IX. The Departure--Devoured by Insects
A FEW minutes later I had again joined my caravan, watched intently, at a respectful distance, by a few astonished natives of Goyaz. As soon as all my mules and horses had been packed--they were very heavily laden--I took my departure in a direction north-west by west. The six men mounted on mules came along. I had armed all my followers with the best repeating carbines that are made, as well as with excellent automatic pistols, and the long daggers locally used; but personally I carried no weapons of any kind.
Having been unsuccessful in obtaining sufficient men from the officials of Goyaz, there yet remained for me one last faint hope. It was to try and get a few followers from the Indian colony of the Salesian friars, a few days' journey west of the Araguaya River.
On April 26th, from the height of Santa Barbara (elev. 2,150 ft. above the sea level), a picturesque chapel and graveyard to the west of the city, I bade good-bye for good to Goyaz capital (elev. 1,950 ft.). One obtained from this point a fine view of the entire city spreading from north to south, at the bottom of the imposing frame of mountains on the south with their extraordinary columnar formation. Each natural column, with its mineral composition and crystallization, shone like silver in the bright light. The ensemble from our point of vantage resembled the set of pipes of an immense church organ. High hills stood to the east. In the distance to the south-west the lower country was open with the exception of mountains in the far background.
We marched rapidly enough across wooded country until we crossed the Rio Vermelho (elev. 1,750 ft.). My men became very excited and began firing their carbines recklessly. I had handed to them fifty cartridges each, with strict instructions not to fire without my orders. I was some distance off. When I heard the fusillade I immediately galloped to the spot. The men had blazed away nearly all their ammunition, nor would they cease firing when I ordered them until they had exhausted their supply of 300 cartridges in all. Why were they firing? Because, said they, they had crossed the first water on their journey.
My heart absolutely sank into my boots when I realized that it was my fate to travel with such contemptible imbeciles for perhaps a year longer or more, and that was only the first day! Oh, what a prospect! We had our first quarrel when the men demanded to have their belts replenished with cartridges for their protection against attack. As I refused to let them have them there was a mutiny, the men declining to go on another yard unless the cartridges were handed to them. We had not been gone more than three hours, and a mutiny already! With a great deal of patience I induced them to go on, which they eventually did with oaths and language somewhat unpleasant. Still I held firm.
After several ascents and descents and a great many mishaps with our mules, unaccustomed yet to the work, we made camp, having marched 18 kil., on the bank of the Rio Agapa (elev. 1,650 ft.), near which the grazing was fair.
Two mules escaped during the night, and we could only make a late start the next morning. Alcides traced them all the way back to Goyaz, where he recovered them. Up and down we went, from 1,760 ft. to 1,550 ft., at which elevation we crossed the Rio Indio with a beautiful rocky bed the banks of which showed strata of red and grey clay and delicious crystalline water. No fossils of any kind were to be seen anywhere, although I looked hard in search of them all the time. The country was undulating and fairly thickly wooded near streams, otherwise it consisted mostly of campos, at the highest point of which another beautiful panoramic view of the escarpment in the plateau we had left behind could be obtained. The elevation was constantly changing between 1,750 ft. and 2,050 ft. above the sea level. Burity and other palms were plentiful. We crossed that day three streams, the last one the Rio Uva.
In a distance of 38 kil. we saw only a miserable shed, although we passed a site where a ruined house and paddock showed that once there must have been quite an ancient and important farm. Yes, indeed, Goyaz State had seen better days in the time of the Emperor and when slavery was legal. With the present lack of population and the prohibitive prices of labour it was impossible to carry on farming profitably.
The landscape was everywhere beautiful, but one never saw a bird, never perceived a butterfly, nor any other animal life of any kind. I was just remarking this fact to Alcides when a snake, eight or nine feet long, crossed at a great speed in front of my mule. The mules and horses were rather frightened at first of snakes, and it was amusing to watch how high they stepped when they saw them and tried to escape from them. We were in great luck. A flock of six beautiful red araras (macaws) passed above our heads. They looked perfectly gorgeous as they flapped their wings heavily and shrieked loudly as they sped along.
The formation of the soil in that region was interesting enough. Under a greyish white surface layer there were thin sedimentary strata of pebbles, deposited evidently by water, then under these a thick stratum--30 ft. or more--of warm-coloured red earth. The streams which had cut their way through this geological formation were invariably limpid in the extreme.
We were beginning to find beautiful flowers and butterflies again, the latter in great swarms near the water.
My caravan of grey and white pack-animals--some fourteen--was quite a picturesque sight as it wound its way down steep hill-sides, the mounted men urging the mules with shouts and lashes from their whips. We experienced difficulty in finding a good camp that night, the grazing being poor and the water scarce when sunset came. It seemed a pity that the most suitable camping places were not always to be found when you wished to halt!
We were now at an elevation of 1,550 ft. When we proceeded the next morning we found nothing of interest. Fairly wooded country alternated with campos, at first rather undulating, then almost flat, until we arrived at the Tapirapuana River (elev. 1,350 ft.), 8 yards wide and 3 ft. deep, which we crossed without much trouble, in the afternoon, at a spot some 28 kil. distant from our last camp. Luxuriant foliage hung over the banks right down into the water, which flowed so slowly--only at the rate of 1,080 metres an hour--that it looked almost stagnant, and of a muddy, dirty, greenish colour.
We were much troubled by mosquitoes, flies and carrapatinhos, the latter a kind of tiny little clinging parasite which swarmed absolutely all over us every time we put our feet on the ground on dismounting from our animals. The irritation was such that you actually drove your nails into your skin in scratching yourself. They could only be driven away by smearing oneself all over with tobacco juice, the local remedy, or with strong carbolic soap, which I generally used, and which worked even more satisfactorily.
A tubercular leper came to spend the evening in our camp. He was most repulsive, with his enlarged features, especially the nose, of a ghastly, shiny, unwholesome, greenish white, and pitifully swollen feet and hands.
The heat was not unbearable in that region--89° Fahrenheit in the shade, 105° in the sun. There was a breeze blowing that day from the north-east, with a velocity of 200 metres a minute by anemometer.
A good portion of the following day was wasted trying to recover four animals that had escaped. In order that they might graze properly it was necessary to let them loose. They sometimes strayed away long distances. Occasionally they hid in the shade of the matto (forest and shrub), and it was easy to miss them while looking for them. Luckily, two of my men--Alcides and a man called Antonio--were excellent trackers, and sooner or later they were generally able to bring back the animals, which was not at all difficult, as one only had to follow the marks of their hoofs to find where they had gone.
We departed late in the afternoon through thick shrub, over marked undulations--in some spots quite steep. From the highest point that day (elev. 1,900 ft.) we obtained an extensive view of flat tablelands in the distance to the east, with a low hill-range standing in front of them. It was scenery quite typical of Central Brazil, with no irregular, striking mountains; but everywhere we had plenty to study in the effects of erosion on that great continent.
I tried to make up for time lost by marching at night--a most trying experience, as my men, unaccustomed to the work and frightened at every shadow, let the mules stray in all directions. I unfortunately had to hand over to my followers a few cartridges each, or else they would not come on. Every now and then that night they fired recklessly in the dark--much to the danger of beasts and men alike--thinking they had seen an Indian, or a leopard, or some other wild animal. I was glad when we arrived in camp and ascertained that no one had been wounded.
That night-march demoralized animals and men alike. Most of the animals strayed away during the night, as the grazing was bad where we halted. I was compelled to halt for two days in that miserable spot, simply devoured by flies and mosquitoes and carrapatos, in order to recover them.
If you do not know what a carrapato is, let me tell you. It is an insect of the order of Diptera and the genus Mosca pupiparas, and is technically known as Melophagus ovinus. Its flattened, almost circular body varies in size from the head of an ordinary nail to the section of a good-sized pencil. Like the carrapatinho--its miniature reproduction--it possesses wonderful clinging powers, its legs with hook attachment actually entering under the skin. Its chief delight consists in inserting its head right under your cutaneous tissues, wherefrom it can suck your blood with convenient ease. It is wonderfully adept at this, and while I was asleep, occasionally as many as eight or ten of these brutes were able to settle down comfortably to their work without my noticing them; and some--and it speaks highly for their ability--were even able to enter my skin (in covered parts of the body) in the day-time when I was fully awake, without my detecting them. I believe that previous to inserting the head they must inject some poison which deadens the sensitiveness of the skin. It is only after they have been at work some hours that a slight itching causes their detection. Then comes the difficulty of extracting them. If in a rash moment you seize the carrapato by the body and pull, its head becomes separated from its body and remains under your skin, poisoning it badly and eventually causing unpleasant sores. Having been taught the proper process of extraction, I, like all my men, carried on my person a large pin. When the carrapato was duly located--it is quite easy to see it, as the large body remains outside--the pin was duly pushed right through its body. The carrapato, thus surprised, at once let go with its clinging legs, which struggled pitifully in the air. Then with strong tobacco juice or liquefied carbolic soap, or iodine, you smeared all round the place where the head was still inserted. The unpleasantness of these various beverages immediately persuaded the brute to withdraw its head at once. You could then triumphantly wave the pin and struggling carrapato in the air. You were liberated from the unpleasant visitor. It was not uncommon while you were extracting one--the operation took some little time--for two or three others to find their way into your legs or body. I fortunately possess blood which does not easily get poisoned, and felt no ill effects from the hundreds of these brutes which fed on me during the entire journey; but many people suffer considerably. My men, for instance, had nasty-looking sores produced by the bites of the carrapato. The mules and horses were simply swarming with these insects, which gave them no end of trouble, especially as they selected the tenderest parts of the skin in various localities of the body to settle upon. Where an animal had a sore it would soon be swarming with carrapatos near its edge. It would then putrefy, and maggots in hundreds would be produced inside the wound almost within a few hours.
There was, near by, an old moradoria, a large patch of muricy trees (Byrsonima), of which various species exist. These were not unlike small olive trees and produced a small sweet fruit quite good to eat.
We went for 22 kil. through a forest with beautiful fan palms over 30 ft. high. There was no animal life. We crossed three streamlets, the country between being undulating. Between the last two streams we came across rock showing through the alluvial deposits. It was an interesting conglomerate of minute crystals cemented together by hardened clay, the whole forming large blocks.
More trouble was in store for us. One of my mules was seriously injured. Its spine was so badly strained that it was quite disabled for further work. My cook, who had a slight attack of indigestion, wished to be left there to die, and declined to proceed any farther. With true Brazilian reasoning he wished, nevertheless, to be paid off before dying. With true English reasoning I explained to him that money would be of little use to him in the next world. If he really intended to die I would certainly not pay him, but his wages would naturally go on while he was alive, continued the journey, and did the cooking. He quickly returned to life, and to his senses.
Really, in the entire experiences of my travels I have never come across more pitiable specimens of manhood than those fellows. They absolutely gave me a sickly feeling that I never lost while they were with me, for many many months to come. The animals, too, were almost as bad as the men. They had little endurance, they had no courage, everything seemed to affect them. The worst Abyssinian mule, for instance, was, for equal work, vastly superior to the best Goyaz mule. It was a useless task to try and train those animals. On my many previous expeditions I had been able to win the affection of my animals, and was able to train them in a few days so that they obeyed with the perfection of soldiers, but in Brazil, the last day I had them--after several months that they had been with me--they were just as disobedient and stupid as on the first day. In fact, they never even seemed to recognize us again. They had learnt absolutely nothing, except bad habits. Everything seemed to frighten them. One mule, for instance, was afraid of crossing small streams. Its legs invariably began to quiver on entering the water, and down would go mule and baggage rolling into the water. All the thrashing in the world could not make it get up. We had to drag the brute bodily across the stream, when it would jump up on its legs again. It was quite futile to try and prevent that animal collapsing every time it had to go across water. So that, on approaching any streamlet, we had to unload it in order at least to prevent the baggage getting soaked.
The interior of Brazil--even comparatively near a city, as we were still to Goyaz--did not compare in civilization with the lowest and poorest countries of Central Asia or Africa. Humble countries like Persia and Beluchistan or Abyssinia some ten or fifteen years ago were more advanced than Brazil to-day. They had good trails on which a regular postal service was established, there were regular rest-houses on those trails, and horses or camels could easily be hired and exchanged at the different stations, so that one could travel comparatively quickly. It was not so in Brazil. Even if you wished to take a short journey of a few days from a city, you had to purchase your horses or your mules, and have the riding and pack saddles made for you at a high cost.
As we have seen, even in the city of Goyaz itself, there did not exist a single hotel, nor did we find a proper rest-house in the 531 kil. between the railway terminus and Goyaz capital. Nor is there one of these conveniences west between Goyaz and Cuyaba, the capital of Matto Grosso. Of course there were no hotels because nobody travelled, but it can also be said that many people do not care to travel where there are no hotels. In so humble and poor a country as Persia you always could indulge in a delicious bath in every caravanserai, which you found in the remotest spots all over the country. In Brazil you have to resort to the streams, where the moment you remove your clothes you are absolutely devoured by mosquitoes, flies and insects of all kinds--a perfect torture, I can assure you. Once you were in the water, immersed up to the mouth, it took a brave man to come out again, as millions of mosquitoes and flies and gnats circled angrily and greedily above your head ready for the attack the moment you came out.
We were travelling all the time at elevations varying from 1,450 ft. at our last camp to 1,400 ft. at our present camp, the highest elevation between these two places being on a rocky hillock about 100 ft. higher than those altitudes.
Our camp was on a streamlet flowing from south to north, of milky water containing lime, which made our tongues and gums smart when we drank it.
Again on May 3rd we went through forest all the time, with wonderful palms and many medicinal plants. Alcides had an extensive knowledge of the curative qualities of the various plants. Various species of the Caroba (Bignoniaceæ), very beneficial, they say, as a blood purifier, especially in the worst of terrible complaints, were plentiful there. Giant nettles, the Ortiga or Cassausan, as it is locally called, were also frequently noticeable, especially when we passed too near and were stung all over by them.
We had risen to 1,200 ft. on the summit of a range called O Fogo. From it we had another exquisite view of the mountain range called Bucainha, which we had left behind to the east. It had a marked erosion on its north side.
On the west side of the pass we found curious small domes as well as pillars and other rocks of columnar formation. We had met during the day many Aricori palms, which, I was told, produced a sweet fruit excellent to eat when ripe, in the month of November.
After a steep rocky descent we made our camp. We halted earlier than usual. I was sitting outside my tent while my dinner was being cooked. I could not help smiling at the warlike array which had been necessary in order to make a start from Goyaz. The camp was a regular armoury. Beautiful magazine rifles, now rusty and dirty owing to the carelessness of the men, were lying about on the ground; revolvers and automatic pistols stuck half out of their slings on the men's belts as they walked about the camp; large knives and daggers had been thrown about, and so had the huge, heavy, nickel-plated spurs of the men, with their gigantic spiked wheels. These wheels were as much as two inches in diameter and even more. It was the habit of Brazilians to wear the spurs upside down, so that when they got off their mounts they had to remove them or it would have been impossible for them to walk. Naturally, worn like that, they were much more effective, and were intended to torment the animals with greater success.
I reprimanded the men for keeping their weapons so dirty. One man thereupon sat himself three feet away from me and proceeded to clean his rifle, keeping the muzzle pointed constantly at me. On my suggesting that he might point the weapon in another direction he roughly replied the usual thing: "There is nothing to be afraid of, it is not loaded"--and he proceeded to pull the trigger, the gun pointed straight at me, when I leapt up and snatched it out of his hands. There was a cartridge in the barrel and several cartridges in the magazine.
During the night the fusillade was constant. It was enough for the men to hear a leaf fall. Immediately there was an alarm and the rifles were fired. Once or twice the bullets came so unpleasantly near me that I suspected they were intended for me. I thanked my stars that my men were bad shots. To make sure of this fact, I one day had a shooting competition. After that I became quite assured that it was sufficient to be at the spot where they aimed to consider myself in absolute safety. It was not so, of course, when they aimed somewhere else. I did not care to take away the cartridges from them altogether, as they would have then imagined that I was afraid of them--an impression which it would have been fatal to let them entertain even for a moment. Each man was allowed to replenish his belt each day to the extent of ten cartridges.
I have elsewhere referred to the absurd pack-saddles used in Brazil, so heavy and unsteady when going over rough country, with the underpads so difficult to adjust that the animals were soon a mass of sores on the back, the sides of the body, on the chest and tail. I had other lighter and more sensible saddles, but I had to discard them as the Brazilians would not hear of using them, and I gave up in despair of teaching them how to pack them. I eventually left those saddles behind.
The riding-saddles, too, were almost as absurd as the pack-saddles, constructed as they were of innumerable and useless pieces of wood, iron and leather. The stirrups were gaudy, and consisted of a regular shoe of silver or other metal, into which you inserted the greater part of your foot, or else of a much ornamented circular ring. The head-piece and bit were also extremely heavy, clumsy, and highly decorated, for everything must be made for show if it had to be used in Brazil.
It was not possible to associate in any way or be friendly with my men. They were unpleasant beyond all conception. One could not say a word--no matter how kind--without the prospect of a long argument or a row. It was quite beyond them to be civil, and, like all ignorant people, they always imagined that they could teach others everything--including good manners! They were ridiculously courteous to one another--a muleteer talking to another always addressing him as "Sir," and referring to his comrades as his "colleagues."
We travelled that day nearly altogether over finely powdered reddish earth of volcanic origin. I had so far not met with a single fossil, not a shell, not a petrified bone of any animal, nor, indeed, impressions on rock of leaves, twigs or other parts of plants. The farther one went on, the more one had proof that that portion at least of the American continent had never been submerged in its entirety.
Some rocks displayed on the surface peculiar perforations such as would be produced by incessant water dripping over them, but these were caused, I think, merely by water falling over them while they were in a molten state; other rocks were thoroughly polished on the surface, as if sand or other gritty substance had flowed with great force over them, mixed with water--perhaps during a period of volcanic activity and torrential rains.
Geological research was somewhat difficult for a passing traveller in that region, for everything was smothered in vegetation. Only here and there in the cuts of rivers was I able to judge a little better of the actual formation of the land.
We camped on the stream Agua Limpa, which duly deserved its name of "clear water" (elev. 1,470 ft.). It flowed south. On May 4th, going through forest again over a hill (elev. 1,650 ft.), we obtained a glorious view of the immense expanse to the west and to the south-west--a great stretch of greenish, long sweeping lines with a plateau in the background. A somewhat taller hill rose at one end of it. We then descended to another deliciously clear river, which deserved as well as the previous one the name of Agua Limpa (elev. 1,450 ft.), but this one flowed north into the Rio Claro. The land was fine, sparsely wooded all the time, absolutely flat, but getting slightly undulating beyond that stream. It seemed wonderful land for agricultural purposes.
After passing the Indain River, the Bom Successo, and another stream, all three flowing south, we swerved more to the north-west, rising up on an elevated spot, from which we obtained another glorious panorama, a high Serra to the west, another in the distance to the east, the two extending almost parallel towards the south, where the gap in the horizon line between these ranges was filled by a very distant range showing a conical peak, and to the west of this another in the shape of a dome. It was the grandeur of these panoramas that impressed one most, rather than their monotonous beauty.
All the outlines of the scenery of Central Brazil had, so to speak, been worn smooth by the erosive action of water and wind, so that no fantastically shaped mountains had yet been encountered, no landscape which some great commotion had rendered strangely picturesque. There, only the steady work of uncountable ages showed itself in a most impressive way to those who understood. From a striking pictorial point of view very little remained in one's mind of those wonderful scenes after one had turned one's head away, except, perhaps, their immensity and the deep green tones--the two salient points of the scenery.
When we had descended from the pass (elev. 1,650 ft.) we came to the Rio Tres de Majo, where a hamlet of three sheds was found. Twenty-eight kilometres from our last camp we arrived at the Rio Rancheria, where stood a miserable farm. Both those streams, at an elevation of 1,300 ft., flowed into the Rio Claro to the north.
We had the misfortune of halting near the farmhouse, and suffered tortures from the millions of mosquitoes, gnats, carrapatos and carrapatinhos which made that night almost unbearable. I invariably found that carrapatos and carrapatinhos were more plentiful where living people or animals were to be found. Near those dirty farmhouses we were simply swarming all over with them. My poor animals, owing to the long marches we had been making, and the terrible pack-saddles, had sore backs and loins, sore chests. Yet we could not stop, and the poor things must stand the pain and strain.
X. Fishing--Termites--The Great Araguaya River
AN amusing incident happened. A cow chewed up the coat of one of my men, which was lying on the ground. In his fury the owner of the coat, on discovering the misdeed, seized his carbine and fired four shots at the cow and four at the farmhouse. None of us could tell where the bullets went. The cow, startled by the shots, gave a few jumps and kicks, then, absolutely uninjured, peacefully continued grazing. The house too remained untouched. Amazing shots my men were!
Across almost flat country we reached the Rio Claro--"the Limpid River" (elev. 1,250 ft. above the sea level), 200 metres wide, and flowing along a winding course in a general direction of south-west to north-east. Wide beaches of sand and fine gravel were to be seen on the convex or inner curves of its channel. Along the banks there was luxuriant vegetation, which hung down and dipped into the water.
Diamonds were to be found in that river. At low water curious eruptive, highly ferruginous rocks showed in the river bed, some in the shape of spherical balls riddled with perforations, as if they had been in a state of ebullition, others as little pellets of yellow lava, such as I had before encountered between Araguary and Goyaz, and which suggested the spluttering of molten rock suddenly cooled by contact with cold air or water.
We encamped some three kilometres from the Rio Claro, on the streamlet Arejado, where again we were devoured by mosquitoes. Although we all had thick mosquito nets, and although we slept wrapped--head and all--in our respective blankets, the brutes managed to find their way in and stung us with incredible vigour. We were fresh blood for them. The irritation caused by their bites was a torment.
We were now getting closer to the country where we were to meet the terrible wild Indians, the most ferocious and cruel cannibals on earth, according to the accounts heard in Goyaz. My men were already beginning to lose heart. With the sleepless night due to the mosquitoes, and the heavy atmosphere caused by a fast-approaching thunderstorm, they were morose in the morning. With the exception of Alcides and the negro Filippe, the others came insolently forward and refused to go any farther. They shoved the muzzles of their rifles under my nose; they wished to be paid up instantly and go back. With a little patience it was easy to get out of difficulties of that sort, if you possessed the gift of keeping calm.
