University of Virginia Library

9. CHAPTER IX
"PASSAGE MONEY"

WE made good progress till a tapir smashed the canoe to matchwood.

We had covered two-thirds of the way, having left the rocks far behind and entered upon the last stretch of the Yasuní where the water was deep and slow under a cool, green canopy. The river at that time happened to be at a low level, leaving the steep clay banks high above our heads. It was perhaps fifteen feet from their tops to water-level. The dugout was high in the water, for we had eaten the greater part of our stores. The rest of our outfit (one machete) was in the woods with us where we had gone for a new pole, leaving the craft tied up under the lee of the bank.

As we made our way back through the thickets we put up a big tapir. The animal, in its blind rush for safety, dashed through the bush for the water. The tapirs, having no means of defence, always make for the water or for a bamboo thicket, whither their enemies, the jaguars cannot follow them. If one of these powerful cats has already fastened itself to the pachyderm's back, it must be either drowned or torn to pieces unless it loosens its hold.

That morning the animal happened to be directly between us and the river, so it made off in the direction of the latter the moment we disturbed it. Tearing through the undergrowth it never halted an instant on

the bank but dived headlong for the water. It landed with a crash amidships and our canoe floated off in bits. We gave thanks to Providence for endowing the bananas and yams with a specific gravity of less than 1.00. We were able to rescue them after a short swim, together with the seasoned sticks for fire-making.

It took us two or three days to rig up a temporary canoe from a "barrel" palm with balsa outriggers and a pair of paddles. We selected one of the largest trees we could find, but with only one machete with which to do the work, the result was a makeshift, but seaworthy craft which served its purpose well enough for the few days' journey to the Aguarica. There Andrade would be waiting for us with everything in the way of stores that we could want.

The sooner we could cover the distance the better, for as we approached nearer and nearer to the Napo the mosquitoes became a torment. Frequently we kept going all night, one taking a watch and steering the canoe while the other slept.

We were mightily glad, then, when we rounded the last bend of that ever-winding tunnel and the broad Napo lay before us shimmering in the blazing sun. It was a matter of but a few hours paddling to cross to the left bank, turn up into the gentle waters of the Aguarica, and draw up at last at Andrade's floating pier. There were not enough clothes to go round, for all that were left were a few rags clinging to the waistbands of our old pants. So Jack lent me what remained of his to supplement my own, and, feeling quite dressed-up, I stepped ashore.

To cut a long story short, Andrade put us up for a few days and we refitted on the credit system which was the basis of all business in the Amazon country in those days of booming trade. Naturally we had nothing

in the world with which to guarantee the old trader repayment, but there was no trouble about that kind of thing down there in 1897. We enjoyed that taste of comparative civilization to the full. It was to us what Biltmore is to the hunter who returns from the North Woods. The "airtights" appealed particularly to Jack—canned biscuits, milk, chocolat-au-lait, butter, and many another unheard-of luxury. Even the lady-chewed masata tasted good.

I took the opportunity of writing home to explain my delayed arrival but, as it turned out, the letter never reached home. Our host was supposed to post it in Iquitos.

Old Andrade displayed great interest in the outside world, of which he knew absolutely nothing; but, for the same reason as deterred so many of his type from going and seeing for themselves, the fear of starving to death through ignorance of what to ask for, he could never be persuaded to undertake a journey down to Pará and on to some part of the civilized world. He asked all sorts of questions about what happened to the rubber after it was shipped in Iquitos, being quite ignorant of the ultimate uses to which the main source of his livelihood was put. It was, of course, impossible to explain to him more than a bare fraction of the processes by which it is turned to a thousand uses.

From him we obtained a fresh canoe which turned out as a matter of fact to have seen much service. Food, pots, kettles, fishing-tackle, mosquito-bars, rifles, ammunition, a double-barrelled trade-gun, and, finally, clothes were stowed in our new "war-bags" and put on board. To Andrade's questions as to what we had found up the Yasuní and why we wanted to go back there we returned evasive answers. There wasn't a fortune to be made up there, but we could get on much better without anybody

interfering with our phantom friends. On many such isolated streams as the Yasuní caucheros had carried out raids and, having shot the men of some savage tribe, had carried off their women and children to be sold as slaves, a business which was common on the Amazon and quite as profitable as rubber. The stoic natures of the aborigines of those parts enabled them to adapt themselves to their new environment with perfect contentment.

