A desert hare leaped noiselessly among the cactus shadows in the evening sun, pricked up its long ears, and glanced about before it bounded off again and disappeared. Crossing the hare's path a tiny striped chipmunk came scurrying along at a tremendous rate.
stopped dead with its tail in the air, and bowled on again like a little bristling ball through the fairy-tale wood. On the highest fork of a three-branched candelabra plant, towering over all the rest, an eagle sat motionless. It did not stir until I was close against the trunk. Then it spread silent wings and glided smoothly away over the enchanted wood. The eagle was not moving: it was the forest and me that were sliding backward, as the bird hung against the vault of sky before disappearing from view. The perfect silence was only interrupted when I moved my own feet. I could hear the leather sole cracking the earth crust, breaking through into invisible cavities dug in the sand by rats, snakes and other desert vermin.
Then I caught a faint sound, faint but with the same effect as a lion's loud roar of menace. It sounded like a half-empty matchbox being gently shaken. This was a warning note of hypnotic terror, in a sort of nature's Esperanto. One had no need to have seen a rattlesnake before in order to jump aside at this unobtrusive sound. Tongue darting, eyes glittering, tail tip slightly raised and twitching, the beast lay rattling its tail, ready to strike. The dry rattle, like a set of plastic rings on the light tail tip, was quivering with fury, and in the hope of leaving the field victorious I looked around desperately for a stick or branch. But just here there was nothing but cactus, with fleshy, thorny branches that simply snapped like cucumber when I struck out at the slithering, supple creature. Finally, a shriveled, fibrous skeleton of a dead cactus proved hard enough to knock the rattlesnake senseless, and before it regained consciousness the victory was won, even if the tail end of the dead body went on quivering and rattiing for a long time aftenvard.
We were supposed to be hunting for boatbuilders in this cactus country. There was not a single tree we could climb to spy out the way. My Mexican friend, Ramon Bravo, had disappeared into the cactus wood to the left in the hope of finding a rocky outcrop with a view, while his wife Angelica and our friend German sat in the Jeep down in the valley. For the twentieth time at least, we had lost the wheel tracks we were following. Now, from where I was standing, I caught my first glimpse of the sea. The lookout point was marked by a living monument of a cactus, shaped like Neptune's own trident, with a trunk so thick that I could hide behind it. This was where the eagle had perched. From up there it must have been able to see
Captions for the following four pages
1. Reed boat of Easter Island, where the author's interest in reed boats began. The island's enigmatic giant statues were carved by seafarers who planted the South American fresh-water reed in the crater lakes and built reed boats of the type found in Peru.
2, 3, 4, 5. Reed boats were once in use from Mesopotamia to the Atlantic coast of Morocco. They have survived to the present day on Lake Chad in the African interior (2 left) on Lake Zwai in Ethiopia (3 above) on Lake Tana at the source of the Nile (4 middle) and in Sardinia in the Mediterranean (5 below).
6. In Mexico reed boats were once in use both at sea and on inland lakes. The last to survive were used by the Seris Indians in the Gulf of California. (Above)
7. Lake Titicaca in Bolivia and Peru has the world's best reed boats today. Large reed ships used to sail along the shores of the Inca kingdom. (Below)
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8. The world's oldest reed boat models from Egyptian mummy tombs, examined by the author in Cairo Museum. (Above)
9. Tomb reliefs in Egypt show that the custom of gathering papyrus reeds to build boats goes back to the earhest dawn of civihzation. (Below)
10. Boatbuilders in ancient Egypt bound papyrus reeds together with strong hemp rope. Some were black-haired, others fair. (Above)
11. Naval action on the Nile. The papyrus boats were loaded with cages of ducks, baskets of food and jars of drink. (Below)
12. A noble and his wife in the cabin on board a papyrus boat, served by a royal butler, while an ordinary seaman, portrayed normal size, steers with the double steering oar. (Above)
13. Cattle freighting on the Nile. The herdsman's rolled-up papyrus tent made an effective life belt. (Below)
14. Sailing skills were extraordinarily advanced in Egypt almost five thousand years ago. The mast was straddled, with steps.
TJS THE RA EXPEDITIONS
great stretches of coast and those savage red mountain peaks inland, through which we had been lurching before the wheel tracks branched off and vanished into the cactus forest. I could see only a silver flash of sunlight on shining water, and blue-tinged mountains far away on the other side. That was enough to set our course. So the four of us jolted on through the enchanted wood, trying to make haste before the sun sank.
Suddenly the cactus forest opened up, giving way to low evergreen scrub, and there, just before us, lay the sea, with small, rippling waves and a wide, virgin beach. Five straining black whale-backs came bursting through the surface of the water, as if heading straight for us, and as they dived and disappeared a shower of glittering small fry shot up in front of them, cascading out of the water. Close inshore they seethed and sparkled for a moment before they, too, scattered and disappeared.
This was nature unadulterated. Before us lay the Gulf of California and behind us on all sides stretched the Sonora desert. The bare blue mountains ranged on the other side were the Mexican desert peninsula of Bqd California, Lower California, some six hundred miles long. We would have to back out of the scrub and into the cactus wood again, for there was not a single hut and no trace of human life to be seen along the shore. We had to go farther up the gulf.
