South America; a geography reader

Front matter

Palm Avenue, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

LANDS AND PEOPLES SERIES

SOUTH AMERICA

Chapter I People And The Land They Conquered

The "Conquistadores " or Conquerors. In one of the

stories of The Arabian Nights Sindbad of the Sea landed at the "City of Apes," so called because the tall coconut trees along the shore and the caves in the mountains were inhabited by great numbers of these terrifying beasts. The houses of the city were built overlooking the water with doors that opened to the sea, and every evening for fear of the apes the people embarked in boats to return at daylight. If a man stayed behind for the night the apes came down from the trees and the mountains, entered his house, and killed him. During the day the apes threw coconuts at the people, and these were carefully gathered both for food and to exchange for merchandise brought in ships from other lands.

Like all the other stories in The Arabian Nights, the story of the City of Apes was 'told merely to entertain people, though at the same time it taught them that there were such things in the world as apes, and coconuts, and trade.

More than a hundred and fifty years ago a number of books on geography were written full of equally wonderful tales of strange lands and people, all supposed to be true. Indeed, these tales were read even by grown people with very much the same interest that children now read fairy stories. Each chapter ended with an account of the "rarities" or "curiosities" of some country, in which were told the wildest tales that travelers could invent. The people of Russia were said to wear clothes made from the woolly skin of a melon ; the Amazon Basin was inhabited by a race of women of great size whose heads were placed not above their shoulders but between them; and in other parts of South America there lived beasts having the body of a man, the head of a lion, and the face of an ape. One of the most incredible ' ' wonders ' ' in these books was that of El Dorado, a tale that was believed for several hundred years after the discovery of America, and on account of which men actually left their homes by thousands to fight under foreign skies

There are many contradictory accounts of the beginning of the story of El Dorado. Perhaps the most reliable among these is one which relates that the story was first brought to the Spanish conquerors by an Indian in Ecuador. Knowing that love for gold was the ruling passion of the Spaniards, he told them that in the remote interior there was said to be a "Man of Gold." About the Indian who brought the tale the Spanish soldiers came crowding and questioning. "Was the place at a great distance?" "How could one get there?" "Would he show them the way?" No one thought to ask, "Is the tale true?" because those were the days of marvelous discoveries and bold adventures. Not only were men having amazing experiences — they were always expecting greater marvels than any that had come to pass and were eager to believe the wildest fancies. So when they heard of El Dorado their imaginations played with the story until they thought the Indian had told them that El Dorado was a great city filled with gold palaces, and that it was inhabited by men and women dressed in gold cloth, and, with gold spoons, eating food cooked in golden kettles.

Though the story was not true it was long believed, like similar stories about the fountain of youth and King Solomon's mines, and the belief drew thousands of adventurers into the wilderness in search of sudden wealth. The explorers and the conquerors of that period traveled up and down many rivers, crossed lofty mountains, and upon their return published maps and notes which for a long time furnished people with the only information they could get about the great interior of South America. Perhaps without the story of El Dorado and the search for it the first explorations of the vast interior of the Amazon Basin might have been delayed for a hundred years. In the footsteps of the explorers, and sometimes even in their company, went missionaries of the church, baptizing the natives, christening the children, and erecting missions where they might teach the Indians "for the glory of the cross."

The True El Dorado. With the " conquistadores" and the missionaries, and in greater numbers after them, came farmers and herdsmen, whose object was not to search for gold or silver but to make homes in a new country. Some of them, sailing south from Panama, settled in the rich valleys of Peru, others settled in central Chile and on the shores of the La Plata estuary, and there were some for whom the unknown Andes offered no terrors and who founded trading posts and homes in the remotest mountain valleys and even in the forests of the great Amazon lowland. While the greater number .of the newcomers were men, there were also a few women and children who faced dangers and hardships that appalled the strongest. These people were the real conquerors of South America. On the pampas of the Argentine, the plains and valleys of Venezuela, and in the mountain basins and valleys of Peru and Chile they discovered an El Dorado far richer than any of which the early explorers had dreamed, for the soil is

Pig. t . Fertile irrigated garden farms near Lima, Peru.

Almost every foot of ground is used. The water is

obtained from the Rimac River

the enduring wealth of the land (Figs, i and 2). Little did they think that their descendants would live to see new nations arise, great herds feeding upon once empty grasslands, and the crowded peoples of western Europe dependent for at least a part of their food supply upon the grain fields and pastures that their explorations had made known.

