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

by Algot Lange

  On the other hand, is heard the noise of the domestic animals of the village. Cows, calves, goats, and pigs seemed to make a habit of exercising their vocal organs thoroughly before retiring. Dogs bark at the moon; cats chase rats through openings of the palm-leaf roofs, threatening every moment to fall, pursued and pursuers, down upon the hammocks. Vampires flutter around from room to room, occasionally resting on the tops of the iron partitions, and when they halt, continuing to chirp for a while like hoarse sparrows. Occasionally there will come out of the darkness of the river a disagreeable sound as if some huge animal were gasping for its last breath before suffocating in the mud. The sound has its effect, even upon animals, coming as it does out of the black mysterious night, warning them not to venture far for fear some uncanny force may drag them to death in the dismal waters. It is the night call of the alligator.

  The sweet plaintive note of a little partridge, called inamboo, would sometimes tremble through the air and compel me to forget the spell of unholy sounds arising from the beasts of the jungle and river. Throughout the evening this amorous bird would call to its mate, and somewhere there would be an answering call back in the woods. Many were the nights when, weak with fever, I awoke and listened to their calling and answering. Yet never did they seem to achieve the bliss of meeting, for after a brief lull the calling and answering voices would again take up their pretty song.

  Slowly the days went by and, with their passing, the river fell lower and lower until the waters receded from the land itself and were confined once more to their old course in the river-bed. As the ground began to dry, the time came when the mosquitoes were particularly vicious. They multiplied by the million. Soon the village was filled with malaria, and the hypodermic needle was in full activity.

  A crowd of about fifty Indians from the Curuça River had been brought to Remate de Males by launch. They belonged to the territory owned by Mons. Danon and slept outside the store-rooms of this plutocrat. Men, women, and children arranged their quarters in the soft mud until they could be taken to his rubber estate some hundred miles up the Javary River. They were still waiting to be equipped with rubber-workers' outfits when the malaria began its work among them. The poor mistreated Indians seemed to have been literally saturated with the germs, as they always slept without any protection whatever; consequently their systems offered less resistance to the disease than the ordinary Brazilian's. In four days there were only twelve persons left out of fifty-two.

  During the last weeks of my stay in Remate de Males, I received an invitation to take lunch with the local Department Secretary, Professor Silveiro, an extremely hospitable and well educated Brazilian. The importance of such an invitation meant for me a radical change in appearance—an extensive alteration that could not be wrought without considerable pains. I had to have a five-months' beard shaved off, and then get into my best New York shirt, not to forget a high collar. I also considered that the occasion necessitated the impressiveness of a frock-coat, which I produced at the end of a long search among my baggage and proceeded to don after extracting a tarantula and some stray scolopendra from the sleeves and pockets. The sensation of wearing a stiff collar was novel, and not altogether welcome, since the temperature was near the 100° mark. The reward for my discomfort came, however, in the shape of the best meal I ever had in the Amazon region.

  During these dull days I was made happy by finding a copy of Mark Twain's A Tramp Abroad in a store over in Nazareth on the Peruvian side of the Javary River. I took it with me to my hammock, hailing with joy the opportunity of receiving in the wilderness something that promised a word from "God's Own Country." But before I could begin the book I had an attack of swamp-fever that laid me up four days. During one of the intermissions, when I was barely able to move around, I commenced reading Mark Twain. It did not take more than two pages of the book to make me forget all about my fever. When I got to the ninth page, I laughed as I had not laughed for months, and page 14 made me roar so athletically that I lost my balance and fell out of my hammock on the floor. I soon recovered and crept back into the hammock, but out I went when I reached page 16, and repeated the performance at pages 19, 21, and 24 until the supplementary excitement became monotonous. Whereupon I procured some rags and excelsior, made a bed underneath the hammock, and proceeded to enjoy our eminent humourist's experience in peace.

  CHAPTER IV.

  THE JOURNEY UP THE ITECOAHY RIVER

  With the subsiding of the waters came my long-desired opportunity to travel the course of the unmapped Itecoahy. In the month of June a local trader issued a notice that he was to send a launch up the river for trading purposes and to take the workers who had been sojourning in Remate de Males back to their places of employment, to commence the annual extraction of rubber. The launch was scheduled to sail on a Monday and would ascend the Itecoahy to its headwaters, or nearly so, thus passing the mouths of the Ituhy, the Branco, and Las Pedras rivers, affluents of considerable size which are nevertheless unrecorded on maps. The total length of the Branco River is over three hundred miles, and it has on its shores several large and productive seringales.

  When on my way up the Amazon to the Brazilian frontier, I had stopped at Manaos, the capital of the State of Amazonas. There I had occasion to consult an Englishman about the Javary region. In answer to one of my inquiries, I received the following letter, which speaks for itself:

  Referring to our conversation of recent date, I should wish once more to impress upon your mind the perilous nature of your journey, and I am not basing this information upon hearsay, but upon personal experience, having traversed the region in question quite recently.

  Owing to certain absolutely untrue articles written by one H——, claiming to be your countryman, I am convinced that you can not rely upon the protection of the employees of this company, as having been so badly libelled by one, they are apt to forget that such articles were not at your instigation, and as is often the case the innocent may suffer for the guilty.