And just as the sun sank behind the line of mountains on the other side and the sea began to turn black, there it was in front of us, the Indian village. One could hardly say that this last surviving remnant of the once powerful Seris tribe had been converted to a romantic architecture by its encounter with the white man and his culture. Half a score of families, some sixty adults and children, had settled here in the sand on barren Punta Chueca, where the head of each family had built a tiny little shack of corrugated iron and tarred paper. Inside there was scarcely room to lie full length on the sandy floor. The building materials and the scrap heaps against the back walls, or broken glass and empty tins, were the result of the sale of turtles, which the Indians caught alive and kept crawling round in a pen at the water's edge.
The Indians did not react noticeably to our anival. Most of them went on with what they were doing, sitting in small groups or
TO THE INDIANS IN THE CACTUS FOREST ^y
walking calmly around between the huts in a medley of colorful headbands, home-made ornaments and long, gaudy raiment in gypsy style. Each man had a long, black pigtail hanging down to the small of the back. The women's faces were painted with lines and spots in symmetrical patterns, barbarically attractive and timeless. An age-old fashion that may suddenly crop up again in our own oversophis-ticated world as the very latest thing. A not unattractive woman in an ankle-length skirt sat surrounded by others grinding natural colors with oil in small pots, while another one had acquired an ordinary lipstick that lent itself admirably to drawing vertical lines on the chin. She beckoned authoritatively to Ramon's wife, who had been watching spellbound. Now she had to sit down on t
he sand and have her face painted in the same pattern. An aged gaffer and a flock of children had joined us, and Ramon was soon recognized. The children sped off like arrows to the farthest hut to fetch Chuchu with all his family. He had been Ramon's interpreter and guide the last time he had been here, filming seal and other animals in the gulf. Now at last there was universal recognition and rejoicing.
Ramon had brought a friend who wanted to see their reed boats? But there were no Seris Indians building askdm nowadays. The one Ramon had seen two years ago? That was the last they had made. Not even the other Seris villages farther north used askam today, since the government had helped every village to buy a wooden boat with an outboard motor. A little naked boy disappeared like a streak and came running delightedly back with a small toy. It was a torpedo boat made of yellow plastic.
Night fell about us. We were lent some cardboard cartons which we folded up under ourselves before lying down to sleep on the floor in a fishing-tackle shed. All night long the Indians kept up their monotonous, incomprehensible chatter. I was drowsily aware of them every time I turned over. They were sitting round small heaps of embers, debating, until they crept to bed an hour or so before we all got up as the stars were beginning to fade.
Before the sun had yet begun to redden the tall cactus crowns, the four of us sat, surrounded by a few Indians, looking out over the peaceful gulf. No one spoke. We just sat. Chuchu rose slowly and ambled down to the silent beach, where he threw out a little round net. With two casts he pulled in four fine fish. Two tiny boys with
three-pronged throwing spears doubled the catch in an instant. That was food enough. Everyone sat. It looked as if nothing more was going to happen that day.
"Will you build an askam for me?" I asked circumspectly.
"Mucho trabajo" they all responded in chorus. "A lot of work." This was about the sum of their vocabulary in Spanish. For anything else they needed an interpreter. Chuchu acted as intermediary.
"You will be paid," I promised. "In goods or pesos."
"Mucho trabajo/' they repeated simply.
The offer increased. Silence. It increased again.
"It is a long way to the reeds," said Chuchu, stalling.
"We will come with you," I replied, and rose to my feet.
Four Indians stood up. They were willing to go. Chuchu, with two brothers and a nephew. Only the eldest brother, Caitano, knew where the reeds were. They grew by a lake on Isla Tiburon, Shark Island, whose rugged outlines we could just make out in the sunrise on the other side of the sound.
The government's outboard motor came into service. Soon we were bucking away over the ripples toward the distant horizon. I was surprised that there were no reeds nearer than this.
"They are fresh-water reeds," Caitano explained. "They cannot grow on the seashore by the desert here. It is a long way to the fresh-water lake."
Shark Island, with its savage mountains, loomed out of the sea. It is not a small island. With a surface area of nearly four hundred square miles, it appears even in world maps. As we jumped ashore on a white sandy beach we found ourselves on the edge of a broad plain, thickly grown with low bushes and scattered cactus trees, between us and the dawn-flushed mountains inland. A single berrendo deer, with a great spread of antlers on its lifted head, stood motionless on the beach, staring. Out came the cameras, stealthily, to immortalize the beast before it took off. Still it did not move, and we crept nearer. Nearer. I went ahead and was included in the picture. Caution was indicated. The deer began to move. Slowly. It strode forward proudly and deliberately, bent its head and butted me in the stomach with friendly determination, an antler in each of my armpits. I tried in vain to push the deer away so that we could get a decent picture; but no, it intended to be immortalized
like this, and all my pushing and shoving, all my efforts to withdraw from this humiliating position were useless. The friendly deer simply followed, now forward, now back, close enough to hold me between its horns without goring and without wishing me any harm. It was a ridiculous situation. Not until the deer had been scratched on the neck and behind the ears was it sufficiently astonished to lift its head and stand staring, wide-eyed, while I backed slowly toward the two-legged company with whom I had come ashore.