Faithful Alcides, who had a fiery temper, seized his rifle and was about to fire at them, when I took the weapon from him.
"Do not shoot them, Alcides: these men have been good (sic) until now because they were in good health. They are bad now because they are ill. I will cure them."
And so saying I felt the pulse and forehead of the astonished rioters.
"Yes, indeed, these men are very, very ill. They need medicine. Alcides, get the castor oil--the large tin."
I had two kinds of castor oil: one tasteless--pour façon de parler--for my own use and cases of serious illness; another in large tins, of the commonest kind, with an odour that would kill an ox, which I used occasionally for punishment on my men when they were disobedient.
Alcides, who quickly entered into the spirit of that little joke, immediately produced the deadly tin, collecting upon the ground the four cups belonging to the strikers. Taking my instructions, he poured some four ounces of the sickening oil into each cup--and perhaps a little more. I handed a cup to each man and saw that he drank it. They all eventually did so, with comic grimaces and oaths. The men, I must tell you, had great faith in my powers as a medicine man. Once or twice before I had already cured them of insignificant ailments, and whenever I told them seriously that they were ill they believed, in their ignorance, that they were really ill.
This done, and to put them again in a good temper, I patted them on the back and, handing each of them a fish-hook and a line, sent them all to fish in the river, saying that as they were so ill I would delay my departure until the afternoon.
"That pool, over there," some three hundred yards distant, I suggested would be an excellent place for them to fish in. In that direction, as meek as lambs, like so many naughty children they all went, carrying the lines away and some toucinho (lard) for bait. Alcides, who was an enthusiastic fisherman, also went off with a line, and had good sport. He reported that the other men lay flat upon their backs most of the time, groaning and moaning, upon the rocks, basking in the sun instead of fishing. The castor oil in any case had the desired effect that the men did not mutiny again for some time.
We did not leave camp until 2 p.m. The country was teeming with plants of great medicinal value, such as the sucupira, which gave a bean much used in Goyaz to relieve stomach troubles; the algudanzinho, with its lovely cadmium-yellow cup-shaped flower--a plant which was most plentiful in that region, and the root of which was said to be very beneficial for the worst of venereal complaints; and also the acaraiba. Many were the handsome wild flowers we came across, principally red and yellow; but to my mind they could bear no comparison with even the ugliest European wild flowers. They were coarse in shape and crude in colour, and in their beauty there was the same difference as there would be between the lovely refined face of an aristocratic woman and that of a handsome massive peasant girl.
Water was certainly not lacking in that country. We crossed the Rio Striminho, then the Rio Stacco flowing from south-west to north-east into a lagoon formed by the Rio Claro. We camped on the bank of the Rio Stacco. The water was delicious.
The negro Filippe killed a wild boar. My men had a great time preparing a huge dinner. They absolutely gorged themselves. Personally I never touch pig in any shape or form, as I cannot get over the idea that its meat is poisonous for any thoroughly healthy person. It may, of course, not be so to people who are not absolutely healthy. The very sight and odour of it make me quite ill, and I fully share the idea of Mahommedans that the meat--certainly of tame pigs--is most unclean.
As we went on we had good sport, my men taking the greatest delight in fishing in the rivers on the banks of which we halted. The travelling was easy over flat country. We made short marches for some days, in order to let the animals recover their lost strength. In the river Las Almas (elev. 1,250 ft.), 20 metres wide and 3 ft. deep, flowing north-west, we caught a beautiful pintado fish--so called because of its spotted appearance. That fish possessed a huge flat head, with long feelers, two on the nose--at the side of the nostrils, to be accurate--two under its lower mandible. The mouth was enormous in comparison with the total length of the fish, and could be opened at an extraordinarily wide angle. Inside were most peculiar teeth in sets of twos, while the mouth was lined with thousands of hard, tiny sharp points. The eyes were far back upon the skull. The bony dome of the palate was divided in the centre, and a similar separation was to be observed in the centre of the lower jaw, giving thus a great flexibility to the interior of the mouth. When measured, the length of the head was exactly one-third of the length of the entire fish.
Other fish, too, were caught that day, called mandibé or fidalgo.
The aspect of the country was gradually changing. During that day's march we had gone over beautiful open stretches of grassy land with only a few stunted trees upon them. Bosquets or tufts of small palms or other trees were to be seen, raised on small mounds, showing how the country was gradually wearing itself down. Nearly each tree was raised on a mound of grey clay. Some fine specimens of Lexia trees, with their peculiarly distorted branches, were to be observed.
Those great scavengers of Brazil, the Urubu, of which two varieties were to be found--the Urubu commun (Cathartes atratus) and the Urubu rei (Cathartes Papa)--a cross between a vulture and a crow, were fairly plentiful now that game was more abundant in the country. They often pierced our ears with their unmusical shrieks. The urubu belonged to the vulture family and was found in all tropical South America. It had black plumage, somewhat shaggy, with reddish legs and feet, and bluish, almost naked, head and neck. Like all rapacious birds of its kind, it lived entirely on dead animals and what refuse it could find about the country. Near farms these birds were generally to be seen in great numbers.
We had a delicious breakfast of fish--really excellent eating--which set everybody in a good humour, and then we proceeded over slight undulations (elev. 1,250 to 1,300 ft.) through forest until we got to the Ponte Alto (High Bridge) River, so called because..., there is no bridge whatever there! The Brazilians are really too delightful in their reasoning; and, mind you, it is not done with a mischievous sense of the ludicrous--indeed no; it is done seriously. The Ponte Alto stream was, like most of the other watercourses of that region, wonderfully limpid.
From that point we were in charming open country, where we could freely breathe the delicious air. Occasionally we saw some angelin trees (the Angelino amargoso and Angelino pedra), technically known as Andira vermifuga M. and Andira spectabilis Sald.
Nearly all the woods we found had a high specific gravity: the two latter, for instance, 0·984 and 1·052 respectively, and a resistance to crushing of kilos 0·684 and kilos. 0·648.
Cacti of great size were numerous. We were now in a region where termite-hills (ant-hills) were to be seen in great numbers. They stood from 2 to 3 ft. above ground, although occasionally some could be seen nearly double that height. Some of the ant-heaps were extraordinary in their architecture, and resembled miniature castles with towers and terraced platforms. Whether they had been built so by the ants or worn down to that shape by the pouring rain and wind, was not so easy to tell.
The more one saw of the termites, the more one disliked them, for they were the most insidious, destructive little brutes of that region. They were ugly in appearance, with their fat white bodies of a dirty greenish-white colour. Nevertheless one could not help having great admiration for those little rascals, which in one night were able to devour the bottom of stout wooden boxes, and in a few hours damaged saddles, clothes, shoes, or any article which happened to be left resting for a little while on the ground. They were even able to make an entire house tumble down in a comparatively short time if the material used in the construction were wood.
Yes, one hated them; yet, when one knew all about them, one had to spend hours watching their doings with a microscope, it was so interesting. They seemed to have two social classes among them--the labouring class and the warriors. To the labourers was given the heavy task of digging underground channels, the surplus earth of which was thrown up with great force through apertures in the soil until the earth so displaced and amassed formed a high heap, riddled in its interior by hundreds of channels and miniature chambers and apartments. To the warriors--really more like a kind of perfect police service--was entrusted the safety of the colony and principally the protection of the young. White ants have many enemies, especially among the larger ants, which carry on regular wars against them; for although ants and termites--commonly called white ants--have many points in common, yet they belong to totally different orders of insects, as can be easily noticed in their structure and development. The peculiar structure of the enlarged heads of the warrior termites was particularly noticeable. Some had a formidable head provided with tentacles and powerful rodent clippers--as well as the peculiar whitish cuirasses in sections of the body. The workers had more normal shapes, the head being better proportioned with the body.
It was enough to split one of the heaps and watch the termites at work to learn a lesson of what devotion and duty mean. In the many passages overcrowded with ants--there was never confusion--you saw hundreds of them, either conveying food or building materials to the various quarters. Some carried leaves, others carried pieces of wood, seeds, or dead insects. If one was not strong enough to convey its load, others came to its assistance--although they generally seemed to resent the intrusion of others in doing their work. I always noticed that when one was in difficulty and others ran to the rescue there generally ensued what seemed to be a row, and the new arrivals hurriedly left--either disgusted or angry, I could not tell which by their minute expression.
Then there were extraordinarily fat lady ants, lying flat upon their backs, and with many attendants around them doing massage and general nursing with the greatest possible gentleness and care. If one wanted to see a great commotion one only had to introduce into one of the chambers a larger ant of a different kind. What struck me was that the moment the fray was over the termites at once--if perhaps a little more excitedly--resumed their work.
What astonished me more than anything was that they would go on working at all--as if nothing had happened--when I split open one of their dwellings and many of the channels, which must have been normally in the dark--were now exposed to the light. This made me suspect that their vision was either missing altogether or was very defective.
Nature is a wonderful organizer. The majority of termites--including warriors and workers--were sexless; that was perhaps why they were such good workers, as they had nothing to distract them. The males and females whose duty was merely to propagate and improve the race were provided temporarily with wings, so that they could fly away from the colony and disseminate their love among other winged termites of other colonies. The relation between different colonies was friendly. When their task was accomplished and flight was no more necessary for them, they conveniently and voluntarily shed their wings, leaving merely a small section of the wing root attached to the thorax.
The local name for all kinds of termites was cupim, but technically they are known in the Order of Neoroptera as Termes album. Another variety of insect, the Psocus domesticus, was also as destructive as the Termes album.
We frequently met with plants of caju, or acaju or acajueiro (Anacardium Occidentale L.) on our course. They belonged to the Terebinthaceæ group. In a preceding chapter I have already described the red or yellow delicious fruit of this tree. Then we found other interesting trees, such as the oleo, the tall and handsome poinna, and numerous specimens of the small but good-looking palm pindova.
There were not many flowers in that particular spot, barring perhaps an occasional cluster of white flowers, principally bocca de carneiro, said to have properties refreshing for the blood.
Near a small stream I noticed some lovely, slender, tall jeguitiba vermelho trees (Couratari estrellensis Raddi), from 75 to 80 ft. high, with branches and clusters of deep green healthy leaves at the summit only.
There was a little less monotony in the scenery before us that day, for to the west stood, over a long, slightly undulating line, one peculiar conical hill heavily wooded. In pools of stagnant water were lovely water flowers, and in the neighbourhood of that moisture many handsome burity palms were prominent in the landscape.
We had been mounting gently all the time from our last camp. Early in the afternoon we reached that magnificent river, the Araguaya, over 200 yards wide, although something like between 2,500 and 3,000 kil., or perhaps more, from its mouth. Its lovely placid waters, reflecting with the faithfulness of a mirror the vegetation on the high steep banks as well as the clouds in the sky, made an effective picture. The dead silence, disturbed only by the shouts of my men urging the mules to the water-side, was most impressive, the water flowing so slowly that it almost looked stagnant.
Not a mountain, not a hill could be perceived, except one low humble range of hills to the south. It was on those hills that the great Araguaya had its birth.
We crossed the great stream--mules, baggage and all, on three canoes upon which a platform had been erected. Once landed on its western bank, we were, notwithstanding local boundary quarrels, in the immense State of Matto Grosso, the wildest of Brazil.
Chapter XI
The Tucano--Fish of the Araguaya River--A Bad Shot--A Strange Sight
I SEEMED to have no luck on that journey. Everything went wrong all the time. Everything seemed to stand in my way to prevent my progress. My men were demoralized, my mules and horses in a pitiable condition. I called a halt of two or three days in order that we might shoe the animals again and rearrange the pack-saddles. We had, of course, a good supply of new shoes, but the work of shoeing so many animals was hard, especially as I had to do most of it myself with Alcides and Filippe, the other men being absolutely useless. Add to this a stifling temperature of 90° Fahrenheit.
To make things worse there came a downpour, such as I have seldom seen, and which lasted for two entire days. That was the dry season too! The house in which we had put up--and through the roof of which we could admire the stars at our ease while in bed--was turned into a regular swimming-tank when the rain came. We had a good deal of trouble to keep our things dry, propping them up on improvised stands of stones which we removed from the crumbling walls of the building. Fortunately, most of my pack-saddle cases were air- and water-tight, so that the contents could not be injured. The wind blew with great fury--at the rate of 460 metres a minute, to be strictly accurate.
There was a humble hamlet at Rio Grande or Porto do Castanho, on the Matto Grosso side, where we had crossed the Araguaya River. It was the gloomiest of gloomy places even in glorious weather. Imagine it on a wet, windy day. The few tiny one-storied cabins--they could hardly be called houses--had got soaked with the storm, and looked miserable. The inhabitants were busy baling water from inside their dwellings. Many tiles of the roofs had been blown away, and those that remained had grown extra dark with the moisture, with merely a bluish tinge from the reflected light of the grey sky upon their shiny surfaces. The solitary palm tree at the end of the oblong square looked pitiful, with its long bladed leaves split and broken by the wind, while the dense foliage along the river banks was now several tones darker and richer than we had seen it before.
Under usual circumstances the plaza--or square--was so high above the river that one could not see the water at all until one went to the edge of the stream, but during flood the river rose as much as 20 ft. and occasionally overflowed the greater portion of the square.
The grass of the square--a mere field--alone seemed happy in the damp. Half dried and anæmic from the hot sun, it seemed to be quickly coming back to life and vigour in those few hours which had rendered us all miserable. My poor horses and mules, worn and sore, stood dripping and wretched, with quivering knees, in the middle of the square--too miserable to feed, only now and then slashing their long wet tails to right or left to drive away impertinent flies.
With the storm the temperature had suddenly descended to 75°, and everybody was shivering with cold after the oppressive heat before the storm.
Upon the half-rotted wooden cross which stood in front of the church was perched a vulture--so thin and shaggy and soaked and motionless that you might easily have mistaken it for a stuffed bird. It was the very picture of misery. But everybody was miserable--one could not help it. I was, too--who am not much given to being depressed.
While marching or camping in the midst of unspoilt nature, I never felt depressed, no matter what happened, and was absolutely regardless of climatic conditions; but in those miserable settlements--feeble attempts at civilization--I must confess that I used to get low-spirited too, and often thought what an idiot I had been to leave my happy homes in Florence and in London, in order to come to these wretched places.
After the attempts at baling out the water had proved futile--as there was more coming in than it was possible to fling out--the people in resignation barricaded their doors and windows. Not a soul was to be seen or heard anywhere. The place was absolutely dead. Even after the storm was over no sign of life could be noticed. The people were all still hiding and trembling in their houses, the comparatively slight but sudden change in the temperature bringing upon most of them attacks of strong malarial fever, which was there prevalent.
At last, splashing her little naked feet along the footpath in the grass--now changed into a streamlet--there approached a little girl with a face as black as coal. She looked terrified as she approached the window out of which I was looking. But she overcame her fright and, prettily stretching out her tiny hand, called out "Boa tarde!" (Good afternoon). Her father and mother were ill; would I give her some medicine for them? Soon after, when the sky had cleared, other patients came along asking for quinine or any medicine I could give them. Others wished to have their teeth pulled out. The Brazilians of the interior had great trouble with their teeth, which were usually in a state of decay.
My own men had wrapped themselves up in their blankets in order to keep warm. They had slept most of the time. They were too cold and lazy even to get up to cook and eat their food. None of the houses possessed a chimney, cooking being done outside; nor, of course, any sanitary arrangements. Those of my men who had toothache cried and moaned the whole night, as might be expected of children aged six of any other country. I have seldom seen men more sensitive and frightened at pain or illness.
The main structure at Porto do Castanho (Port of the Chestnut Tree, because there should be a chestnut tree there) was the church, a mere barn, which elsewhere but in central Brazil would not be considered good enough for storing hay, still less for the worship of the Almighty. Not that it was used much for the latter purpose, as there was no priest within several hundred kilometres. The walls of the church were all scraped and dirty, the corners chipped off by passing animals. All the passers-by went and wiped their dirty hands on the walls of the church--perhaps attracted by the whitewash, which none of the other buildings possessed.
The shops--there were two--had nothing for sale, except some locally grown tobacco. In one shop I found some small iron nails, which were sold at the equivalent of 6_d._ each!
May 11th. The drenching rain continued the entire night, the minimum temperature being 73° Fahrenheit. My poor animals were in a terrible condition the next morning through the damp, the sores having become badly infected. They were in a purulent condition, and a mass of maggots--the terrible bishus, which were the pest of Brazil. So we had the great job of cleaning them all with a powerful disinfectant as well as washing them with a decoction of warm barbatimão (Stryphnodendron barbatimão M.), a wood with a great resistance to crushing (K. 1·015) and a specific gravity of 1·275. The decoction, which was really very beneficial for wounds and sores of animals, was made with the bark of that tree warmed in water over a fire. Another decoction we frequently used was of salt and carrapicho herb, but this was not quite so effective as the former.
My men killed a magnificent tucano--a large bird with climbing, inquisitive habits. It possessed an enormous yellow bill of singularly light structure, the point of which was black. The lower part of the bill was of a brilliant red, and of a similar red was the rib of the upper part of the bill. The plumage was of a handsome velvety black on the body and tail--quite shiny--while the chest was of a pure white, and the under part of the tail of bright vermilion feathers. White feathers showed at the base of the tail above.
The tucano (Ramphastos) is too well known for me to describe it fully again. It is found all over tropical Brazil. There are many different varieties, such as the Ramphastos vitellinus, Ramphastos ariel, the Ramphastos Cuvieri, the Pteroglossus Beauharnaisii, or curl-crested tucano, etc., extremely common, especially farther north, near the borders of the Amazon.
I was sorry when my men killed this beautiful bird. I had watched it for some time, with its inquisitive habits, hopping from branch to branch, peeping its bill into cavities and examining everything that happened below by bending its head attentively, now on one side then on the other. It evidently took intelligent interest in our doings. My men had gone out to do their cooking. The bird watched them with the greatest attention--with jerky movements not unlike those of a magpie.
The tucanos have, I believe, been described as being stupid; but on the contrary I think they are extremely clever--quite as clever as many parrots or macaws. I observed how shrewd that particular bird was. It would come quite close to us, and examine with really amazing attention what we were doing as long as we were not taking any notice of it, but the moment a man happened to touch a stone or try to point a rifle at it, it would fly a long distance off, with shrill yelps, and would not return until it was quite sure that we were not noticing its presence.
The uses of the enormous bill of the tucano have often been discussed by ornithologists, many of whom believe that the bill is of no use to that bird and Nature made in this case a mistake and has not yet had time to rectify it. Scientists frequently allege that Nature makes mistakes, because many of them have never really understood Nature. How could they? They have never been near enough to Nature unspoiled. Many of them also believe that tucano birds are great fishers, following the notion that many water birds have red or yellow bills of large size. That, too, is another great mistake, for the tucano is eminently a fruit and nut eater, and of course a feeder on worms and insects contained in fruit.
The huge bill, attaining the length of six or seven inches, is toothed at the sides in order to be able to saw the stems of fruit. The shape and size of the bill, far from being a mistake of nature, are made so in order to enable that bird to dig holes into the bark of trees and to enable it to crush and chew the many curiously shaped fruits found in certain parts of the Brazilian forest. Moreover, the bill is also a great protection to the head in going through the dense foliage, where thorns are innumerable and alive with dangerous insects of great size, which can, owing to the length of its beak, be destroyed at a distance from the bird's most vital organs.
These birds have received the name tucano from the noise they make, which resembles "tok-kan" very sharply pronounced and with a snap at the end of each syllable.
The tucanos are good climbers, but not good fliers. In fact, their flight is somewhat clumsy and heavy. They seldom fly long distances. They spend all their time on the higher branches of trees. They are generally to be seen alone or in couples, or perhaps occasionally in flocks of three or four.
What spare moments I had in Castanho--after the storm was over--I spent on the banks of the river looking at the magnificent stream.
Looking south, a low hill range could be seen in the distance with a conical summit rising slightly above the range--the Serra do Cayapo. It was there, as I have said, that the great Araguaya had its birth. It was interesting to note that the head waters of the Araguaya--flowing north, of course--had their birth within an infinitesimal distance of those of two such immense rivers as the Inducassu and the Sucuru, flowing into the Parana, and also near the somewhat unknown Taquary River flowing into the Paraguay.
It would be possible--although perhaps expensive--by means of raised artificial lakes and locks actually to join at least one of these southern great rivers to the great Araguaya, and thus--barring some troublesome rapids--form a continuous waterway from south to north across South America, from Buenos Ayres, roughly in Lat. 34° 5' south, to Pará in Lat. 1° 27' 6" South. Imagine a distance by river extending for 33° 37' 54" (or 3,737 kil.) in a straight line--as the crow flies--and not less than double that distance if we include the constant turns and deviations in the various connected rivers.
Easier still and less expensive would be to connect by rail the last two navigable points of those two streams. That will certainly be done some day, when those abandoned regions are eventually populated and properly developed.
There were some rocky falls just below Porto Castanho which prevented navigation as far as the place where we crossed the Araguaya--otherwise the river was navigable from those falls as far as Conceição.
The formation of the clouds over the great Araguaya River was peculiar. Great clusters of globular clouds generally collected in three distinct strata upon a whitish sky as far as high up upon the sky vault.
Facing north, the country appeared absolutely flat, and nothing could be seen above the trees as far as the eye or even a telescope could perceive. In that direction the stream, 200 yards wide, flowed through a perfectly straight channel for about one mile.
The fishing in the river was excellent. One night we caught a lot of fish. One, a huge pirarara weighing 40 lb., then some pirahiba and a pintado, the latter 24 lb. in weight. The pirarara was an extraordinary-looking fish. It had a long head covered entirely with a hard, bony, granular substance, which could only be cracked by a severe blow with an axe. The eyes were prominent and placed quite close to abnormally long antennæ or feelers. The back of the pirarara was bluish black, the centre of the body longitudinally was yellowish, whereas the under part was white. The tail was of a bright vermilion, and the black fins had red edges, which made the huge pirarara a really beautiful fish to look at.
The pirahiba had a grey back with stripes so faint that they were hardly visible. Its head was flat and anchor-shaped. The eyes--very small--were curiously situated on the top of the head instead of at the sides--owing to the fact that the head was really so flat that it had no sides: it was merely a gentle convex curve from one side of the mouth to the other over the skull. The pirahiba too, like most fish of those rivers, possessed long tentacles. Its mouth and fins were slightly tinted red. It displayed powerful teeth similarly arranged to those of the pintado fish previously described.
