Santa Cruz de la Sierra, capital of all the vast department of eastern Bolivia, owes its fame largely to its isolation. Like those eminent men of many secluded corners of South America, it is important only because of the exceeding unimportance of its neighbors. The only tropical city of Bolivia, it stands some 1500 feet above sea-level on the 18th meridian, very near the geographical center of the republic, so far from the outside world that mail deposited on January 7th reached New York on March 11th. Of its 19,000 inhabitants, 11,000 are female. The emporium and distributing point of all this region and of the rubber districts of the Beni, its commerce is chiefly in the hands of Germans, though the two houses that all but monopolize the trade pose as Belgian, with headquarters in Antwerp. There are few Bolivian, and only three cruceÑo houses of importance, and these for the most part buy of German wholesalers in Cochabamba. Three or four native families have as much as $150,000, a fortune by cruceÑo standards, won from rubber, or from cattle ranches roundabout the city. Yet there is much primitive barter, even in the town,—an ox for a load of fire-wood, and the like, with no money concerned in the transaction. Santa Cruz is the place of birth of those famous Suarez brothers who are kings of the rubber districts of the Amazon. It is a city of silence. Spreading over a dead-flat, half-sandy, jungled plain, its right-angled streets are deep in reddish sand in which not only its shod feet—by no means in the majority, though the upper class is almost foppish in dress—but even the solid wooden wheels of its clumsy ox-carts make not a sound. There is no modern industry to lend its strident voice, though the town boasts three “steam establishments” for the making of ice, the grinding of maize, and the sawing of lumber, and every street fades away at either end into the whispering jungle. Narrow sidewalks of porous red bricks, roofed by the wide overhanging eaves of the houses, often upheld by pillars or poles, line most of the streets. But these are by no means continuous, The houses, usually of a single story, their tile roofs bleached yellowish by the tropical sun, present a large room, wide open by day on the porch sidewalk, and rather bare in appearance in spite of a forest of frail cane chairs, black in color. From the once whitewashed adobe walls protrude several pairs of hooks on each of which hangs, except during the hour of siesta, a rolled-up hammock. On or near the floor sits a little hand sewing-machine, the exotic whirr of which sounds now and then; and just inside the door are usually a few shallow tubs, like small dugout canoes, holding tropical fruits, soggy bread cakes, and sugar in all its stages; for many, even of the “best families,” patch out their livelihood with a bit of amateur shopkeeping. Through this main room, parlor, and chief pride of each family, past which one cannot walk without glancing in upon the household, a back door gives a glimpse of the patio, a pretty garden hidden away after the Moorish fashion—strange that the Arab influence should have reached even this far-distant heart of South America—airy and bright and large, for space is not lacking in Santa Cruz, often almost an orchard and blooming with flowers of many colors. On this open several smaller rooms which, being out of sight of the public, are often far less attractive than the parlor. A street of Santa Cruz de la Sierra after a shower, showing the atoquines, or projecting spiles by which pedestrians cross from one roofed sidewalk to another Conscripts of the Bolivian army practicing their first manoeuvers in the central plaza of Santa Cruz. All who have reached the age of nineteen during the past year are obliged to report at the capital of their province on New Year’s Day In the outside world the climate of Santa Cruz is reputed obnoxious to whites; about its name hover those legends, common also to India, of Europeans being worn to fever-yellow wrecks. As a matter of fact, the temperature does not rise higher than in southern Canada The rumors that seep up out of Santa Cruz of her beautiful pure-white types are largely of artificial propagation. It is true that she has a larger percentage of Spanish blood than any other city of Bolivia, but this is rarely found in its unadulterated form. Some negro and considerable Indian ancestry has left its mark, and while there is not a full-blooded African, or perhaps a full Indian, in town, and Spanish is the universal, if slovenly, tongue, genuine white natives are few in number. As to the beautiful girls and women of popular fancy, they do exist, but certainly in no larger proportion than pearls in oysters. The overwhelming majority are coarse-featured, with heavy noses and sensual lips, crumbling teeth that hint at degeneration, and little attractiveness beyond the quick-fading physical one of youth. Some cynic has said that a wall set about Santa Cruz de la Sierra would enclose the largest house of ill-fame on earth. So broad a statement is unkind. Yet not merely are the majority of cruceÑos born out of wedlock—that much can be said of all Bolivia—but those who are accustomed to investigate such matters agree that the