We dragged the boat well up on the sand and began our walk across the level ground. I was expecting at any moment to see the reed-grown inland lake. But no, there was only dry sand here and we had to struggle through a labyrinth of low evergreens, thorn scrub and scattered cactus. No path. No trace of anything but deer, hare, lizards, snakes and rodents. Shark Island had been uninhabited by human beings since the last Seris Indians were compulsorily evacuated to the mainland, some time in Caitano's childhood. We plodded and trudged, right, left, straight ahead, wherever openings appeared in the rugged terrain, but always heading generally inland toward the mountains.
"Where is the lake?" we asked in turns.
"Over there," Caitano replied each time, pointing with his nose without lifting a hand. We walked and we walked. Gradually a vast stretch of land lay between us and the sea. The mountains came closer. Soon we were standing at their foot. Half the day had passed, the sun was blazing straight down on our heads, and we were without water or provisions.
"Where is the lake? Fm thirsty," muttered German.
"Over there," repeated Gaitano, pointing his nose upward. We began to clamber over the stony scree that ran down a cleft in the red mountainside. Up to now we had seen only lizards and hares, but here startled mountain sheep and deer began to run the rocky shelves around us. They were anything but eager to give us the sort of welcome we had had from our lonely friend down on the beach. Once or twice I came upon broken potsherds of Indian manufacture. Indians must once have stumbled down here with their water supply from the lake. Higher and higher. Incredible that any lake could lie up here in the steep, arid mountain wall where only cactus grew now.
Then Gaitano stopped. This time he pointed with his whole
hand. We were standing on some huge, tumbled boulders, looking out over a rocky canyon. High up on the opposite wall the bare red rock split in a side canyon leading up to a little bowl-shaped plateau, and up there the sun was shining on a lush green patch, more fertile and lusher in its light spring-green color than any cactus or desert plant. Reeds!
The lowland, with the plain and the sea in the distance, was already far behind us. Weary and parched, we hurried over the rocks, looking forward only to throwing ourselves into the mountain lake and gulping down great draughts of water. I noticed a few rock shelters half-buttressed v^th crude stone masonry. Human beings had once been busy here. Reaching at last the tall green luxuriance, Cai-tano seized his knife and cut his way into it, until his brown back, with the black pigtail of hair, disappeared in the reeds, which reached high above our heads. I hurried after him.
"Where is the lake?" I asked when I caught up, standing inside the greensward. We could not see further than an arm's length away. He stood gazing at the ground under his toes and pointed straight down with his nose. Black, moist earth mold. The rest of us pressed forward, wanting to push farther in to see the lake. Caitano crawled hesitantly into a dark tunnel made in the reeds by animals who came there to drink. The tunnel ended in a sort of overgrown cavern formed by the reeds, so large that there was room for ever}'one if we huddled together. Here the ground was obviously swampy. Mossy stones felt like cold fungus, and in the midst of them was a shallow pool smaller than a washbasin and completely covered with green spirogyra. I was about to lower my seat into it to cool myself when a suspicion struck me and I stopped without touching the water.
"Where is the lake?" I asked.
"There," replied Caitano, pointing to the exact spot where I had been about to sit.
No one had anything to say. We all suddenly felt desperately thirsty as the promised lake faded away like a mirage. We gingerly fished up the floating greenery below our feet and filtered barely enough water through our closed fingers for everyone to
wet their dry throats. Then we smeared the remaining dregs over our hot bodies and squelched our feet in the mud to exploit the last drop of moisture.
In spite of everything, it was incredibly cool and comfortable inside this shady green nest and life was suddenly marvelous and attractive. It is the great contrasts that give the greatest pleasure; a little slush and shade after the grueling walk made us feel better than a champagne reception after a bus ride. The Indians squinted at the section of sun that could just be glimpsed through the thick roof of reeds above us. They were thinking of the long walk home, and two of them crawled out with their big knives and began to slice the longest stalks off at the root while the rest of us lay for a while dozing idly.
There was something to be learned from this walk. I had assumed, like most other scientists, that it was natural for the Seris Indians to build reed boats. We had assumed that they did so because it was difficult to find wood in the Sonora desert, while the coast was presumably thick with reeds. And now the reality had turned out to be quite different. The Seris Indians had not built reed boats because they had easy access to reeds. On the contrary, they had made their way right up here into the mountains to find a minute trickle of fresh water where they could plant reeds to provide the raw material for their boats. If building reed boats had not been a tradition brought by their ancestors from elsewhere, or learned from visiting sailors, they would never have thought of trailing up to this pool to gather reeds for boatbuilding. They would certainly have made the framework of the boat from the branches of the sturdy iron tree and covered it with animal skins. Sealskin was ideal for kayak building, and the rocks on the south coast of Shark Island were covered with seals. The Seris Indians had learned to build reed boats from someone who came from an area where reed was common. From whom?
The Ra Expeditions Page 5