  On the other hand, without this protection you will find yourself absolutely at the mercy of savage and cannibal Indians.

  I have this day spoken to the consul here at Manaos and explained to him that, although I have no wish to deter you from your voyage, you must be considered as the only one responsible in any way for any ill that may befall you.

  Finally, I hope that before disregarding this advice (which I offer you in a perfectly friendly spirit) you will carefully consider the consequences which such a voyage might produce, and, frankly speaking, I consider that your chance of bringing it to a successful termination is Nil.

  Believe me to be, etc.,

  J.A.M.

  During the time of my journey up the river and of my stay in Remate de Males, I had seen nothing of the particular dangers mentioned in this letter. The only Indians I had seen were such as smoked long black cigars and wore pink or blue pajamas. The letter further developed an interest, started by the hints of life in the interior, which had come to me in the civilisation of Remate de Males. I was, of course, particularly desirous of finding out all I could about the wild people of the inland regions, since I could not recall that much had been written about them.

  Henry W. Bates, the famous explorer who ascended the Amazon as far as Teffé, came within 120 miles of the mouth of the Javary River in the year 1858, and makes the following statement about the indigenous tribes of this region:

  The only other tribe of this neighbourhood concerning which I obtained any information was the Mangeromas, whose territory embraces several hundred miles of the western banks of the river Javary, an affluent of the Solimoës, a hundred and twenty miles beyond São Paolo da Olivença. These are fierce and indomitable and hostile people, like the Araras of the Madeira River. They are also cannibals. The navigation of the Javary River is rendered impossible on account of the Mangeromas lying in wait on its banks to intercept and murder all travellers.

  Now to return to the letter; I thought that perhaps my English f
riend had overdrawn things a little in a laudable endeavour to make me more cautious. In other words, it was for me the old story over again, of learning at the cost of experience—the story of disregarded advice, and so I went on in my confidence.

  When the announcement of the launch's sailing came, I went immediately for an interview with the owner, a Brazilian named Pedro Smith, whose kindness I shall never forget. He offered me the chance of making the entire trip on his boat, but would accept no remuneration, saying that I would find conditions on the little overcrowded vessel very uncomfortable, and that the trip would not be free from actual bodily risk. When even he tried to dissuade me, I began to think more seriously of the Englishman's letter, but I told him that I had fully made up my mind to penetrate the mystery of those little known regions. I use the term "little known" in the sense that while they are well enough known to the handful of Indians and rubber-workers yet they are "terra incognita" to the outside world. The white man has not as yet traversed this Itecoahy and its affluents, although it would be a system of no little importance if located in some other country—for instance, in the United States.

  My object was to study the rubber-worker at his labour, to find out the true length of the Itecoahy River, and to photograph everything worth while. I had with me all the materials and instruments necessary—at least so I thought.

  The photographic outfit consisted of a Graflex camera with a shutter of high speed, which would come handy when taking animals in motion, and a large-view camera with ten dozen photographic plates and a corresponding amount of prepared paper. In view of the difficulties of travel, I had decided to develop my plates as I went along and make prints in the field, rather than run the risk of ruining them by some unlucky accident. Perhaps at the very end of the trip a quantity of undeveloped plates might be lost, and such a calamity would mean the failure of the whole journey in one of its most important particulars. Such a disastrous result was foreshadowed when a porter, loaded with my effects, clambering down the sixty-foot incline extreme low water made at Remate de Males, lost his balance in the last few feet of the descent and dropped into the water, completely ruining a whole pack of photographic supplies whose arrival from New York I had been awaiting for months. Luckily this was at the beginning of this trip and I could replace them from my general stock.

  A hypodermic outfit, quinine, and a few bistouries completed my primitive medical department. Later on these proved of the greatest value. I would never think of omitting such supplies even in a case where a few pounds of extra weight are not rashly to be considered. It turned out that in the regions I penetrated, medical assistance was a thing unheard of within a radius of several hundred miles.

  A Luger automatic pistol of a calibre of nine millimetres, and several hundred cartridges, were my armament, and for weeks this pistol became my only means of providing a scant food supply.

  Thus equipped I was on hand early in the morning of the day of starting, anxious to see what sort of shipmates I was to have. They proved all to be seringueiros, bound for the upper river. Our craft was a forty-foot launch called the Carolina. There was a large crowd of the passengers assembled when I arrived, and they kept coming. To my amazement, it developed that one hundred and twenty souls were expected to find room on board, together with several tons of merchandise. The mystery of how the load was to be accommodated was somewhat solved, when I saw them attach a lighter to each side of the launch, and again, when some of the helpers brought up a fleet of dugouts which they proceeded to make fast by a stern hawser. But the mystery was again increased, when I was told that none of the passengers intended to occupy permanent quarters on the auxiliary fleet. As I was already taken care of, I resolved that if the problem was to worry anybody, it would be the seringueiros, though I realised that I would be travelling by "slow steamer" when the little old-fashioned Carolina should at length begin the task of fighting the five-mile current with this tagging fleet to challenge its claim to a twelve-horse-power engine.