Then we got some tubarao (or Squalus carcharias)--a small fish with a long, pointed head like a bird's beak, of the plagiostomos order, and several mand[~i]--a small yellow fish with enormous eyes. The mand[~i] had remarkable vitality. Seven hours after it had been caught--I had no idea the poor thing was still alive--it gave several leaps in the air, and when I put it in a bucket of water it shortly began to swim as if nothing had happened.
There were only two or three very small dug-outs on the Araguaya, none of which were capable of carrying more than one or two people. There was no boat there large enough to carry all my men and baggage, had I even at that moment decided to descend that river instead of proceeding west. I took observations for latitude and longitude at Porto Castanho, as well as boiling-point observations with the hypso-metrical apparatus, the latter in order to get the exact elevation, and also to keep a check on my several aneroids which I used on the journey merely for differential observations.
May 9th, 1910. Boiling point, 210° 3 F. Temperature of the air, 83° F. = 1182 ft. above the sea level. By Aneroid, 1190 ft.
My mules having had a good rest, I was making ready to start on May 12th, when one of my men refused to come any farther. He wished to be paid off and go. So he received his pay and went. He would probably end his existence in that filthy little hamlet. He would never have the energy to return to Goyaz alone. I was rather glad he had gone, as, a few nights previously, he had fired at me while I was asleep. The bullet had actually made a hole through the canvas of my camp bed. I had fortunately taken the precaution to alter the position of my bed--under my tent--a precaution I took every night, after my men had gone to sleep in their hammocks, some distance outside. The man had evidently aimed where he thought my head was resting. I having turned the bed around, the bullet, fired from the man standing, went just over my ankles, perforating the canvas quite close to them. I naturally came out of my tent to see what was the matter, and saw the man with the rifle in his hand.
"Why did you shoot?" I inquired, as the man, evidently surprised to see me standing before him, ejaculated disconnected words.
"I saw a huge onça" (a jaguar) ... "it was there ... I saw its two eyes shining like fire...."
"Did you kill the onça?"
"No, it leapt away."
I advised the man, patting him paternally on the back, not to startle everybody again. If he should see another onça he had better come to me. I seldom missed when I fired at all--as I had been able to show them a few days before. I did not wish my men to behave like so many timid young girls, as I wished to be able to tell people in Europe that Brazilians were brave and noble.
"Firing in such a fashion indiscriminately," I explained to him, "you might have even killed one of your companions! Now go to sleep like a good fellow, and do not fire again!"
I spoke to the rascal in the gentlest of ways, never for one moment letting him suspect that I knew he had intended that bullet to go through my head. Nor did I ever take any of the other men into my confidence. When they asked what the commotion was about, I told them that their companion had fired at a jaguar and the jaguar had leapt away. There is only one effective weapon you can use with scoundrels. It is the greatest calm and kindness.
The man, hiding his face in his hands, threw himself upon his hammock and began to sob. He sobbed and sobbed and sobbed until the morning--much to the inconvenience of everybody in camp. At sunrise he had been seized with a severe attack of rheumatism which had contracted a leg badly. It was pitiful to see him walking--but when he was not aware of being looked at he walked as well as anybody else.
From that day that fellow never dared look me straight in the face. He avoided riding near me on the march, and in camp was sulky and unpleasant, retiring to a distance and declining to work. He was relieved of the functions of cook. The last time he had produced a meal nearly brought massacre upon him at the hands of the other men.
He received his full pay up to date, without uttering a word of thanks. He duly signed a receipt with his thumb-mark, as he was unable to write. When the troop of horses and mules and his companions left, he never spoke a word of farewell to his companions or animals, nor to me. He sat silent and motionless, with his eyes riveted to the ground as if in a trance. Some days later we discovered that he had stolen from our store some 40 lbs. of coffee and a large quantity of sugar, as well as a number of other articles which had been useful to us.
The sky when we left was overcast, and huge globular clouds, white and grey, hung in great masses, especially half way up the vault of the sky. The country, after crossing the Araguaya, was remarkably beautiful, from an agricultural point of view--enormous campos or prairies--over rich alluvial deposits, with scanty stunted trees upon them. Plenty of burity palms grew in the lower depressions.
My men suffered intensely from the cold at night--the minimum being 60° Fahr., maximum 92°, in the afternoon of the 13th. The temperature had been much lower since we had crossed the great river. The elevation was only 1,250 ft.
Rising slowly over an undulation in the country to 1,300 ft., we began to find igneous rock showing through the surface soil, especially on the higher points.
Lixia (Nephelium Litchi Carab), caraiba and the laranjeira do campo (Citrus vulgaris), were trees to be seen in that region.
We had wonderfully clear sky in the morning. At noon it became slightly clouded, while in the afternoon one-third of the sky was covered. A light breeze blew from the west.
Some 28 kil. from the Araguaya we came to a small miserable farmhouse. After a great deal of bargaining I was able to purchase some extra horses. The people had no idea whatever of the value of money, and named sums at first which would have easily purchased the finest horses on the English turf. They descended in time to more reasonable figures.
Our life was rendered miserable all day by the millions of pium or gnats that swarmed around us and stung us with incredible fierceness and viciousness. Those little brutes left on our skins black marks fully as large as themselves wherever they stung us. The itching was most trying. Those marks remained for several weeks, and only disappeared when we perforated them with a needle to let the blood out, or waited long enough for them to become desiccated and the skin re-formed.
Pium is a word of the Tupi and Tupinamba Indians' language. Those tiny insects entered your eyes, leaving behind an odoriferous acid which caused great irritation of the lids. We removed dozens every day from our eyes. Fortunately they were easily extracted. They also dashed into your ears, up your nose, and, whenever you opened it, inside your mouth.
It was well worth going to Matto Grosso to enjoy the lovely moonlight nights, only comparable in their luminous splendour to nights of Central Africa in the middle of the Sahara desert, and to those on the high Tibetan plateau in Asia. The light of the moon was so vivid that one could see almost as well as in the daytime.
Personally, the crisp cool air (min. 59° Fahr.) made me feel in most excellent health and spirits, but my men, who had putrid constitutions, were a mass of aches and pains. Some cried like children the entire night with toothache, moaning and shrieking like lunatics when the pain became acute; others got internal aches, another had cramp in the legs. I must say that Alcides, with all his faults, was the only one who always did his work--not always with common sense, but he did it--and, when ill, never gave exhibitions of pitiful weakness like the others.
Filippe, the negro, who eventually showed himself to be the bravest Brazilian on that expedition, also stood the pain more calmly and with manliness. As I had judged from the first moment I had laid eyes upon them, those were really the only two men who were any good at all. "Il bon dì si vede dal mattino" (A fine day is seen in the morning), says an ancient and very true Italian proverb; truer, perhaps, in its philosophy with individuals than with the weather.
Many of my men's complaints vanished with the warmth of the sun--108° Fahr. at 1 p.m., with a maximum temperature during the day of 85° in the shade.
With the beautiful clear sky and a gentle breeze blowing, it was a real delight to march. Only a slight whitish mist--always in horizontal streaks--was to be noticed near the earth. The sky, although limpid, was never of a deep blue, but merely of a pale cobalt. The dew was heavy during the night and soaked everything, making the baggage, the tents particularly, heavy for the animals to carry. We still kept at an elevation of 1,250 ft., noticing, as we marched on, an isolated range of hills extending from north-east to south-west and showing considerable erosion at its south-westerly terminus. Two conical hills--one a broken cone--stood on the summit of a flat plateau, the entire range, as well as the summit of hills, showing eroded slopes with vertical wall-like superior portions.
After leaving the stream at the foot of a range 1,450 ft. above the sea level, on rising over a low pass I could observe to the north-east of that range great blocks of eruptive rock much perforated, in which were embedded pellets of yellow lava and of red and black baked igneous rock. On examining the north-eastern end of the main part of the range it was apparent that what remained standing before us was merely one half of a circular crater, the other half of which had collapsed or had been blown up by volcanic action. The bottom of the crater was subsequently filled with alluvial deposits. There was there a grassy plain with a few burity palms. In the valley before us was ideal pasture land, which will some day be of great value.
We crossed two cols (elev. 1,550 ft.) with a beautiful plain between. Then we descended into a third lovely valley on the north side of the outer wall of the crater. The grazing was perfect for the animals. Clusters of vigorous, healthy burity palms stood in great numbers in the centre and at the sides of the valley. This great valley was bounded by two ridges extending in a northerly direction--two spurs, as it were. The rounded, channelled outer sides of the crater to the north would tend to strengthen the theory that those slopes were formerly a gradual continuation of the present inclined valley. On those slopes of the mountain hardly any vegetation could be noticed, perhaps owing to the fact that hard volcanic rock existed under the thin surface padding of yellowish earth.
The valley was buried in red and grey lapilli and ashes, finely broken up marble cubes, and fragments of other forms of crystallized rock.
As we proceeded from camp Fogasso, the northern slopes of the crater became divided into huge furrows, the vertical upper part of the crater displaying vividly rich red tones. The crater was castellated at the summit, like the walls of a fortress.
The geological formation of that portion of the Matto Grosso plateau interested me greatly. Each individual spur, taken separately, showed slopes sometimes abrupt, sometimes well rounded, separated from the next spur of hills by a V-shaped or angular, or else a concave hollow. At the bottom of those hollows one did not find the slopes continuing the line of the crater, but the valley was there absolutely flat and cut the line of the slope sharply. It would almost appear as if a subsidence of the soil had taken place in that particular locality, or else one might speculate whether those abrupt hills had not been the walls of what was once a subterranean volcanic cauldron--the flat valley, in which we were, having been the bottom of that cauldron. What little rock one found in the river bed in this valley showed signs of having been exposed to intense and prolonged heat, and so did the brilliant red summit of the hill range, which was also of the deep red typical of hard-baked rock.
The scene which I had before me there in Matto Grosso greatly reminded me of a similar basin I had seen when the great Bandaisan mountain in Japan was blown up by a volcanic explosion and left merely the bottom part of its gigantic internal cauldron with vertical red walls around it. With the exception of scanty and anæmic grass and a few stunted trees, there was hardly any vegetation noticeable. The Fogasso stream, on the bank of which we camped, flowed in an easterly direction into the Araguaya.
The temperature on the plateau was ideal--min. 63° Fahr. during the night; max. 75°. We were at an elevation of 1,450 ft.
On May 15th we were travelling along a valley over which must have once risen the continuation of a range which stood to the north of us. There were deep grooves and corrugations in the valley in a direction from south to north between the two sections of the now interrupted range. There we found soil of red, brown and yellow tints, or else great stretches of grey volcanic ashes and earth mixed, as well as sharply angular fragments of igneous rock, which showed that they had not travelled there by rolling on the ground or propelled by water.
After this we passed close to another curious spur of mountains on the east--quite isolated and of a red vertical columnar formation. Its summit was broken up--much more so than that of the plateau-like range to the south of us which we were following in a parallel line. The highest point of that range, to the south, was wooded, and so were the two conical-topped hills which towered over it. The strata where exposed showed a slight dip to the north. We crossed the range by two low cols at elevations of 1,550 ft. and 1,560 ft. respectively. On the summit and even lower upon the sides of those cols we found huge boulders of eruptive rock, highly ferruginous. Globular lumps, big and small, of spattered smooth-surfaced yellow lava were to be found in myriads; also many spherical pellets of ferruginous, highly-baked rock with innumerable holes produced while in a state of ebullition. Some of the ferruginous rocks had pellets of yellow lava firmly imbedded in them, which had evidently penetrated while liquid into the hollows of the ferruginous rock which was already in a semi-solid, or perhaps solidified, condition. At any rate, when it happened the ferruginous rock was already harder than the lava.
While I was studying attentively the geological conditions of that region, the sky suddenly became as black as ink to the south, and a heavy shower, which lasted half an hour, drenched us all to the marrow of our bones. Then it cleared up, and the sun, supplemented by our natural heat, dried our clothes upon us again as we went on.
XII. Geological Speculation--Beautiful Pasture-land
THE stars were of extraordinary brilliancy at night; so much so that one could see quite well enough by their light to get about. The atmosphere being extremely clear, they appeared of immense size, the planets shining with dazzling, changing colours which would have filled even the most profane with reverence for their splendour.
I drew the attention of my men to the wonderful sight.
"They are stars!" they replied contemptuously; "Have you never seen stars before?"
It was indeed difficult to enter into conversation on any subject with them without having an ardent desire to strangle the lot, they were so ignorantly offensive. I was thankful I had the sense always to go about unarmed, or I am certain some of them would have paid somewhat dearly for their impertinence. I was glad, too, that I never felt the weight of loneliness, as days and days would go by without my saying a word to them, barring perhaps a shout in camp to bring my breakfast, lunch, or dinner.
What was even worse than entering into conversation with them was to listen--one could not help it, they shouted so loudly all the time--to the conversation among themselves. We will not refer to the choice language they used, so inexplicably sacrilegious and indecorous that it would have set on edge the teeth of the coarsest specimens of humanity; but the subject--I say subject in the singular, mark you, for alas! there was only one subject--discussed in all its phases perhaps, but only one single subject--assassination. The accounts of different murders, in some of which the men boasted they had taken part, were nightly repeated in their minutest details to the assembled crowd--myself excluded--sitting around the fire, while the feijão--beans, so loved by them--were being stewed for hours and hours in a cauldron.
There was the story of one murder of which one of the men was particularly proud, in which he reproduced the facial expression as well as the smothered shrieks of the horrified victim. He gave a vivid description of how the blood squirted out like a fountain from the jugular vein of the throat as it was being severed. That story--most graphically narrated, I admit--had taken the fancy of that cruel crowd. Almost every evening, during the entire time those men were with me, many long months, I heard that story repeated amid roars of laughter from the company. Murder--when applied to others--was evidently for them a great joke!
Inconsiderate to a degree, they would get up and sing at the top of their voices in the middle of the night and keep everybody awake while the feijão was stewing. It took hours and hours before those awful black beans had boiled sufficiently to be edible, and the man who acted as cook had to sit up the whole night to stir them up and watch them. Yes, the position of cook for the camp was not an enviable one, for it meant marching all day and sitting up all night to prepare the feijão for the following day. Yet the love they had for their feijão--I never ate the beastly stuff myself--was so great that those lazy devils, who could not be induced on any account to do other work, did not mind at all having sleepless nights to watch over the stewing cauldron. With the feijão were placed in the pot large pieces of toucinho (lard). We carried quantities of feijão, for without feijão you cannot induce a Brazilian to do anything or go anywhere. Of the two he would rather sacrifice his life than lose his daily feijão.
It requires great ability, I believe, to cook feijão properly. I noticed that all my men in a body were ever superintending its preparation. When the cook in the early hours of the morning happened to let the fire go down, or in his drowsiness was not stirring it properly, there were angry shouts from the other men, who, every time they opened one eye in their sleep, invariably gazed towards the beloved cooking-pot.
We came to a second range parallel with the one described before and extending from north-east to south-west. Again a vertical natural wall was noticeable to the east. This range was subdivided into many sections, almost all of the same size and shape. The end section to the north-east--which made an exception--was about three and a half times the length of any of the others. I observed some deep vertical vents such as are frequently to be seen in the sections of volcanoes that have partly been blown up. These vents were particularly numerous in the north-easterly block, where broad corrugations and some narrow ones--ten in all--were also to be seen.
Two alternatives could explain the present configuration of that region. There had been either a great volcanic explosion or else a sudden subsidence. Personally I was inclined to favour the first hypothesis. I shall explain why. First because the great fissures between the various huge blocks and the grooves carved in those rocks would then at once explain themselves--caused naturally by the violent shock. They had apparently been enlarged in the course of time by erosion of water and wind, and possibly by the friction of the débris of the masses of rock settling down when the stratum was severed. The quantity of débris of shattered rock minutely broken into cubes and other angular forms would suggest that some great shock had occurred. Then the usual yellow pellets of polished lava, either globular or pear-shaped, or like an elongated oval ending in a point and well rounded at the other end, would also indicate that these missiles had been flying great distances through the air in a molten state before they had actually dropped. In fact, the flight was so long as absolutely to cool and solidify them before they fell--unless they had fallen in cold water--for they had retained their original form, instead of getting flattened at the heavier end, as could be expected had the lava reached the ground in a half-soft state. Large blocks of lava--which naturally took a longer time to cool and a shorter time to reach the earth after their flight through the atmosphere--had, in fact, become flattened on the lower side where they struck the ground. Others of a composite globular form had invariably been flattened into a slight curve on the side where they had come in contact with the soil.
Ovoid rocks as large as a loaf of bread and composed of compressed cinders were to be seen about, which, when easily split open, showed a band of slightly ferruginous matter, very brittle, in a crystallized condition. In the centre of these rocks were invariably found beautiful crystals of great limpidity, easily separated from one another by a slight pressure of the fingers.
Erosion had evidently since played great part in the present appearance of the country, but to my mind--directly above what is now a valley--there existed at one time a high range of mountains, which was in those days the great dividing line of the waters flowing south and north.
One might, of course, also argue that what are the mountains now have been pushed up from underneath above the ground into their present position, but local conditions do not tend to encourage this theory.
The strata of red baked rock in the existing mountain side were almost absolutely horizontal, with merely a slight dip to the north. In the northern end of the range the rock showing through the vegetation was white, as if it had been subjected to baking. The western aspect of the first range showed also a vertical summit of red rock with a sloping spur extending to the west.
We camped that night on the river Prata, which flowed south. Elevation, 1,300 ft. Maximum temperature 85° F., minimum 63½° F.
The formation of the clouds was always interesting. The long horizontal streaks across the sky, which were daily noticeable, took a form that day not unlike the vertebræ of an immense snake, whereas the higher clouds of transparent mist in filaments looked exactly like a huge spider's web.
We established our camp under a tall, handsome, slender Xinghi-tree, the triangular fruit of which, with a light brown, hard skin, was deadly poisonous if eaten. Alcides told me that in Minas Geraes it was much used in the manufacture of soap. This tree was extremely neat-looking, with its clean sinuous branches and its pretty, light green, healthy leaves, of an elongated oval shape.
My men had insisted on bringing dogs away with us for safety in case of attack by Indians. They had in fact procured three--I would not care to say how--before our departure from the Goyaz Province. Those dogs were just as faithless and lazy and worthless as the people. They followed us because they got plenty of food, otherwise they had no affection for anybody; and, far from giving an alarm when any person or any animal approached the camp, they were quite unmoved by anything that happened around them during the day or night, except at meal-times. A handsome onça (jaguar) leapt close to camp, and on perceiving us bounded gracefully away--the dogs remaining fast asleep with their noses resting on their respective extended fore-paws. Another day during the march a veado (Cervus elaphus), a deer, sprang in his flight clean over one of the dogs without the dog even noticing him! Game was plentiful in that part of the country, and the animals were so unaccustomed to see people, that one could get quite near them.
My men went after game in the morning and we did not make an early start, in fact not until 10.30 a.m. It was amazing to see the amount of good water that was to be found on the plateau. We crossed a streamlet flowing south (elev. 1,300 ft.), and shortly afterwards, upon gently inclined land, we crossed another stream, also flowing south.
We were travelling due west along the foot of a curious range which stood to our north and of another of similar characteristics to the south. It seemed quite possible, in fact, even probable, that the two ranges were formerly only one, which had then split, and that we were travelling inside the partially-filled-up fissure between the two divided ranges. The sky-line of the two ranges matched exactly on both sides--first a long hump, then two smaller humps, after that a more even and continuous line.
On reaching an elevation of 1,500 ft. we were confronted with a splendid view of a flat plateau to the west. By a steep descent we went down 300 ft. to a river (elev. 1,200 ft. above the sea level) in a hollow, reached by going through dense tall grass and thick vegetation. A humble wooden cross by the stream marked the spot where a Brazilian had been murdered by Indians.
Interesting flows and domes of lava were to be seen near the stream, after which our marching that day was mostly up and down campos with magnificent grazing, the general slope of which was from north to south. At an elevation of 1,400 ft., on turning our heads back, we had a general view of the two ranges which had become separated.
On one side of the range, a sloping back was noticeable, whereas on the opposite side were almost vertical sides, much grooved, with a terrace about two-thirds up the total elevation, except at the western end, where the terrace was instead exactly half way up, with a minor terrace near the summit.
We met and crossed another streamlet, and then rose on our route to 1,550 ft., from where another beautiful view of the plateau to the south-west could be obtained, a low hill range with a higher peak in front of it, and the immense green campos at a slanting angle. Another fine panoramic view of the two divided ranges was also before us, although from that particular point of vantage it was slightly more difficult to reconstruct their former appearance in one's imagination than from the centre of the valley we had crossed, although even from that point the fact was apparent with a little study.
On proceeding down to the river we met some flows of red lava and, upon the top of nearly every undulation, boulders of black eruptive rock showed through, highly ferruginous, as well as much lava in pellets. Débris of baked red and black rock were to be found in quantities down the slopes and at the bottom of those undulations, carried there evidently by water. In one or two places, such as near the river at Ponte Keimada, I smashed some of the larger boulders of yellow lava. Here is what I found inside: Under an outer coating of lava an inch thick there was a layer of solidified cinders. Under that lay a thin layer of lava, then again yet another layer of grey ashes, then lava again. This would indicate that those boulders had gradually reached their present shape partly in revolutions through the air thick with cinders, partly by rolling down or along intermittent stretches of molten lava and cinders during a great eruption, or perhaps during several successive eruptions. Personally, I think that it was during various periods of one eruption before the lava had cooled, so that in its sticky state it would easily collect the ashes round it, which it would certainly not do in its polished, solidified state.
When we had passed beyond the western end of the two parallel ranges a great change was noticeable in the appearance of the country we were crossing. We missed the long, sweeping, uninterrupted lines of the scenery, and had before our eyes a confused surface of bosses, mounds and short undulations, with thick luxuriant vegetation upon them which prevented my studying carefully their geological formation. The soil, of a rich red colour, showed every indication of being extremely fertile in that particular climate.
From the point where we stood, one could well judge the effects of the great volcanic explosion on the back of the range--the one to our left--where a long line of buttresses had formed, as if on that side a subsidence on a large scale had also taken place. It was in any case curious to notice that at the two termini east and west of the two parallel ranges white rock in columnar form was exposed in both ranges in corresponding sites.
