In the Amazon Jungle : Adventures in Remote Parts of the Upper Amazon River, Including a Sojourn Among Cannibal Indians

by Algot Lange

  In the Amazon Jungle : Adventures in Remote Parts of the Upper Amazon River, Including a Sojourn Among Cannibal Indians

  Algot Lange

  In The Amazon Jungle, by Algot Lange

  Adventures In Remote Parts Of The Upper Amazon River, Including A Sojourn Among Cannibal Indians

  Edited in Part by J. Odell Hauser

  With an Introduction by Frederick S. Dellenbaugh

  To

  The Memory of

  My Father

  INTRODUCTION

  When Mr. Algot Lange told me he was going to the headwaters of the Amazon, I was particularly interested because once, years ago, I had turned my own mind in that direction with considerable longing. I knew he would encounter many set-backs, but I never would have predicted the adventures he actually passed through alive.

  He started in fine spirits: buoyant, strong, vigorous. When I saw him again in New York, a year or so later, on his return, he was an emaciated fever-wreck, placing one foot before the other only with much exertion and indeed barely able to hold himself erect. A few weeks in the hospital, followed by a daily diet of quinine, improved his condition, but after months he had scarcely arrived at his previous excellent physical state.

  Many explorers have had experiences similar to those related in this volume, but, at least so far as the fever and the cannibals are concerned, they have seldom survived to tell of them. Their interviews with cannibals have been generally too painfully confined to internal affairs to be available in this world for authorship, whereas Mr. Lange, happily, avoided not only a calamitous intimacy, but was even permitted to view the culinary preparations relating to the absorption of less favoured individuals, and himself could have joined the feast, had he possessed the stomach for it.

  These good friends of his, the Mangeromas, conserved his life when they found him almost dying, not, strange as it may appear, for selfish banqueting purposes, but merely that he might return to his own people. It seems rather paradoxical that they should have loved one stranger so well as to spare him with suspicious kindness, and love others to the extent of making them into table delicacies. The explanation probably is that these Mangeromas were the reverse of a certain foreign youth with only a small stock of English, who, on being offered in New York a fruit he had never seen before, replied, "Thank you, I eat only my acquaintances"—the Mangeromas eat only their enemies.

  Mr. Lange's account of his stay with these people, of their weapons, habits, form of battle, and method of cooking the human captives, etc., forms one of the specially interesting parts of the book, and is at the same time a valuable contribution to the ethnology of the western Amazon (or Marañon) region, where dwell numerous similar tribes little known to the white man. Particularly notable is his description of the wonderful wourahli (urari) poison, its extraordinary effect, and the modus operandi of its making; a poison used extensively by Amazonian tribes but not made by all. He describes also the bows and arrows, the war-clubs, and the very scientific weapon, the blow-gun. He was fortunate in securing a photograph of a Mangeroma in the act of shooting this gun. Special skill, of course, is necessary for the effective use of this simple but terrible arm, and, like that required for the boomerang or lasso, practice begins with childhood.

  The region of Mr. Lange's almost fatal experiences, the region of the Javary River (the boundary between Brazil and Peru), is one of the most formidable and least known portions of the South American continent. It abounds with obstacles to exploration of the most overwhelming kind. Low, swampy, with a heavy rainfall, it is inundated annually, like most of the Amazon basin, and at time of high water the rivers know no limits. Lying, as it does, so near the equator, the heat is intense and constant, oppressive even to the native. The forest-growth—and it is forest wherever it is not river—is forced as in a huge hothouse, and is so dense as to render progress through it extremely difficult. Not only are there obstructions in the way of tree trunks, underbrush, and trailing vines and creepers like ropes, but the footing is nothing more than a mat of interlaced roots. The forest is also sombre and gloomy. To take a photograph required an exposure of from three to five minutes. Not a stone, not even a pebble, is anywhere to be found.