Full of hope, then, we set out for our old home on the headwaters of the Yasuní, thus entering upon the fourth period of that venture, equipped with the knowledge gained on our previous passage.

We went ahead steadily, expert canoemen by this time, enjoying the luxury of sleeping peacefully under the new calico mosquito-bars, and finding a number of our old temporary camps ready for us to use again. The journey occupied between forty and fifty days in all and was on the whole uneventful except for one event of the utmost interest. A day or two after entering the river we had turned in for the night in one of the old camps built by Santiago & Co. In some way or other I kicked away the mosquito-bar and left my feet exposed. At some time during the night I was awakened by a severe twinge of pain in my big toe and, thinking that some insect had bitten or stung me, I reached for the rope of rubber which served as a lamp and struck a match and lit it. My foot was covered with blood but nothing else was to be seen. Presently I saw the cause of the trouble. A vampire bat was circling round under the roof of the shack. With the light still flaring, and myself sitting up in the bunk, the beast returned to the attack again and again, alighting on the floor at the foot of the bunk and climbing up my blanket with the aid of his wings. Naturally, I reached for my machete and floored the voracious, disgusting thing.

In the light of the facts which I have already stated about these creatures, the behaviour of that one, the only one I ever succeeded in catching at work on a human being, was very extraordinary. I undoubtedly interrupted its operations by a coincidence and not because I was directly awakened by the operation itself. For if the latter had been the cause, I should surely have done the same thing many a time. The pain must have been caused either because the beast, in its fright, withdrew its mouth suddenly from the wound, or because in its anger, it bit me with those four sharp eye teeth which they carry. Again, another peculiar feature of the affair was the fact that even while I sat up with the light on and swung at it with my machete it returned again and again to the attack with invincible persistence, nothing short of death putting an end to the fight. It behaved, that is to say, just as these creatures always do in the case of cattle but in direct contrast with their normal behaviour in the case of men. Apparently, the shyness which they display in making an attack on a man gives place to that furious voracity which nothing can frustrate, once they have tasted their victim's blood. My own experience which I have just related is, however, the only instance of its kind which has come to my knowledge.

In such enterprises as ours there is always a strong element of luck. Once we narrowly escaped a disaster which could have caused us another serious set-back. While encamped at ease on a comfortable low sand-bar—a large one, for the Yasuní—I was sleeping in the canoe as a precaution against its breaking its moorings or being left high and dry, while Jack rested on the sand.

The canoe floated in about two feet of water. Suddenly there was a commotion in the undergrowth and three tapirs broke into the open at full speed. Awakened by the noise Jack and I did our best to head them off,

knowing that their blind rush toward us might carry on until they ran us down. We were unable to scare them in the least degree, shout and gesticulate as we might. On they came, one of them tearing through camp, another jumping over the bow of the canoe, and the third, held up at last by the spectre swathed in red calico which yelled and waved its arms at him from amidships, dived clean under the poop. He tipped the canoe up till the water poured in over the bow, but failed to swamp it completely. Like his near relation, the rhinoceros, the tapir certainly needs spectacles. He is a beast against which no precautions can be taken by reason of his gross stupidity. While by nature innocuous, his very clumsiness constitutes a danger. His tameness always provided us with the means of obtaining with great ease a supply of good meat and all the canoe-ropes we could want.

While on the subject of game, I might mention that there is much in the Amazon country which appears fat and attractive but turns out to be uneatable. For example, the paujiles and turkeys are often found to have eaten so much wild garlic, a tuber which abounds in those woods, that their flesh is rank with that well-known flavour which few non-Latin people can stomach.

Thinking that it must be somewhere round Christmas time we resolved to celebrate the festive season by donning some of the new clothes with which Andrade had supplied us. Accordingly we opened a box of shirts. Now, to say that those shirts were tender would be highly misleading. They were decomposed. Had we had a spatula with us we might have succeeded in lighting one out of the dozen without breaking it. As it was, we had more fun out of those shirts than has characterized many another Christmas party I have attended. They had cost us five dollars apiece.

"That's about a dollar a second, if you're careful," observed Jack.

The wet in that country destroys practically anything except wool, rubber and non-oxidizable metals, unless it be packed in airtight containers. A spoonful of salt when exposed to the air will melt before your eyes. Cotton fabrics rot away in a tenth of their natural lifetime. Cereals stowed in sacks soon sprout, while foodstuffs made with a basis of flour become green with whiskers in a few days.