The slope noticeable on the north side of the southern range could be explained by the tilting of the strata where the separation took place. The angle of the strata clearly demonstrated this fact.
Millions of mosquitoes and piums, carrapatinhos and carrapatos made life unbearable both during the day and night. We never had a moment's respite. The gnats, too, in thick swarms around us were a constant worry--we were all day busy removing them from our eyes and ears. They stung us all over most mercilessly. I was making a botanical collection, which not only contained specimens of the leaves of all the trees we met with, but also of minor plants and various kinds of grass. This involved getting off my mule many times a day. Whenever I put my feet on the ground or touched a blade of grass I well knew what was in store for me. At once I became literally covered with carrapatinhos, and set to scratch myself so violently that nothing short of digging my nails into my skin seemed to relieve the irritation--and that, mind you, only momentarily. One had to bear it, and wait until one got to camp in the evening before one could disinfect oneself all over. In this world one never gets credit for anything, but I do think that few men under those circumstances would have gone on, as I did, collecting botanical specimens for no reward whatever except my own pleasure, if pleasure it can be called.
Again we noticed that day wonderful effects of clouds in filaments, one group stretching along the sky in an arc from north to east like the dorsal bone and ribs of an immense fish.
We camped on the bank of a stream (elev. 1,050 ft.) flowing north-east, which was, I think, the same stream we had met in the morning, and which had described a big turn.
My men amused me with their fears. Even when in camp they never left their rifles for a moment. When they went only a few yards away, either to fetch water or bring back a mule, they invariably took all their weapons with them--carbines, automatic pistols, and daggers.
In order to collect specimens and examine the country, I sometimes strayed away alone for long distances from camp--sometimes for two or three hours at a time--always absolutely unarmed. My men began to be thoroughly frightened of the immunity I possessed from attacks of wild beasts and Indians. Although I told them that wild beasts never attacked human beings unless attacked first, and that there were no Indians about, my men would not believe me. They maintained that I must have some special secret of my own which brought me back alive, and that I must be even bullet-proof. They could never be induced to go alone--even when armed--for more than a few metres from camp.
We were having cool nights. Minimum 59° Fahr., maximum 80° Fahr.--on May 17th. A mackerel sky of the prettiest design was overhead, like a lovely mosaic of white and blue porcelain, while a band of clear blue encircled us all around above the horizon line.
Across a forest we continued our journey, rising some 300 ft. to 1,350 ft. above the sea level, where we again found campos and forest alternately upon deep masses of fine red sand or else great expanses of grey and black volcanic cinders intermixed in patches. On reaching the highest elevation we actually went over 6 kil. of volcanic sand and ashes, and in one place traversed a patch of shattered débris with cutting edges of eruptive rock, and brilliant red or deep black pebbles. Then again we saw masses of the usual ferruginous, much-perforated rocks--many so absolutely spherical as to resemble cannon-balls.
To the west we could see before us lovely green undulations--campos--with, in the centre, a curious hump that looked as though due to subterranean pressure. In the distance was visible another of those long flat-topped plateaus typical of Brazil, with a headland which, owing, it seemed, chiefly to erosion, had become separated from the main range. It resembled and was parallel with the second range of the split mountains we had just left. Some nine kilometres from our last camp we encountered the river Das Corgo, flowing south (elev. 1,150 ft.) over a bed formed by an impressive great flow of solidified red lava covered in some places by deposits of bright red earth. Beyond the river we found ourselves again upon yellow sand and ashes.
Beneath a cirro-cumulus--or mackerel sky--again that day, wonderfully beautiful because of its perfection of design, we were gradually rising over the domed elevation we had previously observed, upon which we found masses of tiny pebbles--what are known to geologists by the Italian name of "puzzolana" or scoriæ reduced to a granular condition. Farther on, travelling over other undulations, we sank into thick deposits of grey and yellow volcanic scoriæ, such as fine sand, cinders, and lapilli. At the highest point (elev. 1,270 ft.) we travelled over deep sediments of sand and ashes mixed together. All those undulations, as a matter of fact, were above great buried flows of red lava, which were invariably exposed to sight in the depressions, particularly in the beds of rivers.
Being a great lover of good water--to my mind the elixir of life, the great secret of health and strength--I was always enraptured by the deliciousness of the water in the streams we met. It was so crystalline and limpid that one could not resist the temptation of drinking it, even when not thirsty. I always carried slung to my saddle an enamelled tin cup attached to a string so as to be able to procure myself a drink at all the streams without getting off my mount.
Twelve kilometres from our last camp we came to a watercourse flowing into a big stream at the bottom of the valley. Its bed was in overlapping terraces of polished red lava.
The green country before us, in great sweeping undulations, reminded one much, in its regularity, of the great waves of the ocean--what sailors call "long seas." Where the stream had cut through and left the underlying dome of lava exposed one could easily judge of the thick deposits of sand, ashes and pulverized rock which formed the strata above it.
We travelled over more red volcanic sand for some four kilometres, rising to 1,400 ft., on which elevation was thick matto, or stunted, much entangled forest. Then we emerged once more into glorious open country, marching over a stratum 8 ft. thick of whitish tufa and ashes, this stratum lying immediately above one of red volcanic earth. The strata were easily measurable where rivulets had cut deep grooves in the softer superficial strata and had reached the foundation layer of lava.
The campos seemed to get more and more beautiful as we went west. What magnificent grazing land! One could imagine on it millions and millions of happy, fat cattle; but no, not one was to be seen anywhere. What a pity to see such wonderful country go to waste! There was everything there, barring, perhaps, easy transport, to make the happiness and fortune of thousands upon thousands of farmers--excellent grazing, fertile soil, good healthy climate and delicious and plentiful water--but the country was absolutely deserted.
For miles the beautiful prairies extended, especially to the south-west, where in the distant background loomed a high, flat-topped tableland, interrupted by two deep cuts in its extensive monotonous sky-line. Those cuts were near its southern end. To the south stood a long range of wooded hills--also with an absolutely flat sky-line. We ourselves were not higher than 1,400 ft. above the sea level. My animals stumbled along over a region of much-broken-up débris; then again travelling was easier, although heavy, over tufa, sand and ashes. On descending to a stream, 1,200 ft. above sea level, we slipped terribly on the steep argillaceous slope, and the animals had great difficulty in climbing up on the opposite side, where we made our camp.
The streamlet flowed east into a larger stream, which we also crossed, and which flowed south-west.
It seemed to be getting colder at night as we went westward (May 18th, min. 57° Fahr.), whereas during the day the temperature was hot--max. 97° F. As early as 9 a.m. the thermometer already registered 85° in the shade, and not a breath of wind. The elevation was 1,150 ft. The sky was in streaky horizontal clouds to the east, and thin misty clouds to the south--cirro-stratus.
One of my horses having strayed away a long distance, we only left that camp in the afternoon after the animal had been recovered. We rose quickly over the usual red volcanic sand held down in its place by the vegetation--rather anæmic at that particular spot. Higher up we again sank in the white and yellow ashes, with occasional zones covered by small, angular, black-baked débris.
Ants seemed to flourish happily in that region, for the ant-heaps were innumerable and of great size, several with towers about 6 ft. in height, resembling miniature mediæval castles.
Having risen--all the time over grey and white ashes--to 1,420 ft., we found ourselves again upon open campos with a splendid view of the flat-topped range we had already seen to the north and of another to the south. At the angle where the northern range changed its direction slightly there stood a high prominence of peculiar appearance. The range extended west, where it ended, into a broken cone--as I have already stated quite separated by erosion from the main range. All along the range in the section between the prominence at the angle and the terminal cone could be noticed three distinct level terraces and several intermediate ones--not yet well defined nor continuous along the whole face of the range. About half-way along its length, a semi-cylindrical vertical cut was a striking feature, and appeared from a distance to be the remains of an extinct crater. It may be noted that where that crater was, the range was higher than elsewhere. Its summit, with an undulating sky-line, lay to the west of it, no doubt formed by erupted matter. Other great vertical furrows were noticeable not far from the crater and to the west of it.
The scenery was getting stranger and stranger every day. We began to notice solitary domes and cones in the landscape. That day, in fact, beyond the great campos we had before us a curious little well-rounded dome, standing up by itself upon an absolutely flat surface, at a considerable distance from the flat tableland which stood on one side, and of which formerly it evidently made part. Higher mountains, somewhat nearer to us, were on the south-west.
We had reached the River Corgo Fundo (elev. 1,250 ft.), along the banks of which the laminæ of red-baked rock could be observed with thin white layers between. Above was a lovely green pasture with a tuft of deep green trees, which looked exactly like a bit of a well-kept English park. We mounted up again to 1,430 ft., then went down another descent into a large plain with campos, upon which grew merely a few stunted trees. We were still travelling over deep deposits of sand.
The range to the north of us extended, to be accurate, from north-east to south-west, and at its south-westerly end possessed a dome not dissimilar to the one already described on our previous day's march. This one was perhaps more rounded and not quite so tall. It rose above the plateau in two well-defined terraces, especially on the north-east side, but was slightly worn and smoothed to the south-west. On the terminal mound--clearly separated from the range by erosion--seven distinct terraces could be counted, with some less defined intermediate ones.
In the bed of another stream flowing south--it was impossible to ascertain the names of these streamlets, for there was no one to tell, and none were marked on existing maps--another great flow of red lava was visible. This stream flowed into the Rio das Garças or Barreiros, only 500 metres away--an important watercourse, throwing itself eastward into the Rio das Mortes, one of the great tributaries of the upper Araguaya River.
XIII. The River Barreiros--A Country of Tablelands
THE Rio Barreiros was about 100 metres wide. It was reached through a thick belt, 100 metres in width, of trees and bamboos of large diameter, which lined both its banks. The river flowed swiftly where we crossed it, over a bed of lava and baked rock, red and black, with huge treacherous pits and holes which rendered the job of crossing the stream dangerous for our animals. There were rapids lower down in the terraced mass of rock forming the river bottom. The rock, worn smooth by the water, was extremely slippery. It was only after we had all undressed and taken the baggage safely across on our heads--the river being too deep for the loads to remain on the saddles--that we successfully drove the animals over to the opposite bank.
On the banks I collected some specimens of the laminated red rock, which had no great crushing resistance when dry. It could be easily powdered under comparatively light pressure, and scratched with no difficulty with one's nails. It was of various densities of red tones, according to the amount of baking it had undergone. The superposed red strata had a dip northward in some localities. The rock was much fissured, and had either gone through excessive contraction in cooling or else perhaps had been shattered by some earthly commotion--such as must have occurred often in that region in ages gone by, for, if not, how could one account for finding scattered blocks of this red rock resting upon the surface of great stretches--sometimes for 20 or 30 kil.--of uninterrupted sand or ashes which covered such great expanses of that country?
In the valleys, near water, burity palms were numerous.
Overhead the sky was always interesting. The days nearly invariably began with a clear, speckless sky, but, mind you, never of quite so deep a blue as the sky of Italy or Egypt. The sky of Central Brazil was always of a whitish cobalt blue. That morning--an exception to prove the rule--we had awakened to a thick mist around us, which enveloped and damped everything. No sooner did the sun rise than the mist was quickly dispelled. In the late morning, about 10 o'clock, clouds began to form high in the sky--not along the horizon, as is generally the case in most countries--and grew in intensity and size during the afternoon. Nearly every day at about sunset a peculiar flimsy, almost transparent, streak of mist stretched right across the sky from east to west, either in the shape of a curved line, or, as we had observed as recently as the day before, resembling with its side filaments a gigantic feather or the skeleton of a fish.
In the State of Goyaz, it may be remembered, we had a more beautiful and complete effect at sunset of many radiating lines, starting from the east and joining again to the west, but here we merely had one single streak dividing the sky in two. When the sun had long disappeared under the horizon, that streak high up in the sky was still lighted by its rays--becoming first golden, then red. The effect was quite weird.
My men went during the night on another fishing expedition, but with no luck--partly due to the infamy of our dogs. They used as bait for their large hooks toucinho, or pork fat, of which they had started out provided with a huge piece. They walked off a good distance from camp to find a suitable spot. Unfortunately, while they were there the dogs ate up all the toucinho and the result was that the men had to return disappointed. There was plenty of game, especially wild pig and veado (deer).
Alcides had a smattering of botany, which was a great danger to the company. He knew, he thought, the uses, medicinal or otherwise, of all plants, herbs and fruit, wild or not wild. This, in addition to the greediness of the men--who, although actually gorged with food, were always willing to devour anything else they found--led once or twice, as we shall see, to the poisoning of himself and his companions so dangerously as not only to cause terrible internal pains, but to bring them all actually to death's door.
I never got poisoned myself, as I generally took good care to watch the effects of those experiments upon my men first. Then also in my many years of exploration I had learnt only too well to beware of even the most seductive tropical plants and fruit. Notwithstanding all this, Alcides was really wonderful at turning out pleasant-tasting beverages from the stewed bark or leaves of various trees, and of these decoctions--in which additional quantities of sugar played an important part--my men and myself drank gallons upon gallons. Many of those drinks had powerful astringent qualities and had severe effects upon the bladder, but some were indeed quite good and innocuous.
During the night I observed a most perfect lunar halo, the circle, close to the moon, displaying a curious yellowish red outer fringe.
Since leaving the Araguaya we had been bothered a good deal nightly by the heavy dew, which absolutely soaked everything, made all our rifles and axes and iron implements rusty, and the tents and saddles and baggage considerably heavier for the animals to carry, owing to the moisture they had absorbed. In the early morning we began to get thick cold mist, and it was about that time that the minimum temperature was usually registered--58° Fahr. that particular night, May 19th. We were at quite a low elevation, merely 1,100 ft. When we started in the morning we found more sand and volcanic débris over ridges some 100 ft. or so above the level of the river. A torrent, 15 metres wide, flowing swiftly W.S.W. on a red lava bed, was crossed, the mules slipping terribly on the polished rock. More ashes and sand were found as we ascended to an elevation of 1,200 ft., from which height we discerned a much-terraced headland to the east and two streams meeting and flowing south where we eventually crossed them. One of those watercourses descended in cascades over laminated successive flows of lava, between which thin layers of white crystallization could be seen.
Slightly higher, at 1,250 ft., we sank again in yellow and grey ashes.
Across campos we reached another foaming torrent, flowing as usual over a lava bed, but this time in a north-westerly instead of in a southerly direction. That day we met with many watercourses. Having risen to 1,450 ft., we soon after found another streamlet (elev. 1,230 ft.). Again a red lava-flow was exposed in its bed and showed heavy upper deposits of grey ashes, with above them a thick layer of yellow-ochre sand (1,300 ft.).
The distances on the journey were measured by a watch, the speed of the animals at the time being naturally taken into consideration. It was not possible to use the usual bicycle wheel with a meter attached, which is used with so much success in the Arctic regions or in countries where travelling more or less in a straight line and on a level surface is possible.
Another limpid stream flowing south-west (elev. 1,200 ft.) was reached, then more deep sand and ashes. After that we came to a thick growth of bamboos and brush on reaching the banks of a streamlet winding its way north.
Travelling up and down, all day and day after day, over those undulations became tedious work--red sand, whitish sand, grey ashes, all the time.
On the west side, on descending the last prominence we at last came to a slight variation in the geological composition of the country. After more white sand and ashes had been passed, we came upon great stretches of greenish grey granite exposed in huge domes and much striated, with parallel grooves on its surface so deep that they almost looked as if they had been incised by a sharp tool. These grooves were, nevertheless, naturally caused by the sharp friction of sand and water, I think, and also by sand blown over those rocks with terrific force by winds of inconceivable vigour. All the way down our descent we travelled over that striated rock. It had become exposed to the air, but must have once been buried under sand and ashes like all the rest of that region. Curious vertical cracks were to be noticed in several places, with ramifications from a common centre--evidently caused by the concussion of some huge weight which had fallen from above, perhaps a huge boulder shot out by volcanic action, which had then rolled farther down the incline.
The terminal side of the curious range we had on our right appeared not unlike a fortress with its vertical walls standing upon a slanting bastion.
At the bottom (elev. 1,200 ft.) of the great dome of granite we had travelled upon we crossed a stream flowing south-west, the water of which was quite warm. The high temperature was due, I think, to the heat absorbed by the rock exposed to the sun and communicated to the water flowing over it, rather than to a thermal origin.
Continuing our journey, we had to the south a great hollow basin in the south-western end of the range, with two hillocks between the range itself and the flat boundary plateau to the south.
The highest point of the hill on which we travelled was 1,450 ft. above the sea level. Every metre we travelled westward became more strangely interesting. We were now upon a conglomerate of bespattered lava-drops encased in a coating of solidified ashes. When we reached the stream we had to go through a dark tunnel of dense vegetation, great ferns, giant palms, creepers with their abundant foliage, and tall trees festooned with liane. Having crossed this dark vegetable passage, we emerged once more into lovely open campos.
Great lumpy globular woolly clouds faced us in the sky to the west. Horizontal intermittent white layers were close to the horizon to the east, then three parallel lines of feathery mist to the north-west. In quantity of clouds the sky that day would meteorologically be described as C 4--which means that four-tenths of the sky vault was covered.
One could not help being struck in Central Brazil by the almost absolute immobility of the clouds. One seldom experienced a strong wind; contrary to what must have taken place there in ages gone by, when that country must have been the very home of terrific air-currents and disturbances on a scale beyond all conception. It was only occasionally that a light breeze--merely in gusts of a few seconds--would refresh one's ears and eyes as one marched on. What was more remarkable still was the sudden change of direction of those spasmodic gusts of wind when they did come.
From a river (elev. 1,250 ft.) we proceeded over undulations to 1,550 ft. There we were treated to an extensive and beautiful view to the west, south-west and north-west. The elevated sky-line formed by the plateau and mountains was quite straight, barring three much eroded mountains standing quite isolated and at a great distance from one another.
One of these solitary elevations was to the south-west, another--the castle-like mountain of great height we had already observed--stood due west. Then came the long flat line of the plateau but for a gentle convexity at each end. The plateau, dressed in thick forest, stood in the middle distance to the west-south-west. Campos of great beauty were prominent on its slopes and in the two hollows in the immediate vicinity.
As we wound our way forward we found masses of ferruginous black rock, black débris, and beautiful crystals.
The silence of that wonderful landscape was impressive. The tinkling of my mules' neck-bells was the only cheering sound breaking that monotonous solitude--except perhaps the occasional harsh voices of my men urging on the animals with some unrepeatable oath or other.
Filippe, the negro--to be distinguished from the other Filippi in my employ, a mulatto--was mounted on one of my best mules. He carried a regular armoury on his back and round his waist, for not only did he carry his own rifle but also mine, besides a pistol and two large knives. He rode along, slashing with a long whip now at one mule then at another. Occasionally he treated us to some of his improvised melodies--not at all bad and quite harmonious, although one got rather tired of the incessant repetitions. Filippe was a pure negro, born in Brazil from ex-slaves. He had never been in Africa. His songs interested me, for although much influenced naturally by modern Brazilian and foreign airs he had heard at Araguary, still, when he forgot himself and his surroundings, he would relapse unconsciously into the ululations and plaintive notes and rhythm typical of his ancestral land in Central Africa--that of the Banda tribe, which I happened to have visited some years before. I identified him easily by his features, as well as by his music and other characteristics.
Filippe did not remember his father and mother, nor had he known any other relatives. He had no idea to what tribe he had belonged, he did not know any African language, and he had never to his remembrance knowingly heard African music. It was remarkable under those circumstances that the Central African characteristics should recur unconsciously in Filippe's music. It showed me that one is born with or without certain racial musical proclivities, dictated by the heart and brain. They cannot be eradicated for many generations, no matter what the place of birth may be or the different surroundings in which the individual may find himself, or the influences which may affect him even early in life.
Brazil was certainly a great country for tablelands. As we came out again into the open, another great plateau, ending with a spur not unlike the ram of a battleship, loomed in the foreground to the south. Yet another plateau of a beautiful pure cobalt, also with another gigantic ram, appeared behind the first, in continuation of the two separated plateaux we have already examined. It was separated from these by a deep cut--a regular cañon--several miles wide, and with sides so sharply defined that it looked like the artificial work of an immense canal.
Great campos lay before us in the near foreground, from our high point of vantage (elev. 1,550 ft.). We were still travelling on a surface of volcanic débris, yellow ashes and sand--forming a mere cap over all those hills, the foundation of which was simply a succession of giant domes of lava.
North-west we still had the almost flat sky-line of a plateau rising slightly in two well-defined steps or terraces to a greater height in its northern part. What most attracted me that day was the delightful view of the Barreiros valley spreading before us--a view of truly extraordinary grandeur.
We rapidly descended, leaving to our left the Indian colony of Aracy. Great granitic and lava slabs, much striated, were seen on our way down to the river (elev. 1,200 ft.). The stream was 50 metres wide, and flowed south where we crossed it. There was a handsome white sand beach on the left bank of the river. On the western, or right bank, stood great volcanic cliffs of boiled and broiled rock, interesting for the violent contortions they had undergone during the processes of ebullition, which showed plainly in their present solidified form.
The river bed itself was one of the usual lava-flows with huge globular lumps and knots--but all in a solid, uninterrupted mass.
We waded chest-deep across the stream, conveyed our baggage and mules to the opposite side, and then we all enjoyed a lovely bath with plenty of lathering soap in the deliciously refreshing waters of the Rio Barreiros.
The river Barreiros, which had its birth in the Serra Furnas Corros, to the south-west, entered the Rio das Garças--there 100 metres wide--a short distance from where we crossed it. The latter river, by far the larger of the two and of a very circuitous course, flowed in a south-easterly direction into the Araguaya. The Rio das Garças, which also had its origin in the Furnas Corros Mountains, had almost a parallel course with the upper Barreiros from south-west to north-east, but on meeting the Barreiros suddenly swung round at a sharp angle towards the south-east, which direction it more or less followed until it entered the Araguaya.
We made our camp on the right bank of the Barreiros River. My men were in a great state of mind when I told them that perhaps on this river we might find some Indians. The cautious way in which they remained as quiet as lambs in camp amused me. I noticed the care with which they cleaned their rifles and replenished their magazines with cartridges. I assured them that there was no danger--in fact, that quite close to this place we should find one of the Salesian colonies.