The Wars of Emancipation. For several hundred years the settlers remained loyal to the monarchs of Spain, paying taxes and on the whole obeying the laws, whether these were good or bad. When so-called Spanish rule came to be recognized as misrule, and the laws and taxes of Spain became too irksome, the settlers began what are known as the "Wars of Emancipation." Each group of settlers had its own particular grievance against Spain, and each was separated from its neighbors by miles of wild, unsettled country. The settlements about Caracas and the seaport La Guaira joined with those at Valencia, and, after a long, heroic campaign, defeated the armies of Spain and founded the republic of Venezuela. About the same time there was fighting in Peru and in Chile; and on the shores of the Rio de la Plata the settlers were planning the overthrow of Spain and the

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Fig. 2. Picking cotton with Chinese labor on irrigated land

in a fertile valley at the foot of the A ndes,

Uitarte, Peru establishment of a confederation that has since grown to be the Argentine Republic. Gradually each group became independent, and republics were formed with governments modeled after that of the United States.

The Character of the People. Although the white people of South America are for the most part descendants of Spaniards and Portuguese they are by no means alike in character. Some are children of the wide pampas or grasslands of the Argentine; others live a secluded life in the mountain fastnesses of the Andes; in the rubber forests of the wet Amazon lowlands are isolated settlements rarely visited by white men even to-day; while in the smiling valleys of central Chile, where the climate is temperate, there live the energetic Chileans.

The differences between these various groups of people in many ways remind us strikingly of similar differences among plants and animals and suggest that people, like plants and animals, are to some extent what their surroundings make them. On the wet Orinoco lowlands, when the river floods the country for miles the people have to live in the second stories of their houses, or in the trees like some species of frogs. The bronzed and weather-beaten faces of the desert people remind us of the cactus with its thorns and hard exterior; the tempests of the pampas and the fleet guanaco are scarcely more wild than the gauckos, a class of men in some respects like the picturesque cowboys of our western plains.

Just as we can tell a Scotchman from an Irishman or a Persian from an Armenian, so we can tell a Peruvian from a Chilean or a Colombian from a Brazilian. Not only are there differences of speech from place to place but also slightly different customs which appear to have grown out of the kind of place in which the people have settled as well as the province in Spain or Portugal om which they came. With « the growth of separate republics and national spirit these differences have become greater. The native of Valparaiso no longer says with the man from Quito or Lima, "I am a Spaniard," but "I am a Chilean." Men who herd cattle are likely to be different from men who hoe gardens or gather rubber on great rivers. In some countries real statesmen have been developed, in others the government has been run by coarse politicians who have robbed the people; one country has enjoyed a stable government because the people are proud of their flag and teach their children loyalty to rulers; another country has on the average a new revolution every eighteen months!

To one who has enjoyed the hospitality of a shepherd's hut in the mountains, or lived for weeks in the saddle riding through the grassy plains of the Argentine, or walked for days in and out of the houses of the coffee pickers in the state of Sao Paulo, Brazil, even the smaller differences among the people of South America appear as interesting as the larger differences that give each nation distinction.

The Anglo-Saxon race to which we belong is known in the world for its force of character, its habit of speaking directly to the point, and, to some, for its lack of polite manners. The Latin peoples — among them the Italians and the Spaniards — think Anglo-Saxons are rather rude and are inclined to boast that even if Latin peoples are not so successful in making vast sums of money they are at least polite in making a little money.

A man from Boston once visited a schoolroom in Spain and heard the teacher tell the children that Americans are very cruel. "Just think," she said, "American boys have been known to fight with their fists, like animals, until their noses became bloody." Upon his return the traveler happened to step into a schoolroom in Boston and there heard a teacher say: "The Spaniards are a cruel and bloodthirsty people. Every Sunday they gather around a great arena and watch bullfights at which bulls are cruelly killed, horses gored, and men trampled by infuriated beasts." The Spaniards are no more cruel than we, some of them are much more courteous, and many of them are also very energetic and successful. Perhaps it would be well if each race gained the best qualities of the other. It certainly would do no one harm to be as polite as a Spaniard.

The stranger is everywhere made to feel at home by the charming phrase, "Please consider my house your own," whether the host lives in a hut or a palace. From those who live in the larger cities the phrase carries good will rather than a real invitation to move your baggage into the best room. From the owner of a rich hacienda (plantation) or from the humble shepherd it carries a literal meaning. A traveler once stopped at a Bolivian hut on the edge of the Amazon Basin. He had come from the cool highlands in a single day and was too tired to do more than eat some soup and fried yuca and to accept the owner's invitation to sleep in the dining room, an invitation which ended with the usual phrase — "because it is your house, you know." But the close air of the stuffy little room, the pest of flies and mosquitoes, and the cackling of the startled hens roosting over the table on which the traveler had spread his bed, made sleep impossible, so the next day he pitched his tent near the bank of a river some distance from the hut. At this the owner was very angry. It appeared to him as if his invitation had been scorned, and only after long explanation could he be made to see that the soft sand bar, covered with driftwood and well

Plate I. Mean annual rainfall

Febnao do (^SWbonba I.