  Disease is rampant, especially on the smaller branches of the rivers. The incurable beri-beri and a large assortment of fevers claim first place as death dealers, smiting the traveller with fearful facility. Next come a myriad of insects and reptiles—alligators, huge bird-eating spiders, and snakes of many varieties. Snakes, both the poisonous and non-poisonous kinds, find here conditions precisely to their liking. The bush-master is met with in the more open places, and there are many that are venomous, but the most terrifying, though not a biting reptile is the water-boa, the sucurujú (Eunectes murinus) or anaconda. It lives to a great age and reaches a size almost beyond belief. Feeding, as generally it does at night, it escapes common observation, and white men, heretofore, have not seen the largest specimens reported, though more than thirty feet is an accepted length, and Bates, the English naturalist, mentions one he heard of, forty-two feet long. It is not surprising that Mr. Lange should have met with one in the far wilderness he visited, of even greater proportions, a hideous monster, ranking in its huge bulk with the giant beasts of antediluvian times. The sucurujú is said to be able to swallow whole animals as large as a goat or a donkey, or even larger, and the naturalist referred to tells of a ten-year-old boy, son of his neighbour, who, left to mind a canoe while his father went into the forest, was, in broad day, playing in the shade of the trees, stealthily enwrapped by one of the monsters. His cries brought his father to the rescue just in time.

  As the Javary heads near the eastern slopes and spurs of the great Peruvian Cordillera, where once lived the powerful and wealthy Inca race with their great stores of pure gold obtained from prolific mines known to them, it is again not surprising that Mr. Lange should have stumbled upon a marvellously rich deposit of the precious metal in a singular form. The geology of the region is unknown and the origin of the gold Mr. Lange found cannot at present even be surmised.

  Because of the immense value of the rubber product, gold attracts less attention than it would in some other country. The rubber industry is extensive and thousands of the wild rubber trees are located and tapped. The trees usually are found near streams and the search for them leads the rubber-hunter farther and farther into the unbroken wilderness. Expeditions from time to time are sent out by rich owners of rubber "estates" to explore for fresh trees, and after his sojourn at Remate de Males and Floresta, so full of interest, Mr. Lange accompanied one of these parties into the unknown, with the extraordinary results described so simply yet dramatically in the following pages, which I commend most cordially, both to the experienced explorer and to the stay-by-the-fire, as an unusual and exciting story of adventure.

  FREDERICK S. DELLENBAUGH.

  NEW YORK, November 24, 1911.

  PREFACE

  It is difficult, if not impossible, to find a more hospitable and generous nation than the Brazilian. The recollection of my trip through the wilds of Amazonas lingers in all its details, and although my experiences were not always of a pleasant character, yet the good treatment and warm reception accorded me make me feel the deepest sense of gratitude to the Brazilians, whose generosity will always abide in my memory.

  There is in the Brazilian language a word that better than any other describes the feeling with which one remembers a sojourn i
n Brazil. This word, saudades, is charged with an abundance of sentiment, and, though a literal translation of it is difficult to arrive at, its meaning approaches "sweet memories of bygone days."

  Although a limitation of space forbids my expressing in full my obligation to all those who treated me kindly, I must not omit to state my special indebtedness to three persons, without whose invaluable assistance and co-operation I would not have been able to complete this book.

  First of all, my thanks are due to the worthy Colonel Rosendo da Silva, owner of the rubber estate Floresta on the Itecoahy River. Through his generosity and his interest, I was enabled to study the work and the life conditions of the rubber workers, the employees on his estate.

  The equally generous but slightly less civilised Benjamin, high potentate of the tribe of Mangeroma cannibals, is the second to whom I wish to express my extreme gratitude, although my obligations to him are of a slightly different character: in the first place, because he did not order me to be killed and served up, well or medium done, to suit his fancy (which he had a perfect right to do); and, in the second place, because he took a great deal of interest in my personal welfare and bestowed all the strange favours upon me that are recorded in this book. He opened my eyes to things which, at the time and under the circumstances, did not impress me much, but which, nevertheless, convinced me that, even at this late period of the world's history, our earth has not been reduced to a dead level of drab and commonplace existence, and that somewhere in the remote parts of the world are still to be found people who have never seen or heard of white men.