seeker after feminine favors in Santa Cruz need never leave the block in which he chances to find himself. Plain-spoken foreign residents With few exceptions the foreign residents soon fall into this easy, tropical way of life. The two “Belgian” firms bring in scores of young German employees trained in the European main house; and there are normally some 250 Teutonic residents. The percentage of these is low who are not established within a month of their arrival in any part of the region with their own “housekeepers.” The recruit is shown the expediency of this arrangement by both the precept and the example of his fellow-countrymen. Celibacy is alleged to be doubly baneful in the tropics; there are no hotels or restaurants worthy the name; the pleasure of forming a part of the best native family would soon wear threadbare, even if the Moorish seclusion of these did not make admittance impossible. To live with even a modicum of comfort in these wilds the white man must have a home of his own. The frail walls thereof are slight protection against theft. Unless he will reduce his possessions to what he can carry to and from his stool or counter each day, a “housekeeper” is imperative. Though a neighbor might be induced to provide meals and such housekeeping as she has time for, the cruceÑa brings her personal interest to bear only on those things of which she is genuinely, if temporarily, a part. To her, wages are neither customary nor attractive; the reward for her labors must be a temporarily permanent home. Hence the “servant problem” is most easily solved by adopting the servant. Whatever principles contrary to this mode of life the youthful Teuton brings with him from his native land, they quickly melt away under the tropical sun, and there is commonly little resistance to the new environment. Let it not be understood that there is unusual betrayal or persecution of innocent womanhood in Santa Cruz. Rather the contrary is true. It is the man who runs the most constant gauntlet of temptation. The arrival of a new clerk is sure to cause a crowding of young women about the door of the establishment, and to swamp it with pretended purchasers. Report has it that a daughter of almost the “best families” may be won by the employee who will remain a few years and buy her a house or leave her a small income at his departure. With the poorer classes the usual procedure is to open negotiations with the girl’s family, to give her mother a present, or win her consent through her taste for strong drink. In the wilder regions of the Were the results of these attachments an improved human stock, there might be less to condemn. For in its present stage of progress, tropical Bolivia is more amenable to economic than to “moral” improvement; and the country is sorely in need of population. But the foreign blood injected into cruceÑo arteries is as nothing against the environment. The sons of Europeans may be an improvement upon the natives, at least in those rare cases where the father has remained to add the vigor of his training; but the succeeding generation is only too apt to degenerate quickly into the most native of natives. The assertion of scientists that new blood must constantly be brought to the tropics if these regions are to progress, is plainly demonstrated in Santa Cruz. Throughout the department may be seen to-day in the flesh those conditions which, centuries ago, followed the coming of the Conquistadores without their own women or the Puritan’s Attempted improvement of the status quo meets with as little approval as in all other centers of the universe. The American directress of the government girls’ school found herself balked at the outset in the simplest matters. Her edict that pupils must not come to school without some other nether garment than the customary skirt was bitterly opposed both by mothers and by her assistants, on the ground that “it is so hot in Santa Cruz.” CruceÑos blame the heat for most of their shortcomings, as the gringo miners of the Andes sweepingly “lay it to the altitude.” In the school in question there were 300 girls of the “best families” of Santa Cruz. One in every four of them was of legitimate birth. The teachers were in many cases decrepit grand-dames, yet no one with a relative or a friend in the government offices could be removed, because these saw to it that no report against their protegees ever reached higher officials. In the faculty meetings it was impossible to criticize a pupil, whatever her delinquency, for she was sure to have at least one relative among the teachers to precipitate an uproar. On New Year’s Day I had taken up my abode with the only permanent American resident of Santa Cruz. “Juan” S. Bowles, born in Ohio—a cavalry troop of which state he had commanded from Atlanta to the sea—had come to Brazil nine years after the war and ascended to Santa Cruz by way of the Amazon, in the years when 80 days of hard labor were required to cover the 280 miles now served by the Madeira-MamorÉ railroad. He had never since seen his native land. His ice-plant was for many years the only producer of that exotic commodity in tropical Bolivia, where, in the early days, it ranked as a luxury at 25 cents a pound. Under his