as he drank more freely, he became aware that, like many other good things, it may become a curse instead of a blessing to a man; for he soon found himself growing drowsy under its influence; but the Indians, more accustomed to it, were equal to his share as well as their own, and emptied the pot unmovedly. On later occasions he saw natives quite stupid or unconscious through over-indulgence in the beverage.
He rolled himself in his blankets and was soon asleep; but he was awakened at daybreak by the ceaseless chatter of the monkeys in the trees overhead. The Indians were already astir, packing up their weapons and cooking-utensils, and showing generally that this was the most energetic period of the day with them. The most noticeable feature of their behaviour now was that they had become as careless and bold as, over night, they had been vigilant and calculating; and this point perhaps marks more strongly than any other the difference between the Indians north and south of the Mexican frontier. The attacks in the dark, the night marches so common among the northern redskins, are almost unknown in the south and centre; and in all likelihood this has arisen from the comparative scarcity of nocturnal animals in the north. For one square mile of the Amazon contains more animals of the cat tribe than a hundred miles of the Mississippi, and the only beasts likely to be abroad after dark, apart from a few pumas, are the wolves, of which the North American Indian has no fear.
Mansfield and two of the guides had got into the canoe, when those on the bank held up each a warning hand and fitted an arrow to his bow. A rustling noise came from among the trees and a very graceful though short-legged deer came bounding from between them. No deer ever moved at such a speed unless frightened or pursued, and the Englishman was not surprised to see a dark-skinned animal rise from the ground some few feet behind the fugitive and fall full on its back with a snarling roar that a good-sized lion could scarcely have beaten. A confident smile played 235 over the faces of the Indians in the boat, who took no more notice of the slayer than they would have done of a rabbit.