  Last, but not least, I wish to express my deep obligation to my valued friend, Frederick S. Dellenbaugh, who, through his helpful suggestions, made prior to my departure, contributed essentially to the final success of this enterprise, and whose friendly assistance has been called into requisition and unstintingly given in the course of the preparation of this volume.

  A.L.

  NEW YORK, January, 1912.

  CHAPTER I.

  REMATE DE MALES, OR "CULMINATION OF EVILS"

  My eyes rested long upon the graceful white-painted hull of the R.M.S. Manco as she disappeared behind a bend of the Amazon River, more than 2200 miles from the Atlantic Ocean. After 47 days of continuous travel aboard of her, I was at last standing on the Brazilian frontier, watching the steamer's plume of smoke still hanging lazily over the immense, brooding forests. More than a plume of smoke it was to me then; it was the final link that bound me to the outside world of civilisation. At last it disappeared. I turned and waded through the mud up to a small wooden hut built on poles.

  It was the end of January, 1910, that saw me approaching this house, built on Brazilian terra firma—or rather terra aqua, for water was inundating the entire land. I had behind me the Amazon itself, and to the right the Javary River, while the little house that I was heading for was Esperança, the official frontier station of Brazil. The opposite shore was Peru and presented an unbroken range of dense, swampy forest, grand but desolate to look upon.

  A middle-aged man in uniform came towards me and greeted me cordially, in fact embraced me, and, ordering a servant to pull my baggage out of the water, led me up a ladder into the house. I told him that I intended to go up the Javary River, to a place called Remate de Males, where I would live with a medical friend of mine, whereupon he informed me that a launch was due this same night, which would immediately proceed to my proposed destination. Later in the evening the launch came and I embarked after being once more embraced by the courteous Cor. Monteiro, the frontier official. The captain of this small trading launch was an equally hospitable and courteous man; he invited me into his cabin and tried to explain that this river, and the town in particular, where we were going, was a most unhealthy and forbidding place, especially for a foreigner, but he added cheerfully that he knew of one white man, an Englishman, who had succeeded in living for several years on the Javary without being killed by the fever, but incidentally had drank himself to death.

  The night was very dark and damp, and I did not see much of the passing scenery; a towering black wall of trees was my total impression during the journey. However, I managed at length to fall asleep on some coffee-bags near the engine and did not wake till the launch was exhausting its steam supply through its whistle.

  My next impression was that of a low river bank fringed with dirty houses lighted by candles. People were sitting in hammocks smoking cigarettes, dogs were barking incessantly, and frogs and crickets were making a deafening noise when I walked up the main and only street of this little town, which was to be my headquarters for many months to come.

  After some inquiry, I finally found my friend, Dr. M——, sitting in a dark, dismal room in the so-called Hotel Agosto. With a graceful motion of his hand he pointed to a chair of ancient structure, indicating that having now travelled so many thousand miles to reach this glorious place, I was entitled to sit down and let repose overtake me. Indeed, I was in Remate de Males.

  Never shall I forget that first night's experience with mosquitoes and ants. Besides this my debut in a hammock for a bed was a pronounced failure, until a merciful sleep temporarily took me from the sad realities.

  Remate de Males lies just where a step farther would plunge one into an unmapped country. It is a little village built on poles; the last "blaze" of civilisation on the trail of the upper river. When the rainy winter season drives out of the forests every living creature that can not take refuge in the trees, the rubber-workers abandon the crude stages of the manufacture that they carry on there and gather in the village to make the best of what life has to offer them in this region. At such times the population rises to the number of some 500 souls, for the most part Brazilians and domesticated Indians or caboclos.

