In the dead of night the owl calls, as though surprised at our daring, and a fish, by mistake, jumped into the boat. As it flapped its tail in the water, on the bottom of the canoe, every Indian was roused from his sleep. After joking awhile, they dipped their paddles into the stream, and away we went again.
Midnight passed; the watch was called, and while Richards fought musquitoes, the first watch slept. The sounding line was kept going by night and by day; the turns of the river mapped by the points of the compass; the distance made marked down at the end of each day, and all the streams entering the one we navigate carefully drawn in.
May 31.—At sunrise we ran alongside of a perpendicular bank of red and blue clay, eighteen feet high; by steps we ascend to see a great pampa stretching out before us, or an ocean of grasses, herd-grass from five to seven feet high, gently waving to and fro by the morning breeze, which came from the east. As we stood upon the bank the sun got up behind us; we looked towards the west over the bottom of the Madeira Plate, which is shallow and extensive.
A shed stands upon the bank, and as there was nothing under it, we took a well-beaten path leading from the river, and walked over a level, among ant houses built five feet high and three feet in diameter at the base, made of clay and shaped like sugar loaves.
The ants ascend to the tops of their houses when the pampa becomes overflowed, and there await the falling of the waters. This pampa, however, is not flooded every year, and we have pretty certain information from the ants that the rise is never as much as five feet. Every house is exactly the same height, though they may differ a little in thickness.
We came to a large wooden two-story building, the "Masi" guard and custom-house, at which all traders and travellers must show their passports and papers. We walked up the wooden steps to the second floor, to call upon the commander of the station. In the lower story was a sugar mill, and we found the commander of the guard in bed groaning with stomach-ache under his musquito net. He seemed glad to see us, and while he sat up in his night-cap reading our papers, we walked out on the balcony to look round.
To the north was a row of small trees which gave the pampas the appearance of cleared lands, but the commander came out and explained to us that those trees grew immediately on the bank of the Securé river, and that they marked out for me the true course of that stream as far as I could see, showing that the rivers in this low country are beautifully curtained in with thick foliage, while behind the curtain is a great flat, an extended stage on which wild animals roam. The tall crane stands admiring his reflected whiteness in a pool of clear water, which lies like a mirror on the bottom of this magnificent green floor.
The lands are beautifully hedged in by the line of forest trees. Man has set before him here the hedging and ditching of nature. This pampa looks like a great pasture-field, enclosed by the Mamoré ditch on the south, and the Securé on the north. Under the shade of those trees stand the cattle of the field. They have gradually clambered over the Cordilleras from the flats of Guayaquil, through the table lands of Oruro, and from the salt district of Charcas. The creoles drove them down by the side of the Mamoré river, and let them out into the grassy prairie lands of Chiquitos and Mojos. From this balcony we see one Indian holding a calf, while another milks the cow.
When the cattle came among the Indians, they knew not what to make of them. There were no such animals in their wild lands. The fierce tiger, which they worshipped along with the poisonous serpent, were outdone. The cow interfered with the belief they previously had that the largest animals were God's favorites, particularly those which had the greatest means for active aggression or self-defence.
The cow helped to change such a religion. She was larger than either; and to be attacked by a bull on the open prairie was quite as dangerous as the tiger or the serpent. Great horns stood out boldly in defence of a powerful body.