The house had doubled in size since Tenente Bernardo’s day, without losing its admirable features, its whitewashed rammed-earth walls and pagoda-style roof. Trajano and his third wife occupied a room off the porch opposite the chapel. Trajano had eleven children, all but two from previous wives who had died from illness. Beyond the front porch was the sala, twenty feet square, where visitors were entertained, and behind this was the sala intima; the da Silva women spent most of their time here and in the workroom next to it. There were twelve rooms in all, including separate sleeping quarters for boys and girls, and storage areas for tools and prospecting equipment, as well as for provisions.
The da Silva lands now covered sixteen square miles below the south bank of the Anhembi. The soil was fertile, but, apart from the quince trees, cultivation was limited to food crops for the settlement, the clearings the same as the natives had maintained at their malocas. Cattle and pigs were occasionally driven the thirty miles to São Paulo, but the bandeiras always took precedence over these settled activities. When Amador marched off, all but ten of his eighty-five slaves would accompany him.
One of the first slaves to near the porch greeted Amador and Trajano with a customary “I beseech your blessing!” To which Amador replied, “Jesus Christ bless you forever!” Then Amador beckoned the Tupi to step closer to them.
“We march again, old man,” he told him. “I’m going to lead a bandeira into the mountains.”
“Oh, the Lord is good!” Abeguar said. “Jesus heard my prayer, Master.” The Tupiniquin who had been with Amador and Valentim the day they captured the Carijó hunters so long ago was in his sixties, but he had the energy and spirit of a much younger man and was untiring on the long marches through the sertão.
When the slaves had been assembled, and Amador heard their evening prayer, they stood looking expectantly at him, for word of his remark to Abeguar had been passed among their ranks.
“The prince of Portugal, my Carijó, asks me to lead a bandeira to find emeralds and the mountain of Sabarabuçu,” Amador said, and then told them about the next expedition on which they would accompany him. The slaves cheered wildly and cried out praises for a master who was a great captain of the sertão. As the assembly was breaking up, a rider came into view along a track that led up to the house. Amador smiled at Trajano. “The slaves greet my news so cheerfully. What will this one say?”
Approaching them on a mule was Olímpio Ramalho da Silva. He had earned his name at birth, for he was a particularly large infant. Today, he was a big man with a powerful physique. His face was long and unattractive, with a broken nose, darting hazel eyes, and bushy brows. He had a slow, deliberate manner that accompanied a stubborn temperament. “Macho,” he’d been called by Amador, not to denote vigorous manliness but for the word’s alternative meaning: “mule.”
It wasn’t only obstinacy but also a genuine interest in these beasts that earned Olímpio this nickname. In Olímpio’s thirteenth year, he had been sent to keep an eye on a muleteer transporting Maria’s quince preserve to São Paulo. On this trip, the old Andalusian, then the only mule driver at São Paulo, had got drunk on cachaça. They had been on a broad, safe track at the edge of a small ravine, the muleteer singing a merry ballad as he thrashed his mount, when suddenly the mule had stopped dead in its tracks and toppled onto its side. The mule driver had been flung thirty feet into the ravine; Olímpio hurried down to him, but the Andalusian’s neck was broken. Looking up, Olímpio saw that the mule had got to its feet and was gazing contentedly into the ravine, a sight that had left the boy with a healthy respect for the beast.
At São Paulo, Ishmael and Olímpio had taken the mule driver’s body to his widow. Olímpio had offered to buy the mules. “With what?” Ishmael asked. “Oh, senhor, the son of Maria Ramalho will pay his debts,” the boy insisted. Impressed, Ishmael had guaranteed payment to the widow, and Olímpio had returned home with seven mules and two asses.
Today, Olímpio had one hundred mules and maintained two packs with muleteers to transport goods between Santos and São Paulo. Maria supported this steady employment, but Amador found it a bitter disappointment that Olímpio chose to waste his time with the stubborn and cantankerous creatures when he could be marching with his father’s bandeiras. Not once had Olímpio accompanied an expedition into the sertão.