C. Sao'Roqua

C. Branco

Plate III. Mild bells supplied with fresh water, was an ideal camp site for people accustomed to sleep in the open. To offer to pay a hacendado for a night's lodging is to break a friendship which on his part began when he invited you to rest yourself and your beasts under his roof.

Harbors and Products. The countries of South America for the most part enjoy easy access to the long coast and to the world's trade routes. A position in the remote interior would mean a degree of isolation that would prevent growth because products would have to be shipped down long winding rivers or across lofty mountains. Only Paraguay and Bolivia are without a seacoast, though Paraguay has a river channel which brings steamers to the gates of the country. Bolivia, on the other hand, depends upon railways across Chile and Peru, having lost all of her maritime territory to Chile during the war of 1879-1883.

Like so many other conditions in South America, this is not well known to many of the people of other continents. Some years ago a European nation had trouble with Bolivia and one of the European statesmen is said to have remarked that if Bolivia did not come to terms it would be necessary to send a battleship over to South America and bombard La Paz, the capital of Bolivia. In order to bombard the city the guns of that battleship would have had to shoot about, four hundred miles ! Of course the statesman felt very much ashamed when he was told that La Paz was so far from the sea, and we may be sure that before he talked any more about Bolivia he opened an atlas and studied the geography of South America.

Since nearly all the countries of South America border the sea, a trip around the continent gives the traveler some idea of the various people and their products.

io SOUTH AMERICA: A GEOGRAPHY READER

Along the coast are the important harbors which serve as gateways to the great interior spaces. At Para is the rubber hunter; the man who gathers turtles' eggs for a living ; the German merchant who trades manufactured goods for crude rubber. At Bahia the warehouses contain cacao, tobacco, and sugar. At Santos the air is loaded with the odor of coffee, and ships from all the coffee-drinking countries of the world crowd the docks. The grain boats that come down the Parana from Rosario, as well as the steamers at the docks of Buenos Aires, tell

Fig. 3. A railway line up the face of the steep three-lhousandfoot bluff at Caleta Buena, northern Chile. Nitrate of soda is the chief export

PEOPLE AND THE LAND THEY CONQUERED n us of the extensive farms and ranches and the wide spaces of the pampas of the Argentine, while the boats from the southern coast carry great cargoes of wool brought to Gal- / legos and Porto Madryn by the lonely sheep herders of the bleak gravel plains of Patagonia.

Nowhere in South America is there a more peculiar coast than in northern Chile, where the steep cliffs rising several thousand feet

Fig. 4.

The rough surface of a salt plain in the desert of northern Chile above the sea are bare from top to bottom and seem to lead up to a desert quite unfit for man (Fig. 3). But beyond those great cliffs is a pampa, or plain, which contains nitrate, a substance so valuable and so rare that ships from almost every country in the world lie in near-by ports to receive cargoes of it. This nitrate is to be used in fertilizers, gunpowder, and other chemicals in both Europe and North America (Fig. 4)- The cotton and sugar of Peru (Figs. 1 and 2) are carried to northern countries in large quantities, and in Ecuador there are produced every year thousands of pounds of cacao, from which some of our chocolate and cocoa is made (Fig. 5).

When a man buys a rubber coat he is buying in part the labor of a savage who gathered sap from a rubber tree, smoked it over a fire of palm nuts, and carried it down-

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Fig. 5. Gathering cacao pods from which the chocolate and

cocoa of commerce are produced, La Clementine

plantation, Ecuador

stream in a dugout canoe; when we drink coffee we are drinking a product of the red soil and brilliant sunshine of Sao Paulo, Brazil; the shoes on our feet may have been made from the hide of an Argentine steer; the big guns of our battleships, as well as the firecrackers used in our celebrations, may be charged with powder containing nitrate from Chile; and the chocolate for the frosting on our cake once grew as the seed of the cacao tree in cucumber-shaped pods and was gathered and dried by some swarthy, barefooted native in "the land of the Equator."