In about three weeks we had left the clay banks behind and were poling over a rocky bottom. The rains were due to start any day so we put forth our full strength in order to cover the remaining stretch before finding ourselves floating among the overhanging branches. One day about a fortnight later we passed the scene of the Tragic Night and knew that, in three or four hours, we should be at our journey's end and know once and for all whether our neighbors had accepted our offer of friendship.

When we rounded the last bend the machete still stuck in the tree where we had left it, but alongside was a perfect picture of the whole implement, down to the rivet-holes in the handle. It happened that the tree in which we had left it belonged to that species whose peculiar attribute is its sleek green bark which retains in the form of clear white lines any impressions made upon it.

Reflecting on the savages' action two points seemed to stand out clearly. First, they were determined to have no dealings whatever with us. They had had their chance and deliberately allowed it to slip away. Either they feared us, or they had no desire to trade with us, or, again, their moral code was absolutely rigid on the question of property rights. Whichever of these reasons was the real one, we should never make friends with

them. Secondly, I concluded that what I had before suspected was proved to be correct, namely, that those people knew nothing whatever about freehand drawing or even the most primitive form of caligraphy. I never saw any other mark or sign of any kind on tree, stone, or earthenware pot. Surely, I argued, if they had known how to convey anything by writing or by signs they would have left some sort of message for us on that tree. Instead, they simply placed our machete against it and traced its outline with a sharp stone. Jack gave a disdainful glance in the direction of the tree and summed up the situation in characteristic style:

"They glimmed it, handled it, drew it, and—"beat it," he growled.

We settled down to the task of collecting our passage money for that problematical voyage to New York. But no sooner had we started than I was attacked by one of the greatest enemies of the cauchero, the fever. One day without any warning I began to shake. I shook till I felt that my teeth would drop out with the vibration. My knees gave way, and I lay on the ground hugging myself to keep myself together, the muscles of my face aching with the effort to stop my jaw rattling. Every bone and muscle in my body ached as if it were breaking in two. After running its natural course, the shaking gave place, as in the case of common malaria, to an attack of sweating which soaked my clothes from head to foot and made them so ill-smelling that they had to be hung up out of camp until washed.

Week after week, month after month, the fever returned as regularly as clockwork every other day at about eleven o'clock in the morning. If I was in camp at the time I used to lie down on my blanket while Jack sat on my back "to keep me from meandering all over the landscape," as he put it. When on the trail or at

work I would just lie down wherever I happened to be and shake out my regulation twenty minutes. What with the time occupied by recovering from the extreme exhaustion which the quaking left behind it, I lost an hour every other day for one whole year. After several months of it, Jack turned to me one day.

"You've sure missed your calling," he said; "you'd have made your fortune shaking down Brazil nuts."

I worked on, however, hoping all the time for the day to come when I should be acclimated. But it never came. I became thinner and thinner, and the only thing that flourished was my beard. Jack, too, by the way, had a fine growth which he used to lop off square with his machete, using a post as a chopping-block. We must have looked a comic pair with a square hole left in our beards for eating.

It is once more impossible for me to give any chronological account of our life in the orchid-laden forests of the Yasuní. Our second visit to the headwaters of that river was just one long year of chopping, packing, hunting, cooking and shaking. The period covered was roughly the whole of the year 1897, but again we lost count of time. It mattered little to us whether it was the day before yesterday or to-morrow. Gradually the pile of rubber in the little clearing before our shack grew to quite formidable proportions. We could tell within a dollar's worth how much we had. Our improvised scales were made up of a plain wooden balance to one end of which we attached a five-gallon oil can full of water whose weight we could of course calculate at the rate of eight and one-third pounds per gallon.

Month after month passed by, the monotony broken from time to time by some new discovery. I venture the assertion that it would take the greater part of a man's life to learn all the secrets of those forests. When

he first enters them, trees are either rubber trees or merely trees, the movements of their branches nothing more than movements, the tracks which pass between them denote nothing but the mere passage of some animal. The multitudinous voices of the woods carry no special message to his ear.

Little by little the inner meanings of things unfold themselves to him. But never can he hope to acquire the wonderful knowledge which is the very essence of their existence for those who are born and bred in a world which is itself one boundless forest. In every tree they see a blow-gun, a shelter, an essential drug, or a meal in the making. Each track—perhaps nothing more than a disturbed leaf—is for them a sign-post. A distant noise may mean for them that the maquisapas have found a fruit tree or that the cotos have settled for the night and will be an easy prey for their poisoned arrows. In a word, their knowledge of the world in which they pass their lives, a world stored with the complex gifts of Nature but simple enough by comparison with ours, is complete in every detail. Without that knowledge they could not survive.