So Amador was now surprised to see Olímpio dismount and hurry toward them, calling out excitedly, “Oh, senhor! I’ve heard . . . I saw Senhor Ishmael when I halted at São Paulo. He says you have a letter from the prince regent. May I see it?”
“Read it,” Amador said. He handed the letter to Olímpio.
“A bandeira! For de Azeredo’s emeralds . . . silver . . . gold. A grand expedition!” Olímpio said.
“It’s all written there.”
Olímpio was the only member of the da Silva family who could read and write Portuguese, and he knew some Latin, too. He had Maria to thank for these accomplishments. During three of Amador’s long absences with the bandeiras, Maria had sent Olímpio to the Jesuit colégio. The black robes had returned to São Paulo in 1653, after a thirteen-year exile following their expulsion by the Paulistas; there had no longer been slaving expeditions for them to protest, but most Paulistas did not forgive them their past interference.
When Amador learned that Olímpio, had been to the colégio, he took a whip to Maria and forced her to flee his lands. She had gone to Ishmael for help, for though he shared the Paulistas’ disapproval of Jesuit action against the bandeiras, he had faith in the Jesuit teachers: When the Company was banished from São Paulo, he sent his three sons — Mathias, Marco, and João —to the colégio at Santos. Old friend that he was, Ishmael managed to calm Amador enough to permit Olímpio to recite some Portuguese and Latin, and Amador had conceded that this knowledge was a fine thing for a da Silva.
Finished reading, Olímpio raised his long face and looked eagerly at his father: “This bandeira, Father — I will march with you.”
“You always stayed behind with your mules and asses when we marched.”
“Senhor Ishmael says that if there’s a man to find these treasures, it will be Amador Flôres da Silva.”
“And you believe him?”
“Oh, yes, Father, I believe!”
Amador smiled broadly. “Bring your mules and asses, Olímpio Ramalho. By God’s grace, there’ll be silver and emeralds, enough to spare you a lifetime with those stupid beasts!”
The bandeira straggled in single file along a stony incline to the top of a pass over the Mantiqueira Mountains, an aged volcanic formation on the uplands above the Serra do Mar. With slate blue peaks rising more than eight thousand feet, the Mantiqueira started near São Paulo, ran east along the valley of the Rio Paraiba for some two hundred miles, and then curved to the north; beyond this range lay the highlands of Brazil.
There were fifty Paulistas with the column: Portuguese, both European and Brazilian-born; mamelucos and mulattos; three Spaniards; three Genoese. They were accompanied by 220 natives, mostly Carijó and Tupi, and seven black slaves. The bandeira had left São Paulo five weeks ago and had followed the valley of the Rio Paraiba to the small settlement of Taubaté, some one hundred miles northeast of São Paulo. There they had waited ten days for guides from an advance party that had set up headquarters in the highlands. From Taubaté, the bandeira had traveled for nine days before crossing the Paraiba to the foothills of the Mantiqueira.
Amador had been with the first group to reach the summit of the pass. He now stood alone on a rocky prominence and gazed back along the ridge, where the men and animals of his bandeira were strung out for a mile below him. He wore a quilted leather jacket and thick breeches, but still he shivered as gusts of icy wind stung his face. He could see tier upon tier of mountain, hill, hillock, and rise; slopes jagged and gashed with ravines; deep wooded valleys; streams cascading down shelves of granite and quartz; the distant horizon wavy with pinnacles and rocky summits.
It was July 11, 1674, a month
before Amador’s sixtieth birthday. It had taken two years to raise ten thousand cruzados to finance the bandeira, half from Amador’s own resources — the major part of this from Maria’s quince preserve profits — and the balance by loans, including three thousand cruzados from Ishmael Pinheiro. The bandeira’s royal patronage had brought an offer of one thousand cruzados from the governor-general at the Bahia, but he had sent only 150 crowns. Amador did not complain, for the governor had given him the rank of captain-major and had reiterated the prince regent’s promise of the highest honors.
The previous July, Amador had dispatched an advance party, the size of the column he now led, to set up headquarters and supply camps in the mountains. This company was headed by Capitão Paulo Cordeiro de Matos, a Paulista who had served with Amador on raids against savages in the sertão beyond Piratininga.