unwilted American energy and indifference to local caste rules the plant still produced its daily quota, if at something less than that regal reward. On his back veranda stood a leather bed—an ox-hide stretched on a wooden frame on legs—just the place to spend a cruceÑo night, and his stories of “Johnny Rebs” alone made the week I spent there well worth while. Sometimes, though with difficulty, his reminiscences could be staged in Bolivia. After Santa Cruz had drunk and died of swamp water savored with dead cats for some three centuries, this energetic new resident imported machinery and drove an artesian well, coming upon excellent water some fifty feet below the surface. This he offered “But he didn’t give the pump or drive the well,” retorted the boy; “There is plenty of God’s free water over there in the swamp.” To-day the former captain of cavalry has ten wells to his credit and is trying to get the municipality to let him install an “aeromotor.” For all his long residence, the Ohioan had by no means reconciled life to the cruceÑo point of view. His criticisms on this subject were biting. Though the town swarmed with “educated” loafers, well-dressed according to their ideals, it was all but impossible to get native assistants. The youths, egged on by their mothers, flocked to the already overcrowded white-fingered professions, rather than become mechanics or learn to run an engine, two occupations sadly needed in Santa Cruz. As the old man put it, “They won’t come here and learn a good, useful trade, with pay while learning; yet if you throw a stone at a dog anywhere in town and miss him, you are sure to hit a priest, a lawyer, or a doctor—with nothing to do.” The boys he could hire, of the most poverty-stricken families, would not work where anyone could see them. Agapito would tote bricks within the patio without a protest, but he would take his discharge rather than carry a parcel to or from the post-office. The mothers would rather have their daughters earn their living in the local feminine way than have their sons descend to manual labor. A “caballero,” wearing shoes, without socks, requiring his gun repaired to go hunting, could not get it to the shop until he could find an Indian to carry it there. Bowles was an interesting example of the transplanted American. A man of education and of shrewd native wit, he had developed here in the wilderness a quaint, isolated philosophy of his own, and was one of those rare white men who have spent many years unbrokenly in such an environment and climate without “going to seed.” Not merely was he a wide and reflective reader on all subjects from the scientific to the curious, but still, at seventy-five, produced in the interstices of his labors as chief mechanic of the region authoritative articles for the Buenos Aires, London, and American periodicals. How great a feat this is only those can understand who know the enervating effect on both mind and body of long tropical residence. His staunch individualism and independence of the verdict of the world This New Year’s Day was notable to Bowles for another reason. His youngest son and last effective assistant made his first appearance in the uniform of a Bolivian soldier, and moved from home to the cuartel. Conscription is theoretically universal in Bolivia. On the first day of each year every youth within the republic who has reached his nineteenth birthday must report at the capital of his department, ready for service. Those that are not physically unfit, or have not sufficient influence, are given three months training, after which they draw lots to serve two years at 40 centavos a day. During my time there the plaza of Santa Cruz was overrun with lank country boys and sallow city youths, in most cases still in their civilian garb of baggy, road-worn linen or near-Parisian gente decente attire, awkwardly practicing the right and left face under the commands of youthful officers. By Bolivian law a child born in Bolivia is a Bolivian, whatever the nationality of the father. The Civil War veteran, who had strictly kept his American citizenship, though married to a Bolivian wife, had appealed in vain to the American minister in La Paz. Prospective immigrants to this, as to several other South American countries, should not overlook this point in the future of their children. As Bowles expressed it, “Fifteen hundred bolivianos for every son born in the country is too much tax to pay for the privilege of living in it.” When the time came for choosing by lot the recruits needed But the then most widely-known gringo sojourner in Santa Cruz was an Englishman who chose to call himself “Jack Thompson.” His habitat was the departmental prison. His story was well-fitted to the “Penny Dreadful” or the cinema screen. Some years ago “Thompson” and a fellow-countryman had drifted out of the interior of Brazil into CorumbÁ, and offered to sell their rights to a rubber forest they had discovered. The Teutonic house that showed interest asked them to await a decision, and meanwhile offered them employment in the escort of a party of German employees, peons, and muleteers carrying £7000 in gold to a branch of the establishment in the interior of Bolivia. On the trail a German