XIV. The Bororo Indians
WHILE I was reassuring my men an Indian appeared, bow and arrows in hand. He stood motionless, looking at us. My men, who had not noticed his coming, were terrified when they turned round and saw him.
The Indian was a strikingly picturesque figure, with straight, sinewy arms and legs of wonderfully perfect anatomical modelling, well-shaped feet--but not small--and hands. He was not burdened with clothing; in fact, he wore nothing at all, barring a small belt round his waist and a fibre amulet on each arm.
The Indian deposited his bow and arrows against a tree when some other Indians arrived. He stood there as straight and as still as a bronze statue, his head slightly inclined forward in order to screen his searching eagle eyes from the light by the shade of his protruding brow. He folded his arms in a peculiar manner. His left hand was inserted flat under the right arm, the right hand fully spread flat upon his abdomen.
The first thing I did was to take a snapshot of him before he moved. Then I proceeded to the interesting study of his features. They were indeed a great revelation to me. One single glance at him and his comrades persuaded me that a theory I had long cherished about the aboriginal population of the South American continent was correct, although in contradiction to theories held by other people on the subject. I had always believed--for reasons which I shall fully explain later--that South America must be peopled by tribes of an Australoid or Papuan type--people who had got there directly from the west or south-west, not by people who had gradually drifted there from the north.
Some scientists--with no experience of travel--have been greatly misled by the fact that the North American Indians are decidedly a Mongolian race. Therefore they assumed--basing their assumption on incorrect data--that the unknown Indians of South America must also be Mongolian. This was a mistake, although undoubtedly migrations on a comparatively small scale of Indians from North to South America must have taken place, chiefly along the western American coast. Those tribes, however, unaccustomed to high mountains, never crossed the Andes. Whatever types of Indians with Mongolian characteristics were found settled in South America were to be found to the west of the Andes and not to the east. This does not of course mean that in recent years, when roads and railways and steamships have been established, and communication made comparatively easy, individuals or families may not have been conveyed from one coast to the other of the South American continent. But I wish my reader to keep in mind for a moment a clear distinction between the Indians of the western coast and the Indians of the interior.
To return to our man: I was greatly impressed by the strongly Australoid or Papuan nose he possessed--in other words, broad, with the lower part forming a flattened, depressed, somewhat enlarged hook with heavy nostrils. In profile his face was markedly convex, not concave as in Mongolian faces. Then the glabella or central boss in the supra-orbital region, the nose, the chin, were prominent, the latter broad and well-rounded. The cheek-bones with him and other types of his tribe were prominent forwards, but not unduly broad laterally, so that the face in front view was, roughly speaking, of a long oval, but inclined to be more angular--almost shield-shaped. The lips were medium-sized and firmly closed, such as in more civilized people would denote great determination. His ears were covered up by long jet-black hair, perfectly straight and somewhat coarse in texture, healthy-looking and uniformly scattered upon the scalp. The hair was cut straight horizontally high upon the forehead, which thus showed a considerable slant backward from the brow to the base of the hair. A small pigtail hung behind the head. The hair at the sides was left to grow down so as fully to cover the lobes of the ears, where again it was cut horizontally at the sides and back of the head. The top of the head was of great height, quite unlike a Mongolian cranium.
The eyes--close to the nose, and of a shiny dark brown--had their long axis nearly in one horizontal plane. They were set rather far back, were well cut, with thick upper eyelids, and placed somewhat high up against the brow ridges so as to leave little room for exposure of the upper lid when open.
None of the other Indians, who had gradually assembled, wore a particle of clothing, barring a tight conical collar of orange-coloured fibre encircling their genital organs--so tight that it almost cut into the skin. Without this solitary article of clothing no Indian man will allow himself to be seen by another, less still by a stranger. But with so modest an attire he feels as well-dressed as anybody. I think that this elegant article of fashion must have originated as a sanitary precaution, in order to prevent insects of all kinds, and particularly carrapatos, penetrating within--or else I was really at a loss to understand of what other use it could be. They themselves would not say, and only replied that all Bororo Indian men wore it. The Indians who had assembled all belonged to the Bororo tribe.
On that, as well as on later occasions, I noticed two distinct types among the Bororos: one purely Papuan or Polynesian; the other strongly Malay. The characteristics of those two different types showed themselves markedly in every instance. The majority were perhaps of the Malay type. I was intensely interested at the astounding resemblance of these people to the piratical tribes of the Sulu Archipelago in the Celebes Sea, where, too, one met a considerable amount of mixture of those two types as well as specimens of pure types of the two races.
Among the Bororos many were the individuals--of the Malay type--who had the typical Malay eye à fleur de tête, prominent, almond-shaped, and slightly slanting at the outer angle. The nose--unlike that of Papuan types--was flattened in its upper region between the eyes, and somewhat button-like and turned up at the lower part--just the reverse of the Papuan types, who had prominent aquiline noses with a high bridge and globular point turned down instead of up.
The lips were in no case unduly prominent, nor thick. They were almost invariably kept tightly closed.
The form of the palate was highly curious from an anthropological point of view. It was almost rectangular, the angles of the front part being slightly wider than a right angle.
The front teeth were of great beauty, and were not set, as in most jaws, on a more or less marked curve, but were almost on a straight line--the incisors being almost absolutely vertical and meeting the side teeth at an angle of about 60°. The upper teeth overlapped the lower ones.
The chin was well developed--square and flattened in the Papuan types, but receding, flat and small in the Malay types.
Both types were absolutely hairless on the face and body, which was partly natural and partly due to the tribal custom of pulling out carefully, one by one, each hair they possessed on the upper lip and upon the body--a most painful process. The women--as we shall see--in sign of deep mourning, also plucked out each hair of the scalp.
A striking characteristic of the head--in Papuan types--was the great breadth of the maximum transverse of the head, and the undue prominence of the supra-orbital ridges. Also, the great height of the forehead and its great width in its upper part were typical of the race. The maximum antero-posterior diameter of the skull was equal, in many cases, to the vertical length of the head, taken from the angle of the jaw to the apex of the skull.
The ears nearly invariably showed mean, under-developed lobes, but, strangely enough, were otherwise well shaped, with gracefully defined and chiselled curves. They were not unduly large, with a wonderfully well-formed concha, which fact explained why the acoustic properties of their oral organs were perfect. They made full use of this in long-distance signalling by means of acute whistles, of which the Bororos had a regular code.
The favourite form of earring adopted by the Bororos was a brass ring with a metal or shell crescent, not unlike the Turkish moon, but I do not think that this ornament was of Bororo origin. Very likely it was suggested by the cheap jewellery imported into Brazil by Turkish and Syrian traders.
They displayed powerful chests, with ribs well covered with flesh and muscle. With their dark yellow skins they were not unlike beautiful bronze torsi. The abdominal region was never unduly enlarged, perhaps owing to the fact that their digestion was good, and also because they took a considerable amount of daily exercise. In standing they kept their shoulders well back, the abdominal region being slightly in front of the chest. The head was usually slightly inclined downwards.
The feet of the Bororos of the Malay type were generally stumpy, but this was not so with the higher Papuan types, who, on the contrary, had abnormally long toes and elongated feet, rather flattened. The Bororos used their toes almost as much as their fingers, and showed great dexterity in picking up things, or in spinning twine, when their toes did quite as much work as their fingers.
The colour of the iris of the Bororo eye was brown, with considerable discoloration around its outer periphery, and especially in the upper part, where it was covered by the lid. The eyes were generally kept half closed.
The anatomical detail of the body was perfectly balanced. The arms were powerful, but with fine, well-formed wrists--exquisitely chiselled, as were all the attachments of their limbs. They had quite graceful hands, long-fingered--in more ways than one--and wonderfully well-shaped, elongated, convex-faced nails, which would arouse the envy of many a lady of Western countries. The webbing between the fingers was infinitesimal, as with most Malay races. Great refinement of race was also to be noticed in the shape of their legs--marvellously modelled, without an ounce of extra flesh, and with small ankles.
The Bororos divided themselves into two separate families--the Bororo Cerados and the Bororo Tugaregghi. The first descended from Baccoron; the second claimed descent from Ittibori. Baccoron lived where the sun set, in the west; Ittibari dwelt in the east.
I heard a strange legend in connection with their origin, in which they seemed proud of their descent from the jaguar--which to them represented the type of virility. A male jaguar, they said, had married a Bororo woman.
A sensible custom existed among the Bororos, as among the Tuaregs of the Sahara desert in Africa. The children took the name of the mother and not of the father. The Bororos, like the Tuaregs, rightly claimed that there could be no mistake as to who the mother of a child was, but that certainty did not always apply to the father. This was decidedly a sensible law among the Bororos, who were most inconstant in their affections. They were seldom faithful to their wives--at least, for any length of time.
The Bororos were not prolific. They frequently indulged in criminal practices in order to dispose of their young--either by strangulation at birth or soon after, or by drugging their women before the birth of the child. The young, when allowed to live, took milk from their mothers until the ages of five or six years. The parents were extremely kind to their children; indeed, they were extraordinarily good-natured and considerate. Eight days after birth they perforated the lower lip of male children and inserted a pendant, taking that opportunity to give a name to the child. The lobes of the ears were only perforated at the age of ten or twelve.
It was only at the age of about twenty that men were allowed to marry.
I found among the Bororos an interesting custom which I had seen but once before--in Central Asia, on the slopes of the Himalaya Mountains, among the Shoka tribesmen. I am referring to the "clubs"--called by the Bororos Wai manna ghetgiao. There the young men and girls went not only with the object of selecting a wife or husband, but also to get thoroughly acquainted and see if the mate selected were suitable or not. The men sat on one side of the club-house--a mere hut--the women on the other. In a way, these clubs prevented hasty marriages, for the men were given plenty of time to study their prospective brides and the girls their future husbands. Curiously enough, in the Bororo country it was generally the woman who proposed to the man. When the official engagement was made the man proceeded to the hut of his sweetheart and brought a gift of food for her and her mother. If the gifts were accepted there was no other formality to be gone through, and the matrimonial ceremony was indeed of the simplest kind. The man took away the girl to his hut and they were man and wife.
The cuisine of the Bororos was not attractive to European palate, ears or eyes. One of the favourite dishes of the Bororos, served on grand occasions, was the mingao, or Indian corn chewed up into a paste inside their mouths by women and then displayed before the guests in earthen pots filled with fresh water, in which it was then cooked.
The Bororos maintained that the sun, Cervado, and the moon, Ittary, were two brothers, both being males.
They believed in a superior Being--the essence of goodness and kindness--a Being who will never give pain or hurt anybody; therefore the Bororo, who was really at heart a great philosopher, never offered prayers to that superior Being. Why pray and worry one who will never injure us? they argued.
Then they believed in a wicked and revengeful devil, the Boppé, to whom constant attention was paid because by him was caused all the trouble that humans can have. Malady, accidents, disaster in love, in hunting or fishing expeditions--for all these the devil Boppé was responsible.
Then they had also another evil spirit--the Aroe Taurari--who, they said, often assumed the appearance of their ancestors in order to come and watch the games of the Bororos, such as wrestling and archery. Wrestling--in the catch-as-catch-can style--was one of their favourite games. They were very agile at it. Their favourite trick was to seize each other across the shoulders, each endeavouring to trip his opponent by a twisted leg round his knee. Children in the aldejas were playing at this game all the time. In the Bororo wrestling-matches it was sufficient to be thrown down to be the loser, and it was not essential to touch the ground with both shoulder-blades.
The only other game I saw among the Bororos was the test of strength. It was carried out with a most striking article--a great wheel made of sections, each one foot long, of the trunk of the burity palm tied together by double strings of fibre. The ribbon thus formed by them was rolled so as to make a solid wheel of heavy wood 6 ft. in diameter. The whole was retained in a circular form by a strong belt of vegetable fibre. This great wheel was used by the Bororos in their sports, at festivals, for testing the strength of the most powerful men. It was so heavy that few men could lift it at all, the great test being actually to place it on one's head and keep it there for a length of time.
The Indians of South America, like the Indians of North America, revelled in decorating themselves with the feathers of brightly-coloured birds. The red, yellow and blue giant macaws, fairly common in that region, paid dearly for this fashion of the Indians. Many of those poor birds were kept in captivity and plucked yearly of all their feathers in order to make hair ornaments of beautiful blue and green plumage for the leading musician, who rattled the bacco (a gourd full of pebbles which can make a terrible noise), or else armlets, earrings or necklaces. Some of the designs woven with the tiniest feathers of those birds were quite clever, and required delicate handling in their manufacture. Ducks, too, supplied many of the feathers for the ornaments of the Bororos.
Their cooking utensils were simple enough--merely a few large earthen bowls, badly baked and unglazed, the largest of which was seldom more than 2 ft. in diameter. They broke easily, being made extremely thin.
The Bororos made basket-work by plaiting dried palm-leaves, but their most interesting work of all consisted in the really beautifully made fishing nets. Nearly all the Indians of South America showed remarkable talent and patience at this work. The strings were twisted of a vegetable fibre, extremely resisting, and eminently suitable by its softness and regularity of diameter.
Whether owing to excitement, indigestion or other causes, the Bororos had visions, which they attributed to the Aroe Taurari. In a certain way they were believers in the transmigration of the soul--not generally, but in specific cases.
There were certain Bororos who, by magic songs, professed to fascinate animals in the forest and were able to catch them. The barih or medicine-man generally, assisted in those incantations.
The Bororos were remarkable walkers. They were extremely light on their feet and had a springy gait, most graceful to watch. A striking characteristic of these people was that, when standing--unlike nearly every other tribe of savages I have seen--they spread their toes outward instead of keeping both feet parallel. To a lesser extent the feet were held in that position also when walking. The suppleness of their bodies gave them a great advantage in penetrating with ease anywhere in the forest without having to cut their way through.
Both men and women were passionately fond of dancing, although their dancing had not reached any degree of perfection. With a strip of burity palm upon their shoulders they hopped around, monotonously chanting, with a rhythmic occasional jump, the women following the men.
The women possessed considerable endurance. They could carry heavy weights for long distances by means of a fibre headband resting on the forehead. Under those circumstances the body was kept slightly inclined forward. Children were also carried in a similar fashion in a sling, only--less practically than among many Asiatic and African tribes--the Bororo children were left to dangle their legs, thereby increasing the difficulty of carrying them, instead of sitting with legs astride across the mother's haunches. I was amazed to see until what age Bororo mothers and sisters would carry the young upon their shoulders--certainly children of five or six years of age were being carried about in this fashion, while such hard duties as pounding Indian corn, thrashing beans, and hut-building, were attended to.
Neither in women nor in men was the power of resistance in any way to be compared with that of the tribes of Central Africa or Asia. The Indian tribes of Brazil impressed one as being strong, because one compared them with their neighbours and masters, the Brazilians, who were physically one of the weakest, least-resisting races I have ever seen. When you compared them with some of the healthy savage races elsewhere, the Indians did not approach them in endurance and quickness of intellect. Do not forget that endurance is greatly due to brain power and self-control. The Indian races I saw in Brazil seemed to me almost exhausted physically, owing perhaps to constant intermarriage among themselves. The eyesight of the Bororos, for instance, was extremely bad. There were many in every aldeja who were almost or absolutely blind. The others were nearly all short-sighted.
The Bororos removed--pulled out, in fact--their eyelashes one by one, as they believed it improved their sight, especially for seeing at long distances. They all suffered more or less from complaints of the eyes. Indeed, I have seldom found races whose members had eyes in such poor condition. Conjunctivitis was the most prevalent form of eye disease. Ophthalmia was frequently met with. They seemed to have no efficacious method of curing those complaints, and the result was that one found an appalling number of blind or half-blind persons among them--quite out of proportion to the small population. The Bororos did not, of course, know of spectacles or any other way of protecting the eyes. Even when their eyes were in a normal condition, they nearly all had some defect of vision. Squinting was frequently to be noticed among them, and nearly invariably unevenness of the eyes. Cataract was common at a comparatively early age, and they knew no remedy for it. An abnormally marked discoloration of the upper part of the iris was constantly to be noticed even in young people. Among the healthiest I never saw one man or woman with extraordinary powers of vision such as are most common among savage tribes of Asia and Africa. The diseased condition of their blood was also perhaps to a certain extent responsible for this.
Their hearing was good, but not much more acute than with the average European--and infinitely inferior to that of the natives of Asia and Africa. They suffered considerably from the most terrible of blood complaints, general among them, also from leprosy and various skin troubles.
The Bororos made considerable use of the urucu plant (Bixa orellana L.) which they called nonoku, from the fruit of which they obtained a brilliant red colouring matter for tinting their bows and arrows. The shell of the fruit contained a number of shiny seeds, which, when squashed, exuded a vivid red juice. It adhered easily to the skin of the forehead and cheeks, for which purpose the Indians also extensively used it.
The black paint which the Indians used for smearing themselves across the forehead, cheeks, and upon the shoulders, from side to side, was made to stick to the skin and shine by mixing it with a resin.
The Bororos of the Rio Barreiros district carried five arrows each with them, but each family of Bororos used a special colour and also a different number of arrows, so that no particular rule could be laid down for the entire tribe. The red-tinted arm-band which most men wore was called the aguasso.
Before starting on a hunting expedition of importance the Bororos usually indulged in a feast.
I took a great number of thumb-marks among them, some of which were remarkable for the precision of the spiral lines from the central point, all over the thumb point. Others in the longer thumbs showed a peculiar deviation in the curve at the end, near the point of the thumb. Where the lines began to deviate, the triangle formed was filled in by other lines joining those of the spiral at sharp angles.
The experiments with the dynamometer in order to measure their strength, the anthropometric measurements with a calliper, and the printing of the thumb-marks, caused the Bororos first of all great anxiety, then boisterous amusement. They looked upon it all as utter nonsense--in a way I did not blame them--and repeatedly asked why I did it. I told them that I did it to find out where they came from.
"We are not monkeys," said they; "we do not walk on our hands. If that is your object you should look at our foot-marks on the ground, not at the marks of our hands!"
With these words, from a tracker's point of view, the local wit set the entire company in shrieks of laughter at his quick repartee.
"Oh, yes!" said I; "but with the thumb-marks I may perhaps trace, not only where you come from, but also where your great-grandfather, who is now dead, came from."
That was too much for them. All had been anxious to make a smudge with smoke-black upon my note-book. Now they all refused to do any more thumb-marking, and walked away; but I had fortunately already finished the work I needed from them.
The Bororos--in fact, most Indian tribes of Central Brazil--knew nothing whatever of navigation. This was chiefly due to the fact that all the woods of Central Brazil had so high a specific gravity that not one of them would float. Hence the impossibility of making rafts, and the greatly increased difficulty in making boats. As for making dug-outs, the Indians had neither the patience nor the skill nor the tools to cut them out of solid trees. Moreover, there was really no reason why the Indians should take up navigation at all when they could do very well without it. They could easily get across the smaller streams without boats, and they were too timid to go and attack inimical tribes on the opposite banks of unfordable rivers. Besides, the Indians were so few and the territory at their entire disposal so great, that there was no temptation for them to take up exploring, particularly by water.
They were all good swimmers. When the river was too deep to ford they merely swam across; or else, if the river were too broad and swift, they improvised a kind of temporary raft with fascines or bundles of dried burity leaves, to which they clung, and which they propelled with their feet. These fascines were quite sufficient to keep them afloat for a short time, enabling them also to convey a certain amount of goods across the water.
In other countries, such as in Central Africa among the Shilucks and the Nuers of the Sobat River (Sudan), and the natives on Lake Tchad, I have seen a similar method adopted in a far more perfected fashion. The Shilucks, for instance, cleverly built big boats of fascines--large enough to carry a great number of warriors. Such was not the case with the bundles of burity of the Indians--which merely served for one or at the most two people at a time, and then only until the bundle became soaked, when it went to the bottom.
XV. Bororo Superstitions--The Bororo Language--Bororo Music
THE Bororos were superstitious to a degree. They believed in evil spirits. Some of these, they said, inhabited the earth; others were invisible and lived "all over the air," to use their expression. The aerial ones were not so bad as those on earth. It was to the latter that their invocations were made--not directly, but through a special individual called the barih, a kind of medicine man, who, shouting at the top of his voice while gazing skyward, offered gifts of food, meat, fish and grain to the boppé or spirits invoked. There were two kinds of barih: a superior one with abnormal powers, and an inferior one. The barih eventually pretended that the spirit had entered his body. He then began to devour the food himself, in order to appease the hunger of his internal guest and become on friendly terms with him. The wife of the barih, who on those occasions stood by his side, was generally asked to partake of the meal, but only after the barih had half chewed the various viands, when he gracefully took them with his fingers from his own mouth and placed them between the expectant lips of his better half. She sometimes accepted them--sometimes not. All according to her appetite, I suppose, and perhaps to the temporary terms on which she was that day with her husband.
The Bororos, curiously enough, spoke constantly of the hippopotamus--ajie, as they called it--and even imitated to perfection the sounds made by that amphibious animal. This was indeed strange, because the hippopotamus did not exist in South America, nor has it ever been known to exist there. The women of the Bororos were in perfect terror of the ajie, which was supposed to appear sometimes breaking through the earth. Personally, I believed that the ajie was a clever ruse of the Bororo men, in order to keep their women at home when they went on hunting expeditions. Boys were trained to whirl round from the end of a long pole a rectangular, flat piece of wood attached to a long fibre or a string. Its violent rotation round the pole, with the revolutions of the tablet around itself at different speeds, reproduced to perfection the sounds of blowing and snorting of the hippopotamus. The whizzing of this device could be heard at astonishing distances. The credulous women were rendered absolutely miserable when they heard the unwelcome sounds of the ajie, and, truly believing in its approach, retired quickly to their huts, where, shivering with fright, they cried and implored to have their lives spared.
The boy who whirled the magic tablet was, of course, bound to keep the secret of the ajie from the women. Let me tell you that one of the chief virtues of the Bororo men, old and young, was the fidelity with which they could keep secrets. The youngest children were amazing at keeping secrets even from their own mothers. There were things that Bororo women were not allowed to know. Boys attended the tribal meetings of men, and had never been known to reveal the secrets there discussed either to their sisters or mothers.
When I said it was a virtue, I should have added that that virtue was a mere development of an inborn racial instinct. Young and old among the Bororo were extremely timid and secretive by nature. They feared everybody--they were afraid of each other. It was sufficient to watch their eyes--ever roaming, ever quickly attracted and pointing sharply at anything moving anywhere around--to be satisfied of the intense suspiciousness of these people.
