The first trait of aboriginal character (after this parenthetical alacrity at drunkenness) was shown after some hours of marching and the passage of a dozen streams. The porters, weakened by their drink and the extreme heat, squatted down on the side of a hill by their own consent and with a single impulse. With that lamb-like placidity and that mule-like obstinacy which characterize the antique race of Quechuas, they observed to the chief interpreter that they were weary of falling on their backs or their stomachs at every other step, and that they were resolved to go no farther. Pepe Garcia caused the remark to be repeated once more, as if he had not understood it: then, convinced that an incipient rebellion was brewing, he sprang upon the fellow who happened to be nearest, haled him up from the ground by the ears, and, shaking him vigorously, proceeded to do as much for the rest of the band. In the flash of an eye, much to their astonishment, they found themselves on their feet.
A judicious if not very discriminating award of blows from the sabre then followed, causing the Indians to change their resolve of remaining in that particular spot, and to show a lively determination to get away from it as quickly as possible. Each porter, forgetting his fatigue, and seeming never to have felt any, began to trot along, no longer languidly as before, but with a precision of step and a firmness in his round calves which surprised and charmed the travelers. Pepe Garcia, much refreshed by this exercise of discipline, and perspiring away his intoxication as he marched, began to give grounds for confidence from his steady and authoritative manner. By nightfall the whole troop was in harmony, and the strangers retired with hopeful hearts to the privacy of the hammocks which Juan of Aragon slung amongst the trees on the side of Mount Morayaca.
No effect could seem finer, to wanderers from another latitude, than this first night-bivouac in the absolute wilderness. The moon, seeming to race through the clouds, and the camp-fire flashing in the wind, appeared to give movement and animation to the landscape. The Indians, grouped around the flame, seemed like swarthy imps tending the furnace of some fantastic pandemonium. Meanwhile, amidst the constant murmurs of the trees, the nephew of Aragon was heard drawing the notes of some kind of amorous despair from the hollow of his melodious calabash. The examinador and Colonel Perez lulled themselves to sleep with a conversation about the beauties and beatitudes of their wives, now playing the part of Penelopes in their absence. To hear the eulogies of the examinador, an angel fallen perpendicularly from heaven could hardly have realized the physical and moral qualities of the spouse he had left in Sorata. The Castilian tongue lent wonderful pomp and magnificence to this portrait, and as the metaphors thickened and the superb phrases lost themselves in hyperbole, one would have thought the lady in question was about to fly back to her native stars on a pair of resplendent wings. Colonel Perez furnished an equally elaborate delineation of his own fair helpmate. As for the wife of Lorenzo, nobody knew what she was like, and the panegyric from the lips of her faithful lord rolled on in safety and success. But the personage called by Perez "his Theresa" was a female whom anybody who had passed through the small shopkeeping quarters of Cuzco might have seen every day, as well as heard designated by her common nickname (given no one knows why) of Malignant Quinsy; and, arguing in algebraic fashion from the known to the unknown, it was not difficult to be convinced that the poetic flights of the examinador were equally the work of fond flattery.
Surprised by a midnight storm, the camp was broken up before the early daylight, and our explorers' caravan moved on without breakfast. This necessary stop-gap was arranged for at the first pleasant spot on the route. An old clearing soon appeared, provided with the welcome accommodation of an ajoupa, or shed built upon four posts. At the command of Alto alli!—"Halt there!"—uttered by Perez in the tone he had formerly used in governing his troops, the whole band stopped as one person; the porters dumped their bales with a significant ugh! the Bolivian bark-hunters laid down their axes; and the gentlemen arranged themselves around the parallelogram of the hut, attending the commissariat developments of Colonel Perez. The site which hazard had so conveniently offered was named Chaupichaca. It was the scene of an ancient wood-cutting, around which the trunks of the antique forests showed themselves in a warm soft light, like the columns of a temple or the shafts of a mosque.