of the escort drew the Englishmen into a plot to hold up the party. A week or more inland, at a rivulet called Ypias, the trio suddenly fell upon their companions and killed three Germans, a Frenchman, a Bolivian muleteer, and the chola “housekeeper” of the chief of the expedition. The rest scattered into the jungle; except one old Indian arriero who, unable to run, managed to crawl up into the branches of a nearby tree. There he witnessed the second act of the melodrama. For a time the trio remained in peace and concord, washed, drank, and concocted a meal over jungle brush. But soon the question of the division of the gold became a dispute. The German asserted that, as author of the plan, he should take half. The Englishmen insisted on an equal division. The dispute became a quarrel. At length, late in the afternoon, when the unknown observer was ready to drop to the ground and a quick death, from exhaustion, fear, and thirst, the Englishmen fell upon their confederate with a revolver, two rifles, and a sabre. Even a German must succumb under such odds. Leaving the body where it fell, the pair divided the gold, and each swinging a pair of saddlebags over a shoulder, struck off into the trackless jungle, for some reason fancying this a surer escape than to mount mules and dash for safety in Brazil. Manuel Abasto, a native of Santa Cruz de la Sierra Through the open doors of Santa Cruz one often catches a glimpse of the patio, a garden gay with flowers Meanwhile some of the refugees had reached nearby settlements. Several search parties were made up and, having buried what the vultures had left, took up the scent. The natives of these jungle regions are not easily eluded in their own element. For four days the Britons struggled through the tropical wilderness, half-dead from All this had occurred three years before. Twice “Thompson,” who was a Mason, as are some of the officials of Bolivia, “escaped.” The first time he was found drunk in the plaza before his evasion was known; the second, he walked the 160 leagues to Yacuiva through the jungle without once touching the trail, only to celebrate too early what he fancied, for lack of geographical knowledge, was his escape into the Argentine, and be forced to walk all the way back. Finally, after more than a year in prison, he had been tried—on paper, as in all Spanish-America—and within another twelve-month had coaxed the judge to deliver his verdict and sentence him—to be shot. The supreme court and the president had still to pass upon the matter, and another year had drifted by. Of late years it is not easy to gain admittance to the prison of Santa Cruz. About its doors swarm ragged sentinels who scream frantically “Cabo de Guardia!” (“Corporal of the Guard”), and swing their aged muskets menacingly whenever a stranger pauses to speak to them. But a note from the prefect brought me the attention of the haughty superiors of the “PolicÍa de Seguridad,” who saw fit to permit me to wade across the first patio of the prison. There an insolent half-negro in the remnants of a faded khaki uniform felt me carefully over for firearms, and at length deigned to open a wooden-barred door. Beyond another mud-floored anteroom and through another wooden gate, I found myself in a bare patio some forty feet square, with a deep open well and signs that the entire yard became a pond whenever it rained. This was surrounded on all sides by an ancient low building of adobe, under the projecting eaves of which, on the ground or in hammocks, and inside squalid cell-like rooms, loafed a score or more of men and several women of all known human My errand made known, several of the prisoners, without rising, began to shout, “Don Arturo!” By and by a voice came back, “’StÁ baÑandose!” I crossed to one of the cells, a small room filled with sundry junk, chiefly the tools of a mechanic, of which the wooden-barred door stood ajar. Inside, on a piece of board laid on the earth floor, stood “Thompson,” in the costume of Adam, pouring a bucket of water over his head. I explained that I was drifting through Bolivia and fancied he might be glad to hear his native tongue again. He was, having had only two such visitors during the year just ended. Wrapping a towel about his loins, he stood and chatted, while an anemic half-negro in what had once been khaki leaned against the door-post watching our every movement, and several other prisoners crowded round in the customary ill-bred South American fashion. “Thompson” was an unattractive man in middle life, rather thin, with the accent and bad teeth of the Englishman of the mechanic class, and the uninspired and rather hopeless philosophy of life common to that caste. Otherwise his attitude was in no way different from what it would have been had we been a pair of tramps met on the road. He smiled frequently as he talked, and was neither more sad nor more cynical than the average of his class. He made no secret of his part in what he referred to as “our stunt,” and gave me detailed information on how to find the graves along the trail “where we pulled it off,” in case I should continue to the eastward. He plainly regretted the crime, but only because he had been caught. Knowing he had already published