How truly infinite the world of the sertão, Amador thought. These damp, blue-gray heights; the low, dry hell of the caatinga; fertile valleys of Pernambuco; lonely grasslands of the north; rivers surging through forests without end.
Now as his gaze traveled over the rolling sea of hills, his heart leapt with the vision that this highland kingdom held at least one eminence gleaming with silver . . . that in a deeply cleft ravine or upon the shores of a lakelet there would be a cluster of green fire!
Abeguar, who was captain of the Carijó and Tupi, reached the end of a long slope. He greeted Amador, who acknowledged him with a wave of his hand. Abeguar had been manumitted this past June at the celebrations for St. John.
Far behind the slaves, Olímpio Ramalho took up the rear of the column, with forty mules and their drivers. Amador’s prejudice against his son’s pack animals had lessened when he saw their sure-footedness and the great burdens they were capable of carrying. But the large, lumbering Olímpio remained a disappointment. “When I was twenty-four I had conquered Guiará with Raposo Tavares,” Amador had said to him a few nights ago. “Not mules, Olímpio Ramalho, but tens of thousands of Carijó to be driven overland. I’m pleased that you march with my bandeira. But I worry, Olímpio Ramalho, for you’ve so much to learn about the sertão.”
“Certainly, my Captain-Major,” Olímpio had responded good-naturedly, “but who is my teacher? Am I not a man with the company of Dom Amador Flôres, who is to be governor of Sabarabuçu?”
Amador laughed quietly to himself, and joined Trajano and others who were giving orders for the slaves to make camp.
Over the next twelve days, the bandeira descended the Mantiqueira in a northeasterly direction and crossed a plateau with knoblike hills, rifts, and wooded valleys, a trek that took them into the heart of the highlands.
The ranges beyond the Mantiqueira lay mostly in a north-south direction, with the predominant Espinhaço, (“The Spine”), a belt of scarps and mountains from thirty to 150 miles wide. The highlands separated the headwaters of the lower Rio São Francisco, which flowed north to Pernambuco and turned east to the sea, the Paraná-Paraguay-Plata system of the south, and the smaller Rio Doce streams, which tumbled east of the highlands to the Atlantic.
The previous century bandeiras had reached the western slopes of The Spine and the headwaters of the São Francisco, thus gaining access to the backlands of Bahia captaincy and Pernambuco. The valleys of the Rio Doce and rivers that emptied into the Atlantic below Porto Seguro, had provided a route to the highlands for Marcos de Azeredo. De Azeredo died before he could reveal where he had got his collection of imperfect gems, and for fifty years his find had inspired others to seek a mine of emeralds in these mountains.
Adventurers had also searched for Paraupava, the legendary lake of gold, between these ranges. Few Paulistas now believed in Paraupava, though since Tenente Bernardo’s day there had been some proof that not all pagan stories were false. Men had returned to São Paulo from the sertão with strings of ears from slain savages — trophies taken for confirmation of their kills and for the nuggets of gold embedded in the lobes. No source of this gold had been located, for the clans whose warriors had been mutilated fled at the approach of Paulistas.
On July 29, 1674, Amador’s column reached the headquarters established by Capitão Paulo Cordeiro de Matos at Sumiduoro, below a southern spur of The Spine. During the year Cordeiro de Matos had been here with twenty-six Paulistas and 160 natives, the camp had grown to be a permanent settlement. The stockade stood beside the Rio das Velhas, which fed into the São Francisco; behind the ten-foot palisade were two rows of wattle-and-daub huts and three palm-front malocas. Tracts of forest close by had been burned and cleared for manioc, maize, and other crops.
Cordeiro de Matos, a mulatto originally from the Cape Verde Islands, had been at São Paulo for the past twenty-four years. He was forty-two, an energetic man with a quick temper and a mighty sadism toward slaves who offended him. The son of a slave woman, Cordeiro de Matos had visions of glory equal to those of his commander.
Amador allowed his men only two days rest and then ordered that they equip and provision themselves for the first march into the surrounding mountains. He divided the bandeira into three companies with Cordeiro de Matos, Trajano, and himself in command. Each party would take a different route, two to explore along the western flanks of The Spine, and Amador’s group toward the east and the basin of the Rio Doce.