Chapter II The Southernmost People In The World

The Home of the Yaghan Indians. At the extreme end of the group of islands that fringe the southern end of South America live the Yaghan Indians, ,the remnants of a folk in many respects unique among the savage people of the earth. Some idea of the kind of place which they inhabit may be gained from the map (Plate IV) , which shows that the Yaghans live in latitude fifty-five degrees to fifty-six degrees south, or about as far south of the equator as Sitka, Alaska, is north.

Like the Eskimo, the Yaghan is a child of nature. His life is a constant fight for food, of which there is little enough in a land so wet and cold. Like the "roaring forties," this is a region where the west winds sweep over land and sea. Steep mountains rise abruptly from the water's edge, and about their peaks storm clouds hover almost constantly. At least three hundred days of the year are cloudy. A dull sky, rain-swept mountain sides, the wind a gale, the sea beating the shores of the outer islands furiously, snow- and ice-crowned mountain tops, — these are almost constant elements of the scenery in this land of the southernmost people in the world.

The great naturalist, Darwin, as a young man made a very important study of the region and wrote the first clear description of the people. The following quotation is from his well-known book, The Voyage of the Beagle.

" The lofty mountains boldly rise to a height of between three and four thousand feet. They are covered by a wide mantle of perpetual snow, and numerous cascades pour their waters through the woods, into the narrow

THE SOUTHERNMOST PEOPLE IN THE WORLD 15

channel below. In many parts, magnificent glaciers extend from the mountain side to the water's edge. It is scarcely possible to imagine anything more beautiful than the beryl-like blue of these glaciers, and especially as contrasted with the dead white of the upper expanse of snow. The fragments which had fallen from the glacier into the water were floating away, and the channel (Beagle Channel) with its icebergs presented, for the space of a mile, a miniature likeness of the Polar Sea."

The Yaghans are among the most primitive people on the earth to-day. The leisure and wealth that many of . the people of the temperate zones possess is here unknown. The food supply in any particular place is small, hence the number of people found in any one place is small. From twenty to thirty men and women may live together as a clan, sharing in common the food supply and the danger of securing it. The entire energy of every man, woman, and child is spent in getting food, and this is usually of the poorest kind. If the members of a group are not actually engaged in gathering clams, seals, and fish — their principal diet — they are searching every cove for a favorable place in which food may be found. Often a single family of three or four — mother, father, and children—live apart from the rest in an isolation that appears to us both strange and fearful. The necessity for assistance in case of accident, of protection against an enemy, and the getting of food, is so great that life is more tolerable when a few families live together as a group and have a certain amount of assistance from each other in time of need.

Sea Food and Canoe Fires. Instead of our comfortable houses they have only the roughest shelter of bark and twigs such as an animal might find at nightfall ; instead of having a fixed home they move frequently and abandon one place as soon as a better food supply can be found in another; although they live in a very bleak and cheerless land their clothing is only a piece of sealskin which but partly covers the body and is shifted from one side to the other to correspond with the direction of the wind !

A regular food supply from meal to meal and from week to week is to them unknown. If a dead whale is washed ashore there is a feast; such also is the case if an exceptionally good bank of shells is found upon some little-visited beach. But it often happens that a storm ■arises and lasts for days, confining the canoes to the land. Then if there is no food accumulated, and if the storm is severe enough, the group may be reduced to actual starvation.

Travel by land is so difficult that it is rarely undertaken. Furthermore, these people are children of the sea rather than of the land. They are as much at home in a canoe as they are when walking on the shore. So little attached does it become to any particular home place, that when an Indian family goes out on a voyage it carries along its fire, kept burning upon some earth in the bottom of the canoe, thus assuring means for warmth and cooking when the next landing is made.

The Onas of Tierra del Fuego. Upon Tierra del Fuego are the Onas, a primitive group of people who still lead a savage life such as their fathers led. Once their homes were scattered over the whole island, but since the coming of the European settlers, more than thirty years ago, they have been driven from the plains and are found only in the mountains of the south. The lowlands are now almost completely occupied by the sheep ranches of the white people.

Before the whites came, the Onas depended chiefly upon the guanaco for food and clothing. Like its cousin

THE SOUTHERNMOST PEOPLE IN THE WORLD 17

the llama (Fig. 74), the guanaco appears to be half sheep, half camel, is very swift, and yields a warm, soft skin much used for clothing. But with increase in settlers the guanaco became very scarce. The Onas called the sheep of the settlers ''white guanaco," and found them easier to catch and their flesh tenderer and sweeter than that of the wild animals which had formerly been their main source of food. The guanaco became so scarce that the Onas, probably without thought of wrong, began to kill and eat the sheep that grazed on the land from which they had been driven. So many sheep were thus taken that the whites finally began a cruel war against the Onas, in some cases hiring men to kill them at sight. Some of them were captured and shipped to Dawson Island (latitude 54 S.), where tuberculosis has swept off most of those that were spared from the bullet. Even the blubber of the whale stranded upon the shores is said to have been poisoned so that those Indians who depended upon it for food would be killed.