The Bororos were restless nomads and could never settle anywhere. They were always on the move--hunting, fishing, and formerly on warlike expeditions with other tribes. They showed great skill with their arrows, which they threw with wonderful accuracy even under conditions of unusual difficulty. When fishing, for instance, they showed remarkable calculating powers when the line of vision became deviated by the surface of the water and made it difficult to judge the exact position of the fish at different depths, quite removed from where the eye saw it. Their long arrows had a double-barbed bone head, which was poisoned when fighting men.
The Bororos were not quarrelsome by nature; on the contrary, they were dignified and gentle. They always avoided fighting. It was only when driven to it, or when hunted down and attacked, that they naturally endeavoured to defend themselves. This has brought upon them the reputation of being barbarous and cruel savages. Even among themselves they seldom quarrelled; they never offended one another with words. They had great respect for their elders.
At night the men collected in the village. One of them spoke aloud to the crowd, delivering a regular lecture on the events of the day, their hunting or fishing adventures, or tribal affairs. The greatest attention was paid to the orator, and only after his speech was over a warm but orderly discussion followed.
When a Bororo man was angry with another he would not descend to vulgar language, but he generally armed himself with a bony spike of that deadly fish, the raja (Rhinobates batis) or mehro, as it was called in the Bororo language, which he fastened to a wristlet. With it he proceeded in search of his enemy, and on finding him, inflicted a deep scratch upon his arm. This was considered by the Bororos the greatest insult a man could offer.
Women, as in most other countries, quarrelled more than men. Not unlike their Western sisters, they always--under such circumstances--yelled at the top of their voices, and then resorted to the effective and universal scratching process with their long sharp nails.
It will be judged from this that it will not quite do to put down the Bororos as being as tame as lambs. Indeed, it was sufficient to look at their faces to be at once struck by the cruel expression upon them. They prided themselves greatly on having killed members of rival tribes, and more still upon doing away with Brazilians. In the latter case it was pardonable, because until quite recently the Brazilians have slaughtered the poor Indians of the near interior regions in a merciless way. Now, on the contrary, the Brazilian Government goes perhaps too far the other way in its endeavour to protect the few Indians who still remain within the Republic.
The more accessible tribes, such as the insignificant ones on the Araguaya, were having a good time--valuable presents of clothes they did not want, phonographs, sewing machines, fashionable hats, patent leather shoes, automatic pistols and rifles being showered upon them by expensive expeditions specially sent out to them. It no doubt pleased an enthusiastic section of the Brazilian public to see a photograph of cannibal Indians before they met the expedition, without a stitch of clothing upon their backs--or fronts to be accurate--and by its side another photograph taken half an hour later and labelled "Indians civilized and honoured citizens of the Republic," in which you saw the same Indians, five or six, all dressed up and, it may be added, looking perfectly miserable, in clothes of the latest fashion. It would have been interesting to have taken a third photograph an hour after the second picture had been taken, in order to show how soon civilization--if donning a pair of trousers and shoes and a collar and tie can be called being civilized--can be discarded.
The news had spread by word of mouth down the Araguaya many months ahead that a Brazilian expedition would be sent out with gifts, in order to befriend the Indians--supposed to be innumerable: only a few dozens, all counted, in reality. Seeing no expedition arrive, the Indians--five or six--proceeded to travel some hundreds of miles to go and find it. The expedition for lack of money had remained stuck in a certain town. It was in that town that the valuable photographs were taken. No sooner had they said good-bye to their generous donors than the Indians left the city, quickly removed their clothes, which they exchanged for a few drinks of aguardente (fire-water), and, as naked as before, returned to the shores of their beloved river.
Nevertheless the movement of the Brazilian Government was extremely praiseworthy and did it great credit. Like all movements of that kind it was bound to go to excesses in the beginning, especially in Brazil, where people were very generous when they were generous at all. So that so far the fault has been on the right side. It will undoubtedly prevent in the future much severe, even cruel treatment which has been bestowed on the Indians.
It was only a great pity--a very great pity--that this movement for the protection of the Indians had been started when there were few pure Indians--almost none--left to protect. According to Brazilian statements, the wild Indians of Central Brazil amounted to some fifteen or twenty millions or thereabouts! A few--very few--thousands, perhaps only hundreds, would be nearer the truth. There were no great tribes left in their absolutely wild state anywhere in Brazil. There were a few small tribes or families scattered here and there, but it was seldom that these tribes numbered more than twenty or thirty members. If the tribe numbered fifty individuals it was already a large tribe. Most of them contained merely six or eight members. So that really, in the population of Brazil, these tribes, instead of being the chief factor, were in fact a negligible quantity. It would be rash to make a statement as to the exact number of wild Indians in Brazil, for in a country so big--larger, as I have already stated, than the United States of America, Germany, Portugal, and a few other states taken together--and most of which was little known or absolutely unknown--it was not easy to produce an exact census.
During my journey, which crossed that immense country in a zigzag from one end to the other in its broader width, and covered all the most important regions of the Republic, I became assured that few indeed were the pure Indians to be found in Central Brazil. One went hundreds and hundreds of miles without meeting signs of them; and that in localities where they were supposed to be swarming. The Bororos--a few dozens of them, all counted, in two or three different subdivisions--were perhaps the strongest wild tribe in all the immense State of Matto Grosso.
As I have said, I was greatly impressed, from my first contact with the Bororos, by the strongly Polynesian appearance of some of them. The more specimens I saw of them the more I became convinced that they were of the same race. In fact, more: I began to speculate whether the people of Australia and Polynesia had migrated here or whether it was just the other way--which theory might also be plausibly upheld--viz. that the people of Central South America had migrated to the west, into Polynesia and Australia. Many theories have been expounded of how races always follow certain rules in their migrations, but in my own experience I do not invariably find that those theories are always correct. Again, it does not do to rely too much on the resemblance of words in establishing a relationship between two or more races. Nor, indeed, can one trust absolutely to the resemblance in the rudimentary ornamentation of articles of use. If you happen to be a student of languages, and have studied dozens of them, you will soon discover how far words will travel across entire continents. They can often be traced back to their origin by the knowledge of intermediate languages through which, with distortions, those words have passed. In Central Africa I actually heard words of Mongolian origin, and not only that, but even traced Mongolian characteristics in the type of the ruling classes of natives, as well as in the construction of their language.
It is easy to be occasionally misled. I remember on my journey across Africa how amazed I was at first at hearing some Tonkinese expressions used by the native cannibals. I really could not get over my amazement until I learnt that some years previously a number of Tonkinese convicts had been sent up the Congo and Ubanghi rivers by the French. Several of them had lived in that particular village of cannibals for some years. Hence the adoption of certain words which had remained in frequent use, whereas the Tonkinese individuals had disappeared.
I took special care in Brazil, when making a vocabulary of the Bororo and other Indian languages, to select words which I ascertained were purely Indian and had not been contaminated either by imported Portuguese words or words from any other language. I was much struck by the extraordinary resemblance of many words in the language of the Indians of Central Brazil to the Malay language and to languages of Malay origin which I had learnt in the Philippine Islands and the Sulu Archipelago.
For instance: the Sun, which is called in Malay mata-ari, usually abbreviated into 'ari, was in the Bororo language metiri, and in the language of the Apiacar Indians of the Arinos-Juruena river, ahra, which indeed closely resembles the Malay word. Moreover, the word ahri in the Bororo language indicated the moon--a most remarkable coincidence. It became slightly distorted into zahir in the Apiacar language.
Water, which is poba in Bororo and üha in Apiacar, was curiously enough ühaig in the Bagobo language (Mindanao Island), po-heh or bo-heh in the Bajao language (Mindanao Island), ayer in Malay, and uhayeg in Tiruray (west coast of Mindanao Island, Philippine Archipelago).
Father was bapa in Malay, and pao in Bororo. Many were the words which bore a slight resemblance, as if they had been derived from the same root. Langan, arm, in Malay, was ankan-na or akkan-na. Ear, in the Ilocano language (Philippine Archipelago) was cabayag; aviyag in Bororo. Hair in Ilocano, b[)o][)o]k, in Manguianes bohoc, and in Sulu (Sulu Archipelago) buhuc; in Bororo it was akkao, which might easily be a corruption of the two former words.
I was greatly interested, even surprised, to find that although those Indians lived thousands of miles on every side from the sea, and had never seen it, yet they talked of the pobbo mae re u--the immense water; (pobbo, water; mae, great; re, the; u, an expression of magnification such as our oh).
It was also interesting to note that they had specific words for water of streams--words which we do not possess in the English language, complete as our language is--such as down-stream, and up- or against-stream--like the French en aval and en amont. The Bororo used tche begki, down-stream, and tcheo bugkii, up-stream.
The Bororo language was rudimentary in a way, yet most complete--extremely laconic, with innumerable contractions. The construction of sentences and the position of the verb were not unlike those of Latin languages.
The chief wealth of the Bororo language consisted in its nouns. Like all savage languages, it was wonderfully rich in botanical and zoological terms. The gender was formed by a suffix, the masculine differing from the feminine.
There were in the Bororo language three genders, masculine, feminine and neuter. The masculine was formed by adding the words chireu, curi, or curireu, to the noun; the feminine by the suffixes chireuda and curireuda. There were many words which were used unaltered for either gender. In the case of animals, the additional words medo, male, or aredo, female, clearly defined the sex in specific cases where the names would otherwise be ambiguous. Inanimate objects had no sex, and were therefore neuter.
Most nouns had a plural as well as a singular, but there were exceptions to this rule, such as names of certain plants and animals, the sky, the wind, etc.; not to count things which were generally taken collectively, such as flies--ruque; macaw or macaws, nabure, etc.
The plural was made by the suffixes doghe or maghe--the maghe being used principally in possessive cases, such as tori-doghe, stones; padje-maghe, our mothers. Exceptions to this rule were the words ending in bo, co, go, or mo, to which the suffix e was sufficient to form the plural; whereas in those terminating in do or no, ro, or other consonants, the o was suppressed and an e placed in its stead. Example: jomo, otter, jomoe, otters; cuno, parrot, cune, parrots; apodo, or tucan (a bird), apode, tucans, etc.
There were a number of irregular exceptions, such as aredo, wife; areme, wives; medo, man, ime, men. Perhaps the most curious of plurals was ore, sons, the singular of which was anareghedo (son).
The words ending in go generally formed the plural with an interchangeable ghe.
The pronouns were:
imi = I aki = thou ema = he or she sheghi or paghi = we taghi = you emaghi = they
When immediately before a verb these were abbreviated into I or it, a or ac, e or ei, pa or pag, ta or tag, e or et--I, thou, he or she, we, you, they, according to their preceding a vowel or a consonant. With words beginning with a consonant only the first syllable of the pronoun was used.
The verb itself did not vary in the various persons, but it did vary in its tenses by suffixes, sometimes after the pronoun, sometimes after the verb. In the present tense the Bororos generally used for the purpose the word nure, usually between the pronoun and the verb, with the pronoun occasionally repeated after the nure; but in general conversation, which was laconic, the pronoun was frequently suppressed altogether--similarly to the frequent omission of the pronoun in the English telegraphic language.
There were various other forms of pronouns, but I could not quite define their absolute use--such as the tched or tcheghi, which seemed to include everybody, corresponding to the English we in orations which includes the entire audience, or the whole nation, or even the entire human race.
The Bororo language was complete enough, the conjugation of verbs being clearly defined into past, present, imperative and future.
The past was formed by interpolating between the pronoun and verb the words re gurai, generally abbreviated into re. The imperative was made chiefly by the accentuation of the words, and was susceptible of inflexion in the second person singular and plural. The future was formed by adding, sometimes after the pronoun, sometimes after the verb, the words modde, uo, or ua.
At the end of the second volume, in the Appendix, will be found a vocabulary of useful words needed in daily conversation which I collected during my visit to the Bororos. I had made a much more complete dictionary of their language, in a book which I kept for the purpose, but unfortunately the book was lost with a great many other things in an accident I had some months later on the Arinos River.
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It was not possible to say that the Bororos shone in intelligence. It was seldom one found an individual who could count beyond two. Everything in the Bororo country was reckoned in couples--with the aid of fingers, thumbs, and toes. The learned could thus reach up to twenty, or ten pair--but beyond twenty no Bororo dared venture in his calculations. They had no written language, no sculptures or paintings, no carved idols. Their artistic talent seemed limited to occasionally incising rudimentary representations of horns, footprints, and line figures on rocks.
They showed great skill in the manufacture of their arrows, which were indeed constructed on most scientific lines, and were turned out with wonderful workmanship. The arrows were from 4 to 5 ft. long, and were chiefly remarkable for the intelligent and highly scientific disposition of the two balancing parrot feathers, gently bent into a well-studied spiral curve, so as to produce a rotary movement, united with perfect balance, in the travelling weapon. The arrows were manufactured out of hard, beautifully polished black or white wood, and were provided with a point of bamboo one-third the length of the entire arrow. That bamboo point was tightly fastened to the rod by means of a careful and very precisely made contrivance of split cane fibre.
The Bororos used various-shaped arrow-heads, some triangular, others flattened on one side with a raised rib on the opposite side, others triangular in section with hollowed longitudinal grooves in each face of the triangle in the pyramid, making the wound inflicted a deadly one. Others, more uncommon, possessed a quadruple barbed point of bone.
The favourite style of arrows, however, seldom had a point broader in diameter than the stick of the arrow.
The music of the Bororos--purely vocal--had three different rhythms: one not unlike a slow waltz, most plaintive and melancholy; the second was rather of a loud warlike character, vivacious, with ululations and modulations. The third and most common was a sad melody, not too quick nor too slow, with temporary accelerations to suit words of a more slippery character in their pronunciation, or when sung in a pianissimo tone.
The songs of the Bororos could be divided into: hunting songs, war songs, love songs, and descriptive songs and recitatives.
They were fond of music in itself, and possessed fairly musical ears. They were able to retain and repeat melodies quite foreign to them. Their hearing was acute enough to discern, with a little practice, even small intervals, and they could fairly accurately hit a note which was sung to them. They had flexible voices, quite soft and musical, even in conversation.
In males, as far as I was able to judge, baritone voices were the most prevalent; in female voices, soprano. Their typical songs were chiefly performed in a chorus by men only, although once or twice I heard solos--which, nevertheless, always had a refrain for the chorus. The Bororos sang in fair harmony more than in unison, keeping regular time, and with occasional bass notes and noises by way of accompaniment. They possessed no musical instruments of any importance--a most primitive flute, and one or several gourds filled with seeds or pebbles, being, as far as I could trace, the only two musical instruments among them.
Their songs contained progressions in chromatic intervals. Those progressions were not only frequently repeated in the same melody, but some of the favourite ones recurred in several of their melodies. They frequently broke from one key into another, not gradually or with modulations, but very abruptly. There were constant and sudden changes in the tempo of their melodies, accelerations being frequently caused by excitement in the performers, by incidents occurring, by anger or other passions being aroused. They had no set rules--nor, of course, any written music. The melodies were sung according to the temporary feelings of the performers, who occasionally adorned their performances with variations. Practically they improvised, if led by a musical talent, as they went along. Still, mind you, even when they improvised, the character of the songs was the same, although they may have added so many variations and embellishments to the theme as to make it impossible to identify them. Furthermore, no two choruses ever sang the same songs alike, nor did the same chorus sing the same song twice alike. There were in their melodies great changes in the degree of loudness. Those changes were generally gradual, although often extremely rapid.
The Bororos seemed to be greatly carried away by music, which had upon them quite an intoxicating effect. There were certain high notes and chords in a minor key which had a great attraction for them, and which constantly recurred in their melodies and their lengthy ululations. Some of the notes had undoubtedly been suggested by the song of local birds and by sounds of wild animals. The Bororos were good imitators of sounds, which they could often reproduce to perfection. They were observant with their ears--much more so than with their eyes. Even in conversation the Bororos would often repeat, accurately enough, noises they heard around them, such as the crashing of falling trees, of rushing water, of distant thunder, or foreign words which caught their fancy. I was amazed at their excellent memory in that direction.
There were no professional musicians in the Bororo country in the strict sense of the word, the barih being the only person who might, at a stretch, be put down as one. Nor was anybody taught music. They were one and all musicians without knowing it--or at least thought they were--a belief not monopolized by the Bororos only. They all sang. They learned to sing gradually by hearing and imitating their elders.
I think that with the Bororos the steps of their dances had been suggested by the rhythm of the music, and not the other way round. They preferred music to dancing, for which latter exercise they showed little aptitude. Although their melodies would appear appallingly melancholy to European ears, it did not follow that they were so to them. On the contrary, some which had a most depressing effect on me--and I felt like throwing at them anything handy but heavy to interrupt the melody--seemed to send the performers into a state of absolute beatitude. They kept up those melodies interminably, repeating constantly the same short theme dozens of times--hundreds, in fact, if nothing happened to stop them. When once they had started on one of those songs it was difficult to switch them on to another. They loved to hear it again and again.
The time of their music was "common" time, slightly modified according to the wording of the song. It generally altered into a triple time when the words were of a liquid kind in their pronunciation, and a dual time when sung low and slowly.
When singing, especially during ululations, the Bororos swung their bodies forward and backward--not unlike the howling dervishes of Egypt--uttering occasional high and strident notes. This was generally done before starting en masse on a hunt, when a feast also took place.
The women never joined in the songs, but the boys did. Even if their voices were not powerful enough to produce lengthy ululations, they spiritedly took part in the violent undulations of the body.
The Bororos were great lovers of minute detail. So it was that, in their music, strange, weird effects were attempted, wonderfully complicated in detail.
Bororo singing occasionally took the form of a recitative, with the chorus joining in the refrain--this principally when chanting the merits of a deceased person, or during some calamity in the aldeja, or village.
The only musical instruments I was able to find in the various settlements of Bororos I visited consisted chiefly of single, double, or treble gourds, the latter with perforations at the two ends, used as wind instruments and producing deep bass notes. The single gourd had a cane attachment intended to emit shrill high notes. Then there were other dried gourds filled with pebbles which rattled as they were shaken at the end of a long handle to which the gourds were fastened.
The cane flutes were slightly more elaborate, with ornaments of rings of black feathers. There was only one rectangular slit in the centre of the flute, so that only one note could be produced--as was the case with most of their rudimentary musical instruments.
XVI. Bororo Legends--The Religion of the Bororos--Funeral Rites
THE Bororos believed in spirits of the mountains and the forest, which haunted special places in order to do harm to living beings. Those spirits came out at night. They stole, ill-treated, and killed. In rocks, said the Bororos, dwelt their ancestors in the shape of parrots. The Bororos were greatly affected by dreams and nightmares, which they regarded as events that had actually happened and which generally brought bad luck. They were often the communications of evil spirits, or of the souls of ancestors. The Bororos had many superstitions regarding animals, which they individualized in their legends, giving them human intelligence--especially the colibri (humming-bird), the macaw, the monkey, the deer, and the leopard.
The stars, according to these savages, were all Bororo boys. Let me give you a strange legend concerning them.
"The women of the aldeia had gone to pick Indian corn. The men were out hunting. Only the old women had remained in the aldeia with the children. With an old woman was her nephew, playing with a bow and arrow. The arrows had perforated sticks, which the boy filled with Indian corn. When the boy had arrived home he had asked his grandmother to make a kind of polenta with Indian corn. He had invited all the other boys of the aldeia to come and eat. While grandmother was cooking the children played, and among them decided to go to heaven. In the aldeia there lived an old woman and a red macaw. Both could speak. The boys, having eaten the polenta, cut off the woman's arms, cut out her tongue and eyes, and tore out the tongue of the speaking bird. Having done this, they went into the forest, where they found a liana twisted into innumerable steps (in the Bororo language, ippare, young; kugure, multitude; groiya, step). They could not speak for fear of drawing attention, nor ask any one for help. They had taken the precaution of setting free all the captive birds in the aldeia, and they had flown away, except the pio duddu (the colibri), which they took with them into the forest. The boys gave a long liana, like a rope, to the colibri, requesting him to fasten it to the top of the highest tree, and another long liana which he must tie to the sky where they all wished to ascend. The colibri tied the vegetable ropes as requested, and all the boys climbed up.
"The mothers, missing their children, went to the old woman and the speaking macaw.
"'Where are our children?' said they in a chorus.
"No answer. They were horrified when they perceived the mutilated woman and bird. They rushed out of the hut and saw the children--up--up--high, like tiny spots, climbing up the liana to heaven. The women went to the forest, to the spot where the boys had proceeded on their aerial trip, and showing the breasts that had milked them, entreated them to come down again. The appeal was in vain. The mothers, in despair, then proceeded to follow their children skyward up the liana.
"The youthful chieftain of the plot had gone up last. When he perceived the mothers gaining on them, he cut the liana. With a sonorous bump, the mothers dropped in a heap to the ground. That was why the Bororo women were resigned to see their sons in heaven, forming the stars, while they--the women themselves--remained the transmigrated souls of their mothers upon earth."
The Bororos also said that the stars were the houses of deceased children.
The Bororos believed that the sky vault, or heaven, formed part of the earth, and was inhabited. They proved this by saying that the vulture could be seen flying higher and higher until it disappeared. It went to perch and rest upon trees in heaven. The Milky Way in the sky--the kuyedje è 'redduddo (literally translated "stars they cinders")--consisted for them merely of the flying cinders from the burning stars.
The sun, they stated, was made up entirely of dead barih, or medicine-men, who rose daily with red-hot irons before their faces. The barihs prowled about the earth at night, and went to the east in the morning on their return to the sun. The hot irons held by the barihs were merely held in order to warm the people on earth. At sunset the orb of day "came down to the water" beyond the horizon, and from there marched back to the east. The Bororos maintained that the heavy and regular footsteps of the sun walking across the earth at night could be heard plainly.
The moon, which was masculine to the Bororos, was the brother of the sun, and was similarly the home of barihs of minor importance.