  The seringueiros and their families occupied every foot of space that was not reserved for merchandise. Hammocks were strung over and under each other in every direction, secured to the posts which supported the roof. Between them the rubber-coated knapsacks were suspended. On the roof was an indiscriminate mass of chicken-coops with feathered occupants; and humanity.

  About midships on each lighter was a store-room, one of which was occupied by the clerk who accompanied the launch. In this they generously offered me the opportunity of making my headquarters during the trip. The room was about six feet by eight and contained a multitude of luxuries and necessities for the rubber-workers. There were .44 Winchester rifles in large numbers, the usual, indispensable Collins machete, and tobacco in six-feet-long, spindle-shaped rolls. There was also the "***" Hennessy cognac, selling at 40,000 reis ($14.00 gold) a bottle; and every variety of canned edible from California pears to Horlick's malted milk, from Armour's corned beef to Heinz's sweet pickles.

  Every one was anxious to get started; I, who had more to look forward to than months of monotonous labour in the forests, not the least. At last the owner of the boat arrived, it being then two o'clock in the afternoon. He came aboard to shake hands with everyone and after a long period of talking pulled the cord leading to the steam-whistle, giving the official signal for departure. It then developed that one of the firemen was missing. Without him we could not start on our journey. The whistling was continued for fully forty minutes without any answer. Finally, the longed-for gentleman was seen emerging unsteadily from the local gin-shop with no sign of haste. He managed to crawl on board and we were off, amid much noise and firing of guns.

  After a two-hours' run we stopped at a place consisting of two houses and a banana patch. Evidently the owner of this property made a side-business of supplying palm-wood as fuel for the launch. A load was carried on board and stowed beside the boiler, and we went once more on our way. I cannot say that the immediate surroundings were comfortable. There were people everywhere. They were lounging in the hammocks, or lying on the deck itself; and some were even sprawling uncomfortably on their trunks or knapsacks. A cat would have had difficulty in squeezing itself through this compact mass of men, chattering women, and crying children. But I had no sooner begun to reflect adversely on the situation, than the old charm of the Amazon asserted itself again and made me oblivious to anything so trivial as personal comfort surroundings. I became lost to myself in the enjoyment of the river.

  That old fig-tree on the bank is worth looking at. The mass of its branches, once so high-reaching and ornamental, now lie on the ground in a confused huddle, shattered and covered with parasites and orchids, while millions of ants are in full activity destroying the last clusters of foliage. It is only a question of weeks, perhaps days, before some blast of wind will throw this humbled forest-monarch over the steep bank of the river. When the water rises again, the trunk with a few skeleton branches will be carried away with the current to begin a slow but relentless drift to old Father Amazon. Here and there will be a little pause, while the river gods decide, and then it will move on, to be caught somewhere along the course and contribute to the formation of some new island or complete its last long journey to the Atlantic Ocean.

  As the launch rounds bend after bend in the river, the same magnificent forest scenery is repeated over and over again. Sometimes a tall matamatá tree stands in a little accidental clearing, entirely covered with a luxuriant growth of vegetation. But these are borrowed plumes. Bushropes, climbers, and vines have clothed it from root to topmost branch, but they are only examples of the legion of beautiful parasites that seem to abound in the tropics. They will sap the vitality of this masterpiece of Nature, until in its turn it will fall before some stormy night's blow. All along the shore there is a myriad life among the trees and beautifully coloured birds flash in and out of the branches. You can hear a nervous chattering and discern little brown bodies swinging from branch to branch, or hanging suspended for fractions
of a second from the network of climbers and aerial roots. They are monkeys. They follow the launch along the trees on the banks for a while and then disappear.

  The sun is glaring down on the little craft and its human freight. The temperature is 112 degrees (F.) in the shade and the only place for possible relief is on a box of cognac alongside the commandant's hammock. He has fastened this directly behind the wheel so that he can watch the steersman, an Indian with filed teeth and a machete stuck in his belt.

  Would anyone think that these trees, lining the shore for miles and miles and looking so beautiful and harmless by day, have a miasmatic breath or exhalation at night that produces a severe fever in one who is subjected for any length of time to their influence. It would be impossible for even the most fantastical scenic artist to exaggerate the picturesque combinations of colour and form ever changing like a kaleidoscope to exhibit new delights. A tall and slender palm can be seen in its simple beauty alongside the white trunk of the embauba tree, with umbrella-shaped crown, covered and gracefully draped with vines and hanging plants, whose roots drop down until they reach the water, or join and twist themselves until they form a leaf-portière. And for thousands of square miles this ever changing display of floral splendour is repeated and repeated. And it would be a treat for an ornithologist to pass up the river. A hundred times a day flocks of small paroquets fly screaming over our heads and settle behind the trees. Large, green, blue, and scarlet parrots, the araras, fly in pairs, uttering penetrating, harsh cries, and sometimes an egret with her precious snow-white plumage would keep just ahead of us with graceful wing-motion, until she chose a spot to alight among the low bushes close to the water-front.