Of all the mysteries of the Amazon which I ever probed, the one which one day I solved, there in those woods, is perhaps the strangest. While out hunting on the trail, I was attracted by a peculiar movement among the shorter growth, and turned aside to investigate its origin. Approaching noiselessly, I concealed myself among the verdure within a few yards and waited for a glimpse of whatever creature it might be. Suddenly, ten feet above the ground there came into view a long thin neck surmounted by a head with a pair of horns (or tusks perhaps) which swayed from side to side as if in search of prey. The horns, however, instead of rising from the crown of the head, projected sideways. "If

this is its neck," I thought, "what will its body be like"? And then there flashed through my mind a possible solution. "The Diplodocus at last"!

As I watched for the beast to expose its body, its neck lurched forward and it hooked its horns among the tangled vines which clung to the tree. The neck withdrew, slowly and gracefully, leaving what I had taken to be the animal's head suspended from the vines, the putrid skin sticking to the skull from which there still hung two or three vertebrae. Then it was that I recognized the phenomenon which I had come across once or twice before, the head of a deer hanging from a tree. How such an animal could ever climb a tree had appeared an insoluble problem until that day. The anaconda—for such it was—after ridding itself of that portion of its prey which it could not swallow, withdrew slowly to find a spot where it could sleep off its meal in peace.

Apparently these reptiles, although they have been known to swallow large animals, cannot negotiate the head of a spike-horn deer so, in order not to be deprived of so toothsome a morsel, they swallow the body and wait until they can break off the half-rotten head from the partly digested trunk. That they must wait a considerable length of time before they can accomplish this feat is certain, for the head of which I saw that anaconda rid itself was already in an advanced stage of decomposition. Afterwards I learned from the Indians that what I had seen was a commonplace event in the forest.

When we wanted to rest from our labors in the woods we used to bring into camp a can of fresh rubber-milk and set to work to make something to add to the few necessities and comforts we had—a new tobacco-pouch, a waterproof sheet, a pair of shoes, an air

pillow, or a few candles. Its uses are legion. For patching clothes there is nothing like it; a seam of rubber is far stronger than any thread, or indeed than the cloth itself. In the soaking woods one can pack a perfectly efficient temporary waterproof shelter with ease—an ordinary cotton sheet painted on one side with the pure milk. For canoeing, where one is exposed to the baking sun, a similar sheet can be used without fear of it becoming sticky if the milk has been mixed with common gunpowder before painting, a process which turns the sheet black. The resiliency of absolutely pure rubber (a thing which is rarely found outside the woods) is astounding. A piece can be stretched to ten or even twenty times its length, and will return to its original state. Although perfectly fitting shoes can be made easily and quickly, it is impossible to use them continuously as they scald the feet so soon and expose them to infection. They are made by simply dipping the foot into a pail of milk. Ten minutes after the foot is withdrawn the rubber is dry. By repetition of the same process, a further thickness is added, and so on until the required strength is obtained, the last few drippings being confined to the soles. They are then peeled from the feet (every hair being removed in the process) and are ready for use. They are principally useful for walking over a patch of especially thorny ground, for their elasticity makes them proof against any point however sharp. We provided ourselves with light by daubing both sides of a palm leaf and rolling it into a rope while still wet. The result makes a good, slow-burning, though not very pleasant-smelling torch.

But there is one thing in the woods against which rubber is not proof. We awoke one morning to find that we had been visited during the night by a swarm of "pack-ants" of the common red variety. They had

worked away silently for hours, cutting holes in our mosquito-bars, a Panama hat of Jacks, and even our rubber kit-bags, each ant packing off all it could carry of one thing or the other—an irregular piece severed by its scissor-like cutters. Of Jack's hat all we saw when we rose in the morning was a pair of ants fighting for possession of the last half-inch. Across our little clearing and up a tree went a procession of those citizens of a perfect socialistic state, each one carrying his Red Flag, so recently a part of our precious mosquito-bars which lost about two feet all round the bottom. The kit-bags we found to have been cut in places, but the extreme toughness of the material prevented the marauders from actually removing any pieces. However, their having been able to make any impression on them at all was proof of the ants' prodigious strength. The holes were easily patched, of course, with fresh milk.

