The relief party divided into two companies for the journey back—one section of twelve, the other of eight men. The larger party arrived in the rubber district six weeks later. The smaller party, with the three blacks, was lost in the bush. Five months and a half afterwards five survivors attained safety. The story of their misery is a chapter in the history of Amazonian travel that may never be written.
Two and a half years afterwards I was returning from a disappointing trip to the Karahone country. There were persistent rumours that Robuchon was held a prisoner by the Indians north of the Japura. I determined to see if any evidence could be found to settle his fate. I had in my party one of the negroes who had accompanied the French explorer. We journeyed overland southward through the Muenane-Resigero country till we reached the Kahuinari, thence by canoe to the Japura River. The Japura at this point is about a rifle-shot in width—2500 to 3000 yards across. Some three miles below this point on the right bank, a little way back from the river, was a small clearing. In it were three poles marking the site of a deserted shelter. John Brown, my servant and formerly Robuchon’s, said it was the last camp of Eugene Robuchon.
We made camp in the clearing. A little way inland I found an abandoned Indian house, but all indications pointed to its having been deserted many years before. Half buried in the clearing I discovered eight broken photograph plates in a packet, and the eye-piece of a sextant. Other evidence of civilised occupation there was none. At some little distance my Indians detected traces of a path, and though to me it seemed only an old animal track, they maintained it was a man-made road. Cutting along the line of this path, at the end of a hard day’s work we emerged upon a second clearing and the ruins of a shelter. After careful searching we unearthed a rusty and much-hacked machete or trade knife. There our discoveries ended. The path went no farther.
We encountered no Indians in our search. On further investigation it appeared that there are none in the vicinity, and the nearest to the deserted camp on the south of the river are the Boro living on the Pama River, forty or fifty miles away.
Believing that the most probable route of escape was down the Japura, I journeyed slowly eastward almost to the mouth of the Apaporis. We then turned and came back, searching the right bank. Throughout this time we found no Indians and no signs of Indians. On the bank, about a mile and a half below Robuchon’s last camp, we found the remains of a broken and battered raft. It had evidently been carried down in full river, and left stranded on the fall of the waters. Brown recognised the wreck as that of the raft which the Frenchman’s party had built after the loss of the canoe. But it afforded no clue.
Much as I should have liked at this time to pursue my investigations among the Indians of the left, or north, bank of the river, I had perforce to give up further progress for the time being on account of the mutinous hostility of my boys. Nothing would persuade them that they would not be eaten up if they crossed the great river at this point.
Foiled, therefore, in my attempts to learn anything on the scene of Robuchon’s disappearance, I determined to prosecute inquiries among the Boro scattered about the peninsula bounded by the Pama, the Kahuinari, and the Japura. But here also no amount of examination could elicit any information as to the explorer, the woman, or the dog. I was particularly impressed by the fact that the existence of the Great Dane—an object of awe to the Indians—had left no legend among the natives. Robuchon himself wrote of his hound: “My dog, as always, entered the house first. The great size of Othello, his flashing teeth, and close inspection of strangers, his blood-shot eyes and bristling hair invariably inspired fear and respect among the Indians.” Had such an animal fallen into the hands of the Boro, I feel certain its fame would have outlived that of any chance European who might have become their prisoner, however much they desired to conceal their participation in his murder. My own Boro boys could find no record among their compatriots of the presence of Othello or his master.
After this we proceeded in a northerly direction, and, crossing the Japura, visited the Boro tribe located on the north bank of the river, between the Wama and the Ira tributaries. The chief of this tribe had married a Menimehe woman who, curiously enough, remained on terms of friendship with her parent tribe. The chief informed me that in the Long, Long Before—from reference to the size of his son at the time, I calculated about three years previously—the Menimehe had captured a white man with face hairy as a monkey’s. As Robuchon was wearing a beard at the time of his disappearance this seemed to present a clue, but as the Menimehe refused to confirm the statement, and there was no mention of the woman or of the dog, it added but little to the evidence of his fate.