  Nothing could better summarise the attractions (!) of the place than the name which has become fixed upon it. Translated into English this means "Culmination of Evils," Remate de Males.

  Some thirty years ago, a prospector with his family and servants, in all about a score, arrived at this spot near the junction of the Javary and the Itecoahy rivers, close to the equator. They came by the only possible highway, the river, and decided to settle. Soon the infinite variety of destroyers of human life that abound on the upper Amazon began their work on the little household, reducing its number to four and threatening to wipe it out altogether. But the prospector stuck to it and eventually succeeded in giving mankind a firm hold on this wilderness. In memory of what he and succeeding settlers went through, the village received its cynically descriptive name.

  Remate de Males, separated by weeks and weeks of journey by boat from the nearest spot of comparative civilisation down the river, has grown wonderfully since its pioneer days. Dismal as one finds it to be, if I can give an adequate description in these pages, it will be pronounced a monument to man's nature-conquering instincts, and ability. Surely no pioneers ever had a harder battle than these Brazilians, standing with one foot in "the white man's grave," as the Javary region is called in South America, while they faced innumerable dangers. The markets of the world need rubber, and the supplying of this gives them each year a few months' work in the forests at very high wages. I always try to remember these facts when I am tempted to harshly judge Remate de Males according to our standards; moreover, I can never look upon the place quite as an outsider. I formed pleasant friendships there and entered into the lives of many of its people, so I shall always think of it with affection. The village is placed where the Itecoahy runs at right angles into the Javary, the right-hand bank of the Itecoahy forming at once its main and its only street. The houses stand facing this street, all very primitive and all elevated on palm-trunk poles as far as possible above the usual high-water mark of the river. Everything, from the little sheet-iron church to the pig-sty, is built on poles. Indeed, if there is anything in the theory of evolution, it will not be many generations before the inhabitants and domestic animals are born equipped with stilts.

  Op
posite Remate de Males, across the Itecoahy, is a collection of some ten huts that form the village of São Francisco, while across the Javary is the somewhat larger village of Nazareth. Like every real metropolis, you see, Remate de Males has its suburbs. Nazareth is in Peruvian territory, the Javary forming the boundary between Brazil and Peru throughout its length of some 700 miles. This same boundary line is a source of amusing punctiliousness between the officials of each country. To cross it is an affair requiring the exercise of the limits of statesmanship. I well remember an incident that occurred during my stay in the village. A sojourner in our town, an Indian rubber-worker from the Ituhy River, had murdered a woman by strangling her. He escaped in a canoe to Nazareth before the Brazilian officials could capture him, and calmly took refuge on the porch of a house there, where he sat down in a hammock and commenced to smoke cigarettes, feeling confident that his pursuers would not invade Peruvian soil. But local diplomacy was equal to the emergency. Our officials went to the shore opposite Nazareth, and, hiding behind the trees, endeavoured to pick off their man with their .44 Winchesters, reasoning that though their crossing would be an international incident, no one could object to a bullet's crossing. Their poor aim was the weak spot in the plan. After a few vain shots had rattled against the sheet-iron walls of the house where the fugitive was sitting, he got up from among his friends and lost himself in the jungle, never to be heard of again.

  About sixty-five houses, lining the bank of the Itecoahy River over a distance of what would be perhaps six blocks in New York City, make up Remate de Males. They are close together and each has a ladder reaching from the street to the main and only floor. At the bottom of every ladder appears a rudimentary pavement, probably five square feet in area and consisting of fifty or sixty whiskey and gin bottles placed with their necks downwards. Thus in the rainy season when the water covers the street to a height of seven feet, the ladders always have a solid foundation. The floors consist of split palm logs laid with the round side up. Palm leaves form the roofs, and rusty corrugated sheet-iron, for the most part, the walls. Each house has a sort of backyard and kitchen, also on stilts and reached by a bridge.