Speaking of the devices by which we made life easier in the woods reminds me of a process I invented for fire-making which proved more than ordinarily useful in view of the great difficulty of keeping matches dry. It may be that others who go off into the wilds will find it equally practical. We would collect some dry moss from the underside of a palm leaf (a dry cotton rag would serve the same purpose) and wind it about the point of a machete; having sprinkled it with gunpowder and placed a cap on the point of the blade, a sharp rap with a stone on the cap would set the powder off and ignite the moss.

There came a time when the supply of roots in the nearest Indian chacra gave out and we turned our attention to a much larger one some four or five miles from camp. But here we were disappointed, for the owners had harvested everything that grew there and replanted the place with fresh cuttings. That was a serious thing

for us, for there was no other chacra within a good day's march and if we were to bring any further supplies of vegetables into camp we should have no time left for real work. About the same time the sugar had gone and the molasses was dwindling; when there was only a gallon left we began to suspect each other of taking more than a fair share. So we divided up what was left in equal parts and took one each. In a few more days I saw the bottom of my tin, upon which Jack, not wishing to outlast me, finished all he had at one draught. So ended the last of our sweets. But that was only the beginning of trouble. The tobacco gave out. Jack, a non-smoker, was unaffected by what was for me a real tragedy. So keenly did I feel the loss that not once nor twice I spent whole days, tramping off to distant spots where we had worked, in the hope of finding some old fag-ends. I might have known better—indeed I probably did, but tried to persuade myself to the contrary. So I was reduced to smoking banana leaves, which, though a poor imitation of the real thing, did something to help me forget the misery of the fever and the monotony of our diet. Day by day our menu became more and more restricted, tending gradually toward nothing but rice—finding its own level, so to speak. There were no fish in the stream near camp, for the water was too swift for their liking. Of game we had a varying supply: it seemed that many of the beasts and birds came and went by seasons, moving, no doubt, to fresh hunting-grounds when they had exhausted the supply of food. Time and again we turned for solace to our library, a yellow-back, twenty-page, United States Government pamphlet on Cornstalk Disease of Cattle. I have always been at a loss for an explanation as to how it happened, but somehow it found its way from Quito up the Yasuní, folded in an old shirt perhaps. I think I must have picked it up when I went down to Andrade's place the second time. At any rate to this day I can quote from its pages: "This prevalent disease traces its origin to the smut on the corn-stalks," etc., etc.

One day while we were packing a load of rubber back to camp we came across an ant-eater shambling along near the trail. We shot it, hoping to find relief from the eternal boiled rice which was rapidly becoming nauseating.

Apparently that particular animal made a specialty of black ants, for we found about a quart of them in its stomach. But what interested us was its meat. It looked tough, but gave off no unpleasant odour. Within half an hour after putting it in the boiling-pot the flesh all fell to pieces. However, being hungry, we each ate a good portion. In a few minutes we were both as sick as could be. The effects of that meal left Jack the same day but I was not so fortunate. I became really ill and was on my back for days, delirious much of the time. When I seemed to be getting better, the canoe broke its moorings at high water and started for the Napo without us. It seemed by that time we were destined to pass through one trouble only to strike another, for that was the commencement of the worst twenty-four hours I ever spent on the Yasuní.

Jack dived in to save the dugout and they were both swept out of sight. After waiting impatiently till dark for him to return, I began to despair as the night hours succeeded one another without a sound or a sight of my companion. Finally, I gave him up as drowned, and, taking a torch, I tried to follow the bank in search of his dead body. In my fevered condition I could have done little or nothing in any case, but it was impossible to sit still. When morning light came, but still no Jack, I began to appreciate to the full the loneliness

of that gloomy forest. My illness helped to plunge me deeper still in depression, until my frame of mind was one of absolute hatred of that dismal wilderness. As the morning wore on I commenced planning, as I lay exhausted in my bunk, how to build a craft that would take me and my half-ton of rubber away from that Godforsaken spot. Even if I were too weak to hunt, there would be just enough rice to see me through.

In the early afternoon a well-known song came floating down-river to my disbelieving ears. Was this the beginning of madness or only some passing hallucination? Whatever it was, it was intolerable. Poor old Jack, probably floating fifteen or twenty miles down-stream * * *.

Jack walked in.