The Mountain Refuge of the Onas. Were Tierra del Fuego composed wholly of plain doubtless the Onas would have been entirely destroyed by this time. But the southern part is mountainous and stormy and covered in part with dense forests. It is not the kind of country desired by the sheep farmer or ranchman, and here the Onas have made their last stand.

The lower mountain slopes of southern Tierra del Fuego are covered with evergreen beech trees and various shrubs. About two thousand feet above the sea the forests thin out and so bush-like do the trees become that one can step over them. In many places on the lower lands the growth is so rank that one cannot make headway except by cutting a path with an ax. From the twisted trunks hang long festoons of mosses and lichens and the sweet fungus which resembles mucilage and is eaten by the Indians. Soft mosses, carpeting

Fig. 6. Part of the town of Punta Arenas, Strait of Magellan

the ground, hold the water at the surface and turn part of it into impassable bog.

"Among the mosses, and along the wood edges, delicate ferns, yellow violets, orchids, cranberries, compositas, and other plants are found. But perhaps one of the most beautiful shrubs in the world is a naming red honeysucklelike plant. ... As one cruises about the channels its flowers paint on the hillsides broad patches of beautiful red against its darker background of sombre green. The flowers here have practically no odor, but on bright sunny days, which sometimes do occur in this weird, sombre land, make the wood edges and grass lands quite gay in midsummer (December 2 1 st) . " (Furlong.)

The Southernmost City in the World. On the northern shore of the Strait of Magellan is Punta Arenas, a city of fifteen thousand people, which has the distinction of being the southernmost town in the world (Fig. 6). Unlike Africa and Australia, South America extends well

THE SOUTHERNMOST PEOPLE IN THE WORLD 19

toward the Antarctic Circle. Cape Town in South Africa is only as far south of the equator as New Orleans is north ; but Punta Arenas is as far south of the equator as Sitka, Alaska, is north- of it. A map of the ocean trade routes of South America shows how important is the position of this unique town (Plate II). It is on the only water route through the southern Andes. Boats from Europe, Africa, or the east coast of North America desiring to make the west coast of South America have a choice of two routes : either the exposed and stormy route around Cape Horn, where one vessel in ten is lost or disabled, or the quieter and shorter route through the Strait of Magellan past Punta Arenas.

The strait is so narrow, however (in one place it is only a mile between the lofty shores) , that sailing vessels find it very difficult to pass except with the most favorable wind and sea. Punta Arenas is therefore a great repair and coaling station for steamships on the southern routes, as Stanley on the Falkland Islands (Plate IV), several hundred miles east of the strait, is the great repair and supply station for sailing vessels. Fleets of steamers anchor in the port of Punta Arenas. Some of (hem receive coal for the long voyages between Europe and the west coast of South America. In addition, some of them receive the products of the country — the sheep, hides, tallow, and wool of the region north of the port.

Punta Arenas itself is a revelation to one expecting to see frontier conditions. It has electric lights, a few well-paved streets, a newspaper, and good telephone and cable service. The name of the town is the Spanish for sandy point (Punta = point; Arena = sand).

The prosperity of Punta Arenas depends largely upon the pastures north of the strait. East of the Andes

Mountains and extending northward for five hundred miles is a narrow belt of rich grazing country, whose southern end is now occupied by thousands of cattle, horses, and sheep. The products of the flocks and herds that graze on the plains bordering the strait are carried in huge wagons to Punta Arenas, whence they are shipped to the mills and factories of Europe and America, whither the steamers of the port are bound.

The life of the herders in the sheep and cattle pastures of this region is that of the ranch and camp. It is the kind of life so well known in the United States from the early ranching people of Wyoming and western Texas — a careless, free, out-of-door life with much privation from winter storms, snows, and cold, with plain fare, rough speech, a cheerful hospitality, and a certain frankness not always found in the manners of people who dwell in cities.

Many of the shepherds not only care for their flocks but also cultivate a few vegetables, and live in permanent homes. These men are for the most part English and Scotch. They have found here a country as well suited to grazing as their own, and where it is easier to make a living than in the crowded homeland.