The night before Amador set out, he was sitting with Cordeiro de Matos and Trajano when Olímpio approached them. He was barefoot, and wore shirt and breeches, with a blanket thrown over his shoulders. He had been away from the stockade searching without success for seven mules that had wandered off, and had not been told whose search party he was to accompany.
“Senhor.” Olímpio saw Trajano nudge Amador, who looked up at him. “You haven’t told me whose company I’m to march with.”
Amador tugged at the end of his beard as he bent his head and frowned at Trajano. “Which company is his, he asks.”
Trajano began to grin; Cordeiro de Matos sat quietly, not wanting to interfere between Amador and his son.
“You can best serve the bandeira by staying at this camp.”
“I came to help you find emeralds and silver.”
“And so you shall, Olímpio Ramalho. You’ll help me, my son, by obeying my command. I leave you as master of the camp. Guard it with your life, camp master! Keep everything ready for the heroes who’ll return with the prince’s emeralds!”
Long afterward, Olímpio Ramalho remembered that night in July 1674 and the wild optimism of the leaders of the bandeira.
How brightly that fire had burned in the camp! They had saluted one another, the knights-errant of the high serra, and had declared that they stood at the very gates of Paradise.
Who, then, were these three men he now beheld at the camp this August day four years later? Dear God in heaven, were these the giants whose hopes had soared as high as the mountains?
Captain-Major Amador Flôres da Silva wandered from hut to hut, his exhortations endless and repetitive, summoning men to march back into the hills with a dream of another range, another valley, a new direction with fresh possibilities. His eyes were dark-rimmed and sunken, his hair and matted beard silver. He was bareheaded, his war jacket stained and shabby, his breeches ragged.
Trajano was also as unkempt as a mameluco beggar in the alleys of São Paulo — no boots, shirtless, torn breeches. He was moody and sullen and rarely spoke with anyone. Capitão Cordeiro de Matos, the third visionary, was close to open rebellion: He avoided the other two and kept company with Paulistas of like mind, who were ready to flee back to São Paulo.
In the four years since July 1674, when Amador marched off on his first exploration for emeralds and silver, he had led a company of men into the mountains seven times, and on one occasion had been away for six months. Savages of these highlands had killed Paulistas and natives; they had been struck down by sickness and exhaustion; they had deserted into the forest. One-third of the original bandeira were now dead or missing.
There had been finds of green ston
es, but every sample carried to Procópio Almeida, a goldsmith recommended to the bandeira by Ishmael Pinheiro, had been rejected as worthless.
After four years of failure, few were as disheartened as Cordeiro de Matos, who urged Amador to at least return to São Paulo not entirely empty-handed. But Amador adamantly refused to convert the prospecting bandeira into a slave-raiding party, even though he’d spent every cruzado he had and had also doubled his indebtedness to Ishmael Pinheiro.
On August 6, 1678, Amador proposed another probe into the hills. The Paulistas around Cordeiro de Matos appeared to heed his call, and midmorning this day were assembled in the clearing of the stockade. In addition to Amador and his sons, seventy-six Paulistas had been in the ranks of the bandeira four years ago; forty-one remained, and twenty-nine of those stood with Cordeiro de Matos. Of 380 natives, 92 had died or fled; 164 of the survivors were slaves of the twenty-nine Paulistas ready to march.
Amador was on a bench outside a hut he occupied with Trajano and Olímpio. Now Cordeiro de Matos left his men and walked across to Amador.
“The men won’t go north . . . I asked them to make one last search for the emeralds.”
Amador’s face grew taut. “Don’t lie, Capitão Cordeiro de Matos,” he said in a controlled voice. “This was your wish.”
“Face the truth: We’ve failed. A thousand hills . . . a thousand valleys . . . every crack and crevice investigated. There are no riches in these hills.” He swept his hand in a wide arc toward the shabby huts and malocas. “Look at me, Amador Flôres. Look at yourself. Haven’t we suffered enough? Shouldn’t there have been one small reward for all this effort?”
Brazil Page 55