The legends of the Bororos were generally long and somewhat confused. They were the outcome of extremely imaginative and extraordinarily retentive minds. Their imagination frequently ran away with them, so that it was not always easy to transcribe the legends so as to render them intelligible to the average reader, unaccustomed to the peculiar way of thinking and reasoning of savages. Yet there was generally a certain amount of humorous vraisemblance in their most impossible stories. Their morals, it should be remembered, were not quite the same as ours. There were frequently interminable descriptive details which one could on no account reproduce in print, and without them much of the point of the legends would be lost. So that, with the confusion and disorder of ideas of the Bororos, their peculiar ways of expression, and the mutilation necessary so as not to shock the public, the legends were hardly worth reproducing. Still, I shall give here one or two of the more interesting legends, which can be reproduced almost in their entirety.
"The sun and moon (two brothers, according to the Bororos) while hunting together began to play with arrows with blunt heads, such as those used by Bororos for catching birds alive. They hit each other in fun, but at last the sun shot one arrow with too much force and the moon died from the effects of the wound. The sun, unconcerned, left his dying brother and continued hunting; but afterwards returned with medicinal leaves which he placed on the wound of the moon. According to Bororo fashion, he even covered the dying brother entirely with leaves, when he saw his approaching end. When he discovered that the moon was dead he became frightened and left. That is why the moon, which when alive was once as bright as the sun, is now of less splendour. It is because it is dead, and the sun is still alive."
The Bororos firmly believed that formerly the world was peopled by monkeys. This was rather an interesting legend, as it would point out that the Bororos, in any case, were aware that the world was once inhabited by a hairy race, which they called monkeys. It is quite remarkable that a similar legend was found among many of the tribes of the Philippine Islands and Sulu Archipelago, and along the coast of the Eastern Asiatic continent. The Bororos stated that they learnt from monkeys how to make a fire. Monkeys were their ancestors. The whole world was peopled by monkeys in those days. Monkeys made canoes, too.
"One day a monkey and a hare went fishing together in a canoe in which they had taken a good supply of Indian corn. While the monkey was paddling the hare was eating up all the corn. When the corn had been entirely disposed of, in its irresistible desire to use its incisors, the hare began to gnaw the sides of the canoe. The monkey reprimanded the hare, and warned it that the canoe would sink, and as the hare was not a good swimmer it would probably get drowned, or be eaten by fish which swarmed in the stream. The hare would not listen to the advice, and continued in its work of destruction. A hole was bored in the side of the canoe, which promptly sank. The hare being a slow swimmer--according to Bororo notions--was immediately surrounded by swarms of doviado (gold fish) and speedily devoured. The monkey--an excellent swimmer--not only was able to save its life, but, seizing a big fish, dragged it on shore.
"A jaguar came along and, licking its paws, asked whether the monkey had killed the fish for its (the jaguar's) dinner.
"'Yes,' said the monkey.
"'Where is the fire for cooking it?' replied the jaguar.
"The sun was just setting. The monkey suggested that the jaguar should go and collect some dried wood in order to make the fire. The sun was peeping through the branches and foliage of the forest. The jaguar went, and returned with nothing; but in the meantime the monkey, with two pieces of soft wood, had lighted a fire and eaten the fish, leaving a heap of bones. When the jaguar arrived the monkey leapt in a few jumps to the top of a tree.
"'Come down!' said the jaguar.
"'Certainly not!' said the monkey. Upon which the jaguar requested its friend the Wind to shake the tree with all its fury. The Wind did, and the monkey dropped into the jaguar's mouth, from which it immediately passed into the digestive organs. The monkey little by little moved its arms in the close quarters in which it found itself, and was able to seize the knife which it carried--in the most approved Bororo fashion--slung across its back. Armed with it, it split the jaguar's belly and resumed its daily occupation of jumping from tree to tree."
I was able to record yet another strange legend on the preservation of fire.
"An otter," said the legend, "in days long gone by, had with great difficulty lighted a fire on the bank of a river. The sun first came to warm itself by the fire, and while the otter had gone on one of its aquatic expeditions, the moon arrived too. The sun and moon together, feeling in a mischievous mood, put out the fire with water not extra clean. Then they ran for all they were worth. The otter, feeling cold, came out of the water and, to its amazement, found the fire had been extinguished.
"'Who did it?' cried the furious otter, wishing to kill whoever had put the fire out. While its anger was at its highest the otter perceived a toad, which was accused of extinguishing the fire because its legs were as red as fire.
"'Do not kill me!' appealed the toad. 'Put your feet on my belly.' The request was at once granted. The toad opened its mouth wide, and with the pressure of the otter's paws upon its body a burning coal was ejected from its interior anatomy. The otter spared the toad's life in recognition of its services in preserving the fire. That is why the otter and the toad have been friends ever since."
It was not easy to collect legends from the Bororos, as only few of them were inclined to speak. The same legend I found had many variations, according to the more or less imaginative mind of the narrator.
Here is an extraordinary explanation of the origin of lightning.
"A boy had violated his own mother. His father, discovering the misdeed and wishing to punish him severely--in fact, get rid of the boy altogether--sent him to several dangerous places to collect various things for him, such as wild fruit, etc. The son, fearing disaster, went to his grandmother for advice. She in turn called first one bird and then another for their advice. The father had sent his son to fetch some small gourds (bappo rogo), which grew floating on or suspended above the water of a lagoon. But the lagoon was filled with the souls of deceased Bororos and evil spirits. In the first instance the grandmother begged for the help of the pio duddo (or colibri). This obliging bird accompanied the boy to the lagoon and, flying over the water, with its beak cut the twigs of the small gourds, and one by one brought them to the boy, who had wisely remained on dry land in order not to be seized by the evil spirits which lay concealed in the water. When the bird was about to bring the dried gourds back, the seeds which were inside rattled and aroused the evil spirits of the lagoon. Up they all sprang--but the colibri was too swift for them, and the gourds were safely delivered to the boy. The boy brought them to his father, who, amazed at seeing his son still alive, sent him next to fetch some large gourds--such as those used by the barih at funerals and in high ceremonies.
"The boy went once more to his grandmother, and she this time recommended him to a dove (metugo). When the dove and the boy arrived at the lake the dove cut some large gourds, but, unfortunately, in so doing made a noise. The souls and evil spirits of the lake leapt out and dispatched numerous arrows to kill the dove, but, as luck would have it, dove and bappo (gourds) escaped unhurt. The boy handed the large gourds to his astounded father, who could not imagine how the boy had escaped death a second time.
"The Bororos used in their dances the nails of wild pigs, which they attached to their feet in order to produce a noise something like castanets. That ornament was called a buttori.
"The father next ordered his son to go and bring back a complete set to form a buttori. For some reason or other--according to the legend--the buttori was also found suspended over the lagoon swarming with souls and evil spirits. The grandmother on this occasion advised the son to accept the services of a large, beautifully coloured locust--called by the Bororos mannori. The mannori, however, made so much noise while on its errand that it became riddled with arrows from the angry spirits of the lake. To this day, say the Bororos, you can see a lot of white spots all over the body of the mannori. Each marks the spot of a former wound. But the mannori, too, faithfully delivered the foot ornaments to the youth. The youth brought them to his father, who, in amazement and vicious anger, ordered his son to go with him on the mountain to seize the nest of the cibae (vulture). According to the notions of the Bororos, the souls of their dead trans-migrate into the bodies of birds and other animals.
"The young fellow again paid a visit to his wise grandmother, who was this time greatly upset. She handed him a stick and requested him to insert it at once into the vulture's nest, when they had arrived in the hollow in the rock where the nest was. The boy departed with his father up the precipitous mountain side. When they had nearly reached the nest the father placed a long stick across a precipice and ordered his son to climb on it and seize the nest. The son duly climbed--carrying with him his grandmother's stick. When he had reached the top the father did all he could to shake the son down into the chasm, and even removed the long stick on which he had climbed. But the lucky boy had already inserted his grandmother's stick into the crevasse and remained suspended, while the father--really believing that he had at last succeeded in disposing of his son--gaily returned to the aldeia (village). The son, taking advantage of a liana festooned along the rock, was able to climb to the very summit of the mountain. There, tired and hungry, he improvised a bow and arrow with what materials he could find, and killed some lizards. He ate many, and hung the others to his belt. He went fast asleep. With the heat, the fast decomposing lizards began to smell. The odour attracted several vultures, which began to peck at him, especially in the softer parts behind (for he was sleeping lying on his chest and face, as Bororos generally do). The boy was too tired and worn to be awakened. The vultures then seized him by his belt and arms, and, taking to flight, soared down and deposited him at the foot of the mountain. There the boy woke up, famished. His supply of lizards had been eaten by the vultures. He searched for fruit and ate some, but he could not retain his food owing to injuries caused him by the vultures. (Here a good portion of the legend has to be suppressed.)
"As best he could, the boy went to look for the aldeia, but it had vanished. He walked for several days, unable to find traces of his tribe. At last he found the footmarks which they had left upon their passage. He followed them, and came to a fire freshly made, left by the Indians. He went on until he identified the footmarks showing where his grandmother had gone. He made sure they were hers by the extra mark of her stick on the ground. With the assistance of a lizard, then of a big bird, then of a rat, then of a butterfly, he discovered the whereabouts of the old lady. He was by then an old man. Upon perceiving his grandmother he again became a boy, and hurried on--making a noise so that she might know him again. She asked another nephew--'Look and see who is behind!'--The nephew turned round and recognized his eldest brother--who was also his father. The grandmother embraced him tenderly.
"The eldest fellow persuaded his grandmother and brother not to return to the aldeia where he had suffered so much from the hands of his father.
"'They have made me suffer,' he said, 'and I shall take my revenge. Come with me, and we shall all be happy together.'
"They went to a beautiful spot. He climbed a mountain, and from there proceeded to produce lightning, thunder and wind, which exterminated the rest of the tribe in the aldeia. That is why, when the Bororos see lightning, they say that it is someone's vengeance coming upon them."
In the Bororo language, lightning was called boeru goddo or "angry people"; thunder was bai gabe when near, and boya ruru--or deaf sound--when distant.
The Bororos related an interesting legend of a great flood or deluge.
"One night a Bororo went with his bow and arrows to the river in order to fish, at a spot where a cane snare or trap had been made in the stream. He killed a sacred fish. No sooner had he done this than the water immediately began to rise. He was scarcely able to get out of the water and run up the mountain side, lighting his way with the torch of resinous wood he had used in order to attract the fish while fishing. The water kept almost overtaking him, it rose so rapidly. He called out to the Bororos of his tribe to make their escape, as the water would soon drown them, but they did not believe him and consequently all except himself perished. When he reached the summit of the mountain he managed to light a big fire just before the rising water was wetting the soles of his feet. He was still shouting in vain to all the Bororos to run for their lives. The water was touching his feet, when he thought of a novel expedient. He began to remove the red-hot stones which had lain under the fire and threw them right and left into the water. By rapid evaporation at the contact of the hot missiles, it is to be presumed, as the legend does not say, the water ceased to rise. In fact, the water gradually retired, and the Bororo eventually returned to the spot where he had left the tribesmen. All were dead. He went one day into the forest and he found a doe--which had in some mysterious way escaped death--and he took her for his wife. From this strange union were born children who were hornless and quite human, except that they were very hairy. After a few generations the hair entirely disappeared. That was how the Bororo race was preserved."
That extraordinary legend was, to my mind, a very interesting one--not in itself, but from several facts which in its ignorant language it contained. First of all, the knowledge of the Bororos concerning a former hairy race--a hairy race referred to in legends found all over the Eastern Asiatic coast and on many of the islands in the Pacific from the Kuriles as far as Borneo. Then it would clearly suggest a great deluge and flood which most certainly took place in South America in days long gone by, and was indeed quelled by burning stones--not, of course, thrown by the hands of a Bororo, from the summit of a mountain, but by a great volcanic eruption spitting fire and molten rocks.
As I have stated elsewhere, there was every possible indication in Central Brazil that torrential rains on an inconceivable scale--naturally followed by unparalleled floods--had taken place, in the company of or followed by volcanic activity on a scale beyond all imagination. One had only to turn one's head round and gaze at the scenery almost anywhere in Central Brazil, but in Matto Grosso particularly, to notice to what extent erosion and volcanic activity had done their work.
Another curious belief of the Bororos was worth remembering. They claimed that men and women did not come from monkeys, but that once upon a time monkeys were human and could speak. They lived in huts and slept in hammocks.
The Bororos possessed no geographical knowledge. Beyond their immediate neighbourhood they knew of no other place, and did not in any way realize the shape or size of the earth.
They called themselves Orari nogu doghe--or people who lived where the pintado fish (orari in Bororo) was to be found. The Bororos spoke of only three other tribes: the Kaiamo doghe (the Chavantes Indians), their bitter enemies; the Ra rai doghe--the long-legged people--ancient cave-dwellers, once the neighbours of the Bororos, but now extinct; and the Baru gi raguddu doghe--a name better left untranslated--applied to a tribe living in grottoes.
In the way of religion the Bororos admitted of five different heavens, in the last of which dwelt a Superior Being--a deity called the Marebba. Marebba's origin was unknown to the Bororos. All they knew was that he had a mother and a powerful son. Marebba only looked after the men--but he was so occupied that when the barihs--through whose mediation it was possible to communicate with him--wished to be heard, they had to shout at the top of their voices in order to attract his attention. Only the higher barihs could communicate with him, the lower barihs being merely permitted to communicate with his son.
They also believed in the existence of a bad god--an evil spirit called Boppe. Boppe inhabited the mountains, the tree-tops and the "red heaven." There were many boppe, male and female, and to them were due all the misfortunes which had afflicted the Bororos. Some of the barihs maintained that they had actually seen both Marebba and some of the boppes. They gave wonderful descriptions of them, comparing them in their appearance to human beings. The Bororos believed that in any food it was possible to find a boppe--there established in order to do evil. Therefore, before partaking of meals, especially at festivals, they first presented the barih with fruit, grain, meat and fish in order to appease the anger of the evil spirits.
The Bororos believed in the transmigration of the soul into animals. They never ate deer, nor jaguar, nor vultures, because they thought that those animals contained the souls of their ancestors. The jaguar, as a rule, contained the soul of women. When a widower wished to marry a second time he must first kill a jaguar in order to free the soul of his first wife from suffering.
They also seemed to have an idea that the arué, or souls of the dead, might reappear in the world and could be seen by relatives. Men and women all became of one sex on leaving this world--all souls being feminine, according to the Bororos.
The apparition of the souls before their relatives was, of course, merely a clumsily arranged trick of the barihs. This is how it was done. They made a circle of branches of trees--in order to keep the audience at a distance--and then erected a large wooden gate, so arranged that when the souls appeared it fell down in order to give them free passage. The souls--generally not more than two together--upon being called by the barih, entered the ring with their faces covered and hopping with a special step of their own. They did not respond to prayers or tears, and kept on twirling about within the ring. The body was that of a woman, wearing from the waist down a gown of palm leaves. The face was covered by a mask of vegetable fibre which allowed its owner to see and not be seen. Upon the head was worn a cap of wax in which were stuck a great number of arrows, so that it looked just like the back of a disturbed porcupine.
Naturally those "souls" were merely special girls dressed up for the occasion. But credulous Bororo women believed they were actually seeing the souls of their dead relatives. They worked themselves into a great state of excitement.
The same implement which was employed by the Bororos to reproduce the sound of the aigi or ajie (hippopotamus)--a board some ten inches long and three inches wide attached to a string and revolved from a long pole--was also used by them to announce the departure of souls from this world to the next. The women were ordered to cover their faces or hide altogether inside their huts when these noises were produced. Should one be curious enough to inquire into their origin and look, she was generally condemned to death--frequently by starvation. The Bacururu--or the Coroado Indians--believed that, after such an indiscretion, nothing could save the life of a woman.
Before starting on a hunting or fishing expedition prayers were offered to the souls of the departed, so that they might not interfere with the success of the expedition, and if possible help instead.
The funeral rites of the Bororos were singular. On the death of a man, a chorus of moans began and tears were shed in profusion, while some one sang for several days the praises of the defunct in a melancholy monotone. The body was covered for two entire days, during which all articles that belonged to the deceased, such as bow and arrows, pots, and musical instruments, were smashed or destroyed. The débris was stored behind a screen in the hut, where subsequently was also kept the hearse in which the body was conveyed to the burial spot. The body, wrapped in a palm-leaf mat, was then interred in a shallow oval grave just outside his hut. A wooden beam was placed directly over the body, and then the hollow was covered over with some six or eight inches of earth. A few branches of trees and some thorns were thrown over it to indicate the spot.
For twenty days in the evening and night moans resounded through the air. More tears were shed by the relatives and by the barih, who frequently proceeded to the grave to pour water on it. On the twentieth day, while some one set at play the awe-inspiring revolving board, others proceeded to exhume the body--by then in a state of absolute decomposition. The remains were taken to the stream and the bones cleaned with great care. The skull was placed within two inverted hemispherical baskets, whereas all the other bones of the body were heaped into a third concave basket of a larger size.
It was on their return--with moans and chanting--to the bayto, or meeting-place in the aldeia, that the most touching scene ensued. The skull was decorated with a design of coloured feathers, while those present inflicted wounds upon their own bodies, shedding blood upon the basket of remains. The women, moreover, tore one by one each hair from their heads and bodies in sign of mourning.
After this the skull and bones were placed within another basket, and were either cremated or thrown to the bottom of a river. The property of the deceased was then set ablaze.
I noticed in a hut a skirt made of long palm leaves. It was donned at funerals. There were also several long rudimentary flutes, formed by a cane cylinder with a rounded mouthpiece inserted into another. These flutes, too, were used only on such mournful occasions.
The barih received a present from relatives at the death of individuals in the tribe. The family remained in mourning from five to six months. The widow, at the death of her husband, was expected to tear each hair off her scalp, one by one, until her head remained as bald as a billiard-ball. She generally did it.
The corpses of women were treated slightly differently. When a woman died she was buried pro tem. A feast was given to the tribe. The process of denudation having been given ample time to leave her skeleton clean, her bones were collected, and placed in a special basket and then cremated. The ashes were scattered to the winds, and so were all her clothes, ornaments, chattels, smashed to atoms, and articles of food. Even fowls, if she possessed any, were destroyed. Usually they were eaten by her friends.
The Bororos did not possess a sense of honour resembling ours. Theft was not considered dishonourable, and was not looked down upon nor condemned by them. If a Bororo liked anything belonging to any one else, they could see no reason why he should not appropriate it. That was their simple way of reasoning, and as no police existed among them such theories were easily followed.
Taking something belonging to a stranger was, in fact, rather encouraged, and in our experience we had to keep a sharp watch when Indians came to our camp, as things disappeared quickly. They seldom took the trouble to ask for anything; they just took it and ran away.
The measurements of Bororo heads in the table on page 261, taken, as an average, from several of the most characteristic types, will be found of interest, especially when compared with some from Papuan and Malay tribes of the Philippine and Sulu Archipelagoes with whom they have many points in common.
Due allowance must be made for the artificial deformation of the cranium in the case of the Bororos.
I had no end of trouble in obtaining these measurements, as the Bororos would not hear of being measured. They were frightened of the nickel-plated calliper I used for the purpose. It was quite beyond them to understand why any one should want to know the length of their noses. In fact, although many, after a lot of coaxing, submitted to have other measurements taken, few of them would let me measure the nose. None at all would permit me to measure the length of their eyes, as they feared I should intentionally blind them.
I met other tribes of Bororos as I went along, and I was able to add to the curious information already collected and given in previous chapters. It appeared that at the birth of a child the head, while the skull was still soft, was intentionally compressed and bandaged, especially at the forehead and back, so as to flatten it and produce an abnormal shape of the skull. In many cases only the back of the head was flattened by the application of artificial pressure. The elongation was both upwards and sideways. This deformation was particularly confined to male children.
|Bororos. | |Bilan, Island of Mindanao Philippine Archipelago. | | |Manobo. | | | |Mahommedans West coast of Mindanao I. | | | | |Guiangas. | | | | | |Samal. | | | | | | |Bagobos. | | | | | | | |Ilocanos. | | | | | | | | |Mandayas (Gandia). | | | | | | | | | |Tirurays. | | | | | | | | | | |Mansakas (of Panter). | | | | | | | | | | | |Yacanes. ----------------------------+--------+-------+-------+-------+-------+-------+-------+-------+-------+-------+-------+------- | Metre. |Metre. |Metre. |Metre. |Metre. |Metre. |Metre. |Metre. |Metre. |Metre. |Metre. |Metre. ----------------------------+--------+-------+-------+-------+-------+-------+-------+-------+-------+-------+-------+------- Vertical maximum length | | | | | | | | | | | | of head | 0.264 | 0.215 | 0.222 | 0.212 | 0.236 | 0.222 | 0.234 | 0.229 | 0.233 | 0.240 | 0.221 | 0.220 Bizygomatic breadth | 0.1415 | 0.130 | 0.131 | 0.137 | 0.138 | 0.130 | 0.132 | 0.125 | 0.129 | 0.130 | 0.123 | 0.131 Maximum breadth of | | | | | | | | | | | | forehead | 0.145 | | | | | | | | | | | Minimum breadth of forehead | | | | | | | | | | | | at lower part of | | | | | | | | | | | | temples | 0.130 | 0.133 | 0.124 | 0.131 | 0.126 | 0.126 | 0.136 | 0.131 | 0.127 | 0.128 | 0.130 | 0.131 Maximum length of cranium | | | | | | | | | | | | (from forehead to | | | | | | | | | | | | back of head) | 0.199 | 0.215 | 0.193 | 0.181 | 0.183 | 0.173 | 0.183 | -- | 0.199 | 0.192 | 0.184 | 0.185 Breadth of skull one inch | | | | | | | | | | | | above ear | 0.1945 | | | | | | | | | | | Maximum breadth of | | | | | | | | | | | | lower jaw | 0.132 | 0.132 | 0.123 | -- | 0.117 | 0.121 | 0.124 | 0.116 | 0.109 | 0.117 | 0.110 | 0.125 Length of nose | 0.064 | 0.060 | 0.050 | 0.052 | 0.058 | 0.052 | 0.055 | 0.057 | 0.062 | 0.053 | 0.056 | 0.060 Breadth of nose at nostrils | 0.0375 | 0.043 | 0.037 | 0.041 | 0.035 | 0.045 | 0.037 | 0.037 | 0.037 | 0.043 | 0.037 | 0.039 Distance between eyes | 0.033 | 0.032 | 0.034 | 0.030 | 0.031 | 0.033 | 0.032 | 0.034 | 0.028 | 0.033 | 0.035 | 0.031 Length of ear | 0.066 | 0.055 | 0.052 | 0.056 | 0.074 | 0.063 | 0.072 | 0.060 | 0.065 | 0.062 | 0.060 | 0.063 Length of mouth | 0.057 | 0.065 | 0.050 | 0.050 | 0.056 | 0.055 | 0.050 | -- | 0.052 | 0.057 | -- | 0.055 Length of lower jaw from | | | | | | | | | | | | ear to centre of chin | 0.1365 | | | | | | | | | | | Breadth of upper lip | 0.025 | 0.023 | 0.021 | 0.017 | 0.023 | 0.020 | 0.027 | 0.024 | 0.022 | 0.024 | 0.021 | 0.020 Breadth of lower lip | 0.020 | | | | | | | | | | | ----------------------------+--------+-------+-------+-------+-------+-------+-------+-------+-------+-------+-------+-------
N.B.--For further particulars see "The Gems of the East," by A. H. Savage Landor.