A detail which struck the travelers in arriving was very characteristic of these lands, filled so full of old traditions and inca customs. Chaupichaca was marked with a square terminal pillar, one of those boundaries of mud and stones, called apachectas, which Peruvian masonry lavishes over the country of Manco Capac. A rude cross of sticks surmounted this stone altar, on which some pious hand had laid a nosegay, now dried—signifying, in the language of flowers proper to masons and stone-cutters, that the work was finished and left. A little water and spirits spared from the travelers' meal gave a slight air of restoration to these mysterious offerings, and a couple of splendid butterflies, whether attracted by the flowers or the alcoholic perfume, commenced to waltz around the bouquet; but the corollas contained no honey for their diminutive trunks, and after a slight examination they danced contemptuously away.
At seven or eight miles' distance another streamlet was reached, named the Mamabamba. It is a slender affluent of the Cconi, to be called a rivulet in any country but South America, but here named a river with the same proud effrontery which designates as a city any collection of a dozen huts thrown into the ravine of a mountain. The Mamabamba was crossed by an extemporized bridge, constructed on the spot by the ingenuity of Garcia and his men. Strange and incalculable was the engineering of Pepe Garcia. Sometimes, across one of these continually-occurring streams, he would throw a hastily-felled tree, over which, glazed as it was by a night's rain or by the humidity of the forest, he would invite the travelers to pass. Sometimes, to a couple of logs rotting on the banks he would nail cross-strips like the rungs of a ladder, and, while the torrent boiled at a distance below, pass jauntily with his Indians, more sure-footed than goats. The wider the abyss the more insecure the causeway; and the terrible rope-bridges of South America, or the still more conjectural throw of a line of woven roots, would meet the travelers wherever the cleft was so wide as to render timbering an inconvenient trouble. Occasionally, on one of these damp and moss-grown ladders, a peon's foot would slip, and down he would go, the load strapped on his back catching him as he was passing through the aperture: then, using his hands to hold on by, he would compose, on the spur of the moment, a new and original language or telegraphy of the legs, kicking for assistance with all his might. Juan of Aragon was usually the hero to extricate these poor estrays from the false step they had taken, the other peons regarding the scene with their tranquil stolidity. A glass of brandy to the unfortunate would always compose his nerves again, and make him hope for a few more accidents of a like nature and bringing a like consolation.
"THE MAMABAMBA WAS CROSSED BY AN EXTEMPORIZED BRIDGE."
The bridge of the Mamabamba conducted the party to a site of the same name, through an interval of forest where might be counted most of the varieties of tree proper to the equatorial highlands. Up to this point the vegetation everywhere abounding had not indicated the presence, or even the vicinage, of the cinchona. The only circumstance which brought it to the notice of the inexperienced leaders of the expedition would be a halt made from time to time by the Bolivian bark-hunters. The examinador and his cascarilleros, touching one tree or another with their hatchets, would exchange remarks full of meaning and mysteriousness; but when the colonel or Mr. Marcoy came to ask the significance of so many hints and signals, they got the invariable answer of Sister Anna to the wife of Bluebeard: "I see nothing but the forest turning green and the sun turning red." The most practical reminder of the quest of cinchona which the travelers found was an occasional ajoupa alone in the wilderness, with a broken pot and a rusted knife or axe beneath it—witness that some eager searcher had traveled the road before themselves. The cascarilleros are very avaricious and very brave, going out alone, setting up a hut in a probable-looking spot, and diverging from their head-quarters in every direction. If by any accident they get lost or their provisions are destroyed, they die of hunger. Doctor Weddell, on one occasion in Bolivia, landed on the beach of a river well shaded with trees. Here he found the cabin of a cascarillero, and near it a man stretched out upon the ground in the agonies of death. He was nearly naked, and covered with myriads of insects, whose stings had hastened his end. On the leaves which formed the roof of the hut were the remains of the unfortunate man's clothes, a straw hat and some rags, with a knife, an earthen pot containing the remains of his last meal, a little maize and two or three chuñus. Such is the end to which their hazardous occupation exposes the bark-collectors—death in the midst of the forests, far from home; a death without help and without consolation.