When twins were born one was killed or else left to die in the sun, as they believed that the other could not live if both were left alive. Murder for them, in that instance, was a question of humanity.
The Bororos had a perfect horror of natural death. They were terrified at the sight of a person dying. Therefore when one of their people was about to expire they covered him up and placed him out of sight. If he or she under those circumstances delayed in departing this life, the departure was hastened by suffocation or strangulation. The Bororos were too restless, and could not wait too long for anything.
They were easily suggestionized. Many of them would make excellent subjects for hypnotic experiments. The women particularly were extraordinarily sensitive to animal magnetism. They were much given to hysterical displays. One of the reasons which was given me for hastening the death of moribund Bororos was a curious superstition that the sight of a dying person would cause the death of women, particularly if the dying person happened to look in the direction of one woman present. The women believed this so firmly that occasionally--the Bororos asserted--women actually became ill and died when they saw a dead person. This, no doubt, may have occurred merely by suggestion. Women were never allowed, under ordinary circumstances, to see dead people.
When dancing the Bororos sprang on one foot and then on the other, always hopping about in a circle.
Abnormalities and deformities were frequently noticeable among them, such as hare-lip, supernumerary toes and fingers, and hypertrophy of the limbs. Abnormalities of the genitals were general owing to tribal customs.
One of the evil spirits most feared by the Bororos was called aroi koddo--or "soul that falls." It was a spirit that came to earth solely for the purpose of punishing the Bororos. They said that this spirit was an extremely noisy one and its approach was announced by terrifying sounds.
The Bororos were frightened of comets and had about them superstitions similar to those of Europeans--that is to say, that their appearance caused illness, misfortune and death. Solar and lunar eclipses, the Bororos stated, were merely the result of anger on the part of evil spirits. "The sun or moon were making faces because they were angry," was their highly astronomical explanation of the phenomenon.
The Bororos had a firm belief that some of their ancestors lived in the sun, others in the moon; and they said the ancestors caused the sun to make faces when angry. In the sun also lived the head of all the barihs, or medicine-men, the intermediary between humans and spirits; whereas in the moon dwelt only those who could invoke the souls of the ancestors. The barih was only capable of communicating with a barih's ancestors.
XVII. The River Das Garças--Majestic Scenery
I WENT to call on the Salesian Fathers. Between my camp and the river Das Garças, on the right bank of which the colony stood, there was a great dome of red volcanic rock with many loose boulders such as we had seen for the last three days of our journey. The river was swift and deep. The colony was on the opposite side of the water. We shouted until an Indian appeared and took us across in a rickety canoe belonging to the friars, which he paddled with the stalk of a palm-leaf.
The Salesians were remarkable people, and should be an example to many other missionaries. Wherever they went they did not trouble much about making converts. They taught the natives instead how to work the soil and how to make all kinds of articles which might or might not be useful to them as they became more civilized. The chief effort of the monks was to teach the natives agriculture, from which--charity always begins at home--the friars themselves were naturally the first to reap the benefit. At the same time the natives learned, and earned, and were made happy. They improved their mode of living and were, with great softness and patience, not only drawn nearer to Catholicism but towards white people altogether. The Salesians had established on the Rio das Garças--an enchanting spot--a beautiful farm on which they grew quantities of Indian corn, sugar-cane, wheat, and all kinds of vegetables.
Although I am not a Roman Catholic, the Salesians received me very politely and took the greatest delight in showing me all over the Mission. It was interesting to note that everybody was working hard. The Father Superior himself was busy shaping a big table from a huge plank of hard wood, and nothing could induce him to leave his sweating work--not even to go and have his meals. Father Colli Agostino was detailed to go round and explain everything to me.
The Salesians had no trouble with the Indians, whom they found quite gentle and docile. But they could never be relied upon. One day the entire tribe would come and help to work the soil with great vigour; the next day they would all disappear from the neighbourhood and no one knew where they had gone--sometimes for weeks. They invariably came back, sooner or later, and, what was more, they were always welcomed back.
Converting them to Christianity was a different matter. The Salesians had made little headway in that direction.
"We are patient people," said Father Colli; "it will come in time. Already the Bororos are beginning to join us in the church, where many enjoy singing with us. They are intelligent and soon learn to sing."
I purchased, at almost prohibitive prices, many things from the Salesians, principally food for my animals and men. Of course, in buying one had to realize where we were, which made all the difference in the price. I was glad to pay them the money and obtain the commodities.
The Salesians told me that while digging to make the foundations for one of their buildings they had found--only 3 ft. under ground--in the sandy soil several earthen pots of great antiquity, in excellent preservation, as well as a fireplace with ashes and charcoal. The sand had evidently accumulated in the valley below there owing to wind and not to water. The frail pottery, imperfectly baked, would have crumbled away quickly in moisture.
On May 20th (min. 58° Fahr., max. 85°) we were again off toward the west, travelling over great domes of red lava, the higher portions of which were covered by layers of ashes and red sand. We were at an elevation of 1,480 ft. in the deep basin of the Rio Barreiros and Rio das Garças, but we soon went over three consecutive ridges, 1,550 ft. above the sea level, with delicious campos and a bosquet of trees here and there. In the arc of a circle extending from north-west to south-west we had in front of us a beautiful view. Previous to reaching the third ridge, that day, we also had behind us a wonderful panorama of the great plateau described in a previous chapter.
On travelling over a fourth elevation we found ourselves upon another immense dome of red volcanic rock, blackened on the surface, as if by fire, and with the peculiar striations we had noticed once or twice before. In this case there were cross striations as well, the direction of one set of parallel marks being from north-west to south-east, of the other set north-east to south-west, thus forming lozenges, each about 60 cm. across. All those lozenges were so regularly cut that the ensemble gave the appearance of a well-made pavement. Then I noticed some peculiar great cavities in the rock, like those formed by glacial action. In fact, on a superficial examination, it seemed almost as if that region had first gone through a period of great revolution while in a state of semi-liquefaction owing to intense heat from fire, after which a sudden and intense cooling had taken place and covered the country perhaps even with ice. Whether the immense deposits of ashes and sand had been formed before or after the glacial period--if any such period ever existed in that particular region--could be merely a matter of speculation. In many places the sand, ashes, and red earth had almost consolidated into easily friable rock.
Where the actual rock was not exposed we had campos, campos, campos, stretching as far as the eye could see. Far from being monotonous, one had--or at least I had--a delightful sensation in riding across those interminable prairies of beautiful green. One could breathe the pure air with fully expanded lungs, and in that silent, reposeful solitude one felt almost as if the whole world belonged to one. We were not much worried by insects on those great open places; it was only on getting near patches of vegetation and near streams that we suffered from the attacks of those pests.
We saw few trees--all stunted and weak--as the padding of earth over the rocky under-strata did not permit their roots to go deep down, and therefore they grew up with difficulty and anæmic.
Twelve kilometres from the Rio Barreiros we came to a stream (elev. 1,400 ft.). On our left, rising above the inclined campos, was a triple undulation much higher than its neighbours. To the west stood two twin, well-rounded mounds, that my men named at once "the woman's breasts," which they much resembled.
We were still marching on deep deposits of ashes, and, higher, upon semi-hardened sandstone. On the northern side the twin hills had a different shape. They ended in a sharply pointed spur.
After going over an ochre-coloured sandy region (elev. 1,530 ft. above the sea level) we were again on magnificent undulating campos, dotted here and there with dark green shrubs and bosquets to the north, north-west, and north-east.
Beyond, to the north-east, loomed again in the far distance our mysterious plateau, of a pure cobalt blue where in shadow. As one ran one's eye along its sky-line it was almost flat for more than half its length, then came a slight dip, followed by a terraced dome. Then again a straight line followed by a slightly higher and more undulating sky-line with three steps in it, and a conical end at its eastern terminus. The most easterly point of all--the highest--resembled a castle with vertical sides. But of this we have already spoken, at the terminal point of the great divided range we had passed some days previously. The vertical cliffs of the plateau, where lighted by the sun, were of a brilliant red colour.
As we approached the twin hills they appeared to be the remains of an ancient crater. They formed, in fact, a crescent with a broken rocky lower section--completing the circle of the crater. I had no time to go and examine carefully, as it would have meant a deviation from my route, but that is how it appeared to me. There were, in fact, extra deep deposits of volcanic ashes at the foot of the descent before we arrived at the river Agua Emeindada, where we made our camp that night, 15 kil. from the Rio Barreiros.
My men went after game that night. Alcides killed a veado (deer), and we all enjoyed the fresh meat for dinner.
The clouds (cirro-stratus) were, during the entire day, in horizontal lines and slight globular accumulations, the latter in a row and, taken en masse, giving also the impression of lines just above the horizon to the west. At sunset we once more saw the glorious effect of the radiation from the west, only instead of being straight lines there were, that time, feathery filaments which rose in graceful curves overhead, like so many immense ostrich feathers. They joined again in a common centre to the east.
My men were complaining all the time of the intense cold at night, and made me feel almost as if I had been responsible for it. They grumbled perpetually. During the early hours of the morning their moans were incessant. They never ceased crying, as hysterical young girls might do, but as one would not expect of men. Some of them had toothache--and no wonder, when one looked at their terrible teeth and the way they ate. They devoured pounds of sugar every day--our supply, which should have lasted a year or more, having already almost been exhausted. It was impossible for me alone, with all the astronomical, geological, botanical, geographical, meteorological, photographic, anthropometric, and artistic work--not to mention the writing-up of my copious daily notes--also to keep a constant watch on the supplies. I had handed over that responsibility to Alcides. Unfortunately, he was the greediest of the lot. Every time I warned him not to be so wasteful, as we should find ourselves dying of starvation, he and the others made me feel that I was meanness itself, and that I was only doing it to save money.
I never objected to their eating as much as they could--as I have always made it a point on all my expeditions to feed my men on the best food procurable, and give them as much as they could possibly devour. But it pained me to see quantities of good food thrown away daily, as I knew what it would mean to us later on.
"We are Brazilians," said they, "and like plenty to eat. When there is no more we will go without food. You do not know Brazilians, but Brazilians can go thirty or forty days without anything to eat!"
"All right," said I--"we shall see."
Forty minutes--and perhaps not so long--had been, so far, the longest time I had seen them cease munching something or other. Not satisfied with the lavish food they were supplied with--heaps of it were always thrown to the dogs, after they had positively gorged themselves--yet they would pick up anything on the way: a wild fruit, a scented leaf of a tree, a nut of some kind or other, a palmito, a chunk of tobacco--all was inserted in the mouth. It was fortunate that we took enough exercise, or surely they would have all perished of indigestion. In my entire experience I have never seen men eat larger quantities of food and more recklessly than my Brazilian followers did. In the morning they were almost paralyzed with rheumatism and internal pains all over the body. Frequently those pains inside were accentuated by the experiments they made in eating all kinds of fruit, some of which was poisonous. Many a time on our march did we have to halt because one man or another was suddenly taken violently ill. My remedy on those occasions was to shove down their throats the end of a leather strap, which caused immediate vomiting; then when we were in camp I gave them a powerful dose of castor oil. After a few hours they recovered enough to go on.
On May 21st the minimum temperature of the atmosphere was 55° Fahr., the maximum 79°, the elevation 1,250 ft. at the stream Agua Emeindata. My men declared again they were half-frozen during the night and would not go on with me, as it was getting colder all the time and they would certainly die. When I told them that it was not cold at all--on the contrary, I considered that temperature quite high--they would not believe me.
With the temperature in the sun during the day at 98°, most of the aches of the men disappeared, and I had little trouble with them until after sunset, when there was generally a considerable drop in the temperature.
We went on. We had a volcanic mountain to the left of us--half the crater of a volcano formed of red lava and friable red-baked rock. In the northern and central part of the mountain were masses of lava which had been shot out of the mouth of the volcano and had solidified into all kinds of fantastic forms, some sharply pointed, some red, others black. On the east side of the crater was a dome covered with earth with an underlying flow of lava. Then could be observed a circular group of huge rocks, pear-shaped, with sharp points upward. While the volcano was active these rocks had evidently stood on the rim of the then cylindrical crater. The mountain behind those rocks was formed by high accumulations of red volcanic sand, which in time had gradually, by the action of rain and sun, consolidated into soft rock.
The plateau extending northward, which was disclosed in all its entirety before me from the elevation of 1,600 ft. which we had reached, also seemed to possess an extinct crater shaped like a crescent with steep slopes and two rounded promontories on its side.
The sky that day was partly covered by transparent feathery clouds and by dense mist near the horizon line to the east, but was quite clear to the west. As usual, that evening we were again treated to fairly handsome radiating white lines from the sun reaching half way up the sky vault, but this time they were flimsy and not to be compared to the magnificent displays we had observed before.
Our animals still sank in ochre-coloured sand, or stumbled on conglomerate rocks of spattered lava pellets embedded in sandstone. Capping the higher undulations we again found deposits of ashes.
We travelled for long distances on a ridge at an elevation of 1,650 ft. over a thick layer of sand and ashes mixed. Then campos spread before us, and upon them here and there grew stunted vegetation, the trees seldom reaching a greater height than 15 ft.
From our last high point of vantage the crater with fantastic rocks and its continuation we had observed appeared to form a great basin. A subsidiary vent was also noticeable. Farther on our march we found other immense deposits of grey ashes and sand alternately--one great stretch particularly, at an elevation of 1,600 ft. Water at that spot filtered through from underneath and rendered the slope a grassy meadow of the most refreshing green. We were rising all the time, first going north-west, then due north. At noon we had reached the highest point.
From the high point on which we were (1,920 ft.) we obtained a strange view to the west. Above the straight line of the plateau before us rose in the distance a pyramidal, steep-sided, sharply-pointed peak, standing in solitary grandeur upon that elevated plain. Why did it stand there alone? was the question one asked oneself--a question one had to ask oneself frequently as we proceeded farther and farther on our journey. We often came upon mountains standing alone, either on the top of table-lands or in the middle of extensive plains. Their presence seemed at first unaccountable.
Again as we journeyed onward the mules' hoofs were injured by treading over large expanses of lava pellets and sharp-edged, cutting, baked fragments of black rock, myriads of which also lay embedded in reddish half-formed rock or buried in layers of yellowish-red earth.
To the north was a majestic panorama of the most delicate tones of blue and green, with almost over-powering sweeping lines hardly interrupted by a slight indentation or a prominence rising above the sky-line. Only to the north-west in the middle distance was there the gentle undulating line of magnificent campos--most regular in its curves, which spread in a crescent toward the west. The line was interrupted somewhat abruptly by a higher and irregular three-terraced mass, but soon resumed its sweeping and regularly curved undulations beyond. This great crescent almost described a semicircle around the smaller undulations over which we were travelling.
We descended to 1,750 ft. On facing west we had curious scenery on our left (south). A huge basin had sunk in--evidently by a sudden subsidence which had left on its northern side high vertical cliffs supporting the hill-range that remained standing. The undulating centre and sides of the immense depression formed beautiful campos with an occasional bosquet of forest on the top of hills, and also on the lowest points of the undulations. Those bosquets were few and far apart, only to be found where moisture was plentiful. The remains of a high, flat plateau, which had escaped while the rest of the country had subsided, loomed alone in the distance.
One of the central hills was crowned by great black volcanic boulders of the same rock which was visible at the southern edge of this great basin, bounded by vertical cliffs--all of the same composition.
Directly south-west the evenness of the sky-line was again interrupted by two mountains--flat-topped, one not unlike the gabled roof of a house, the other like a cylindrical tower on the top of a high conical hill. We again rose to an elevation of 1,950 ft., still travelling on the summit of the plateau bordering the deep depression. We were compelled to describe a curve in our route, and had reached a height of 2,000 ft. We perceived to the north-east and east a long, uninterrupted--almost flat--sky-line. We had described a sweeping curve right round the irregular edge of the undulating plateau. We could now look back upon the southern aspect of the vertical black and brown rocky cliff, on the summit of which we had been travelling. The rocky cliffs were particularly precipitous and picturesque in the western portion. Interminable campos were still before us.
I occasionally picked up interesting plants and flowers for my botanical collection. Innumerable in this region were the plants with medicinal properties. The sentori (centaurea) for instance--plentiful there, with its sweetly pretty mauve flower--when boiled in water gave a bitter decoction good for fever.
We came upon a patch of landir or landirana trees, with luxuriant dark green foliage. They grew near the water, and were by far the tallest and handsomest, cleanest-looking trees I had so far seen in Matto Grosso. They attained a great height, with extraordinarily dense foliage, especially at the summit, but also lower down at the sides. Then burity palms were fairly abundant wherever one met landir trees in groups or tufts. We were now travelling at an elevation of 2,050 ft., then soon after at 2,100 ft. above the sea level. There was merely stunted vegetation growing upon the red earth and sand.
On descending from that high point we came upon extraordinary scenery. To our right (north) was another concave depression with a further subsidence in its central part. Due west and north-west, from the spot where we first observed the scene, appeared four curious hemispherical domes forming a quadrangle with three less important ones beyond. In the south-easterly portion of the depression was a great rocky mass, while due north another, and higher, conical mount, much higher than all the others, could be observed.
In the eastern part of the depression a wide circle of big volcanic boulders--undoubtedly an extinct crater--was to be seen, with huge masses of spattered yellow lava in large blocks as well as ferruginous rock. That great depression--taken in its entirety--was subdivided into three distinct terraces, counting as third the summit of the plateau. A mighty, deep, impressive chasm, smothered in vegetation, could be observed within the central crater--in the north-east side of the circle.
The summit of the plateau, varying in elevation from 2,000 ft. to 2,100 ft., on which we were travelling was entirely covered by sand and grey ashes.
The valley in the depression extended in lovely campos from south-west to north-east--in fact, as far as the giant table-land which stood majestic in the distance.
The scene, as we stood on the edge of the plateau, was impressive in its grandeur, in its silence. In the morning the sky was almost entirely covered with transparent clouds in scales like a fish. In the afternoon the sky above changed into horizontal layers of globular clouds, which stood as still as death. Leaden black globular accumulations covered one-third of the sky vault, great unshapen masses overhead rendering the air heavy.
We marched all that day on a deep layer of ashes. On descending from the plateau we had on our left great clean campos and plentiful burity palms in a slight depression where moisture filtered through. As the caravan was moving along gaily, a veado (deer) gracefully leapt in front and, turning its head back two or three times to look at us, ran before us. Filippe, the negro, in his excitement, gave wild yells which set the mules stampeding, while green parrots in couples, scared at the sudden disturbance, flew overhead, adding piercing shrieks to the rapid tinkling of the mules' bells, the rattling of the baggage on the pack-saddles, and the shouts of the men trying to stop the excited mules. All those sudden noises mingled together were quite a change for us, accustomed to a constant deathly silence.
Before us on the W.N.W.--as we still sank in grey ashes--were two conical hillocks. In the distance, to the west, two small flat-topped plateaux rose above the sky-line, and also two hills shaped not unlike the backs of two whales. On our left we had an immense crack or fissure extending from north-east to south-west between the hill-range on which we travelled and another on the south--both showing huge domes of eruptive rock, apparently extensive flows of red lava subsequently blackened on the surface by weathering. On the opposite side to ours the rock was exposed all along the fissure for a great height, except the surface padding on the summit, where beautiful fresh green grass was in contrast to the deep tones of the rock. On our side we were still struggling in ashes and sand, with striated and much indented boulders of lava showing through.
We found many sicupira nuts, of a small, flat and fat oval shape, and a yellow-ochre colour. The shell contained many tiny cells or chambers--just like the section of a beehive. Each chamber was full of a bitter oil, said to cure almost any complaint known.
On May 22nd I took observations with the hypsometrical apparatus in order to obtain the correct elevation, and also as a check to the several aneroids I was using for differential altitudes. Water boiled at a temperature of 210° with a temperature of the atmosphere of 70° Fahr. This would make the elevation at that spot 1,490 ft. above the sea level. The aneroids registered 1,480 ft.
We came upon two strange rocks, one resembling the head and neck of a much-eroded Sphinx--of natural formation--blackened, knobby, and with deep grooves; the other not unlike a giant mushroom. The sphinx-like rock stood upon a pedestal also of rock in several strata. The head was resting on a stratum 1 ft. thick, of a brilliant red, and at a slight dip. Under it was a white stratum much cracked, after which came a stratum of white and red blending into each other. This stratum, 2 ft. thick, showed the white more diffused in the upper part than the lower. The lowest stratum of all exposed was of a deep red.
Near this stood erect another columnar rock of a similar shape, the head and base entirely of red rock. It was eroded on the north-west side to such an extent that it was almost concave in the lower part. This rock, too, showed great cracks and a slight dip north-west in the strata. Vertical fissures were noticeable, and seemed caused by concussion.
A third rock--flat, with a convex bottom--stood as if on a pivot on the angular point of a pyramidal larger rock, this larger rock in its turn resting over a huge base. There was no mistake as to how those two rocks had got there. They had fallen from above, one on the top of the other. A proof of this lay in the fact that they had arrived with such force that the base had split at the point of contact. As there was no hill above or near those rocks, there was little doubt that they had been flung there by volcanic action.
We were in a region of extraordinary interest and surprises. In the plain which extended before us there stood two conical hills in the far north-west, and three other hills, dome-like, each isolated, but in a most perfect alignment with the others, towards the east. Close to us were giant domes of rock, the surface of which formed marvellous geometrical designs of such regularity that had they been on a smaller scale one might have suspected them of being the work of human beings; but they were not, as we shall see presently.