a doctored account of the occurrence in an English monthly and had found the remuneration exceedingly useful in eking out his existence in a Bolivian prison, I suggested the writing of the whole story. “Aye, but they ’re not going to give me time,” he answered, rolling and lighting a cigarette. “I just got word from Sucre that they have confirmed the sentence. Now as soon as the president signs it, they’ll call me out and ...” “Oh, I don’t believe Montes would do that to a gringo,” I remarked encouragingly. “He is a Mason, too—” “Well, I don’t care a rap whether they do or not,” he replied, with When he had dressed and stepped outside to pose for a photograph, he presented rather a “natty” appearance, though his low-caste face could not be disguised. Together we wandered through the prison. “Thompson,” in his striving to be “simpÁtico” amid his surroundings, had become quite a “caballero” in his manner, and spoke Spanish unusually well for one of his class and nationality. The prisoners found it as necessary to earn their own living inside the prison as outside, for though the government theoretically furnishes food, it would not have kept the smallest inmate alive for a week. “Thompson” asserted that he had not touched prison fare since his incarceration. His “cell” was fitted up as a workshop, with a bench, a small vise, and such tools of a mechanic as he had been able to collect, and he earned a meager fare and other necessities by mending watches and at the various tinkering jobs that reached him from outside. Shoe-making was the favorite occupation of his fellow-jailbirds. More than a dozen had their open “cells” scattered with odds and ends of leather and half-finished footwear. Formerly, the public had passed freely in and out of the prison, and prisoners, underbidding free labor, since their lodging was already supplied them, had always earned enough to satisfy their appetites. Now, the rules had become somewhat more strict, at least to outsiders, and with less opportunity to sell their wares more than one inmate suffered from hunger. We passed into one of the two large common rooms, foul-smelling mud dens in which “Thompson” had seen as many as 37 persons of both sexes and all degrees of crime, age, and condition sometimes locked in for an entire month by some whim of carcelero or judge. The room being completely innocent of any convenience whatever, the conditions of prisoners and prison when the door might finally be unlocked needs no description. Just now the room was open, and there were but 26 inmates, men and women mixed indiscriminately, for there were no rules, even at night, as to the sleeping-places of the two sexes. The female prisoners, in fact, earned their food as do so many cruceÑas outside, from such of the male inmates and soldier guards as could reward their favors, and had advanced to a point where even privacy was no longer requisite. Even then several slovenly couples reclined together on the uneven floor in half-amorous During my stroll my companion ceremoniously introduced me to several of the six “gringo” prisoners. One was a German-Peruvian, eight months before the manager of a local bank, and since then in prison, still untried, on the charge of disposing of bad drafts. When a powerful company does not feel it has sufficient evidence to convict a man whose arrest it has caused, it is the Bolivian custom to see that the judge does not bring the case to trial. Nearly every government official semi-openly having his price, the prisons are apt to hold chiefly those who have underbid in the contest for “justice.” “Thompson” asserted—and he was corroborated by many outside the cÁrcel—that for some £200 he could make his escape. The savage half-Indian conscripts serving as carceleros vented their hatred of the gringos at every opportunity, and made their lives constantly miserable by watching for the slightest breaking of the rules to give them an excuse to shoot. In former times, when rubber was high in price, the Intendente de la PolicÍa frequently sold prisoners to the “rubber kings” of the Beni at 1000 bolivianos a head, and it was a rare victim of this system who did not end his days as a virtual slave in the Amazonian forests. As we shook hands at the gate of the inner patio, “Thompson” remarked: “If Montes signs it, I’ll have forty-eight hours left with nothing to do and I’ll write you something. I believe the thoughts of a man waiting to be shot”—it was the only time he used that word during the interview—“would make interesting reading. The ending would be all right if these Indians could make a good job of it, but they’ll end by bashing in my head with the butts of their muskets, as they have all the others.” “In respect for the Bolivian government!” shrieked the evil-eyed, ill-smelling official behind the main desk. “But I have no respect whatever for the Bolivian government,” I protested, warding off with an elbow the boy soldier who was attempting to snatch the hat from my head; and I stepped out into the street. There I was legally immune. There is no law requiring one to uncover in the streets, even in straight-laced Santa Cruz. But the legal aspect of a case is easily overlooked in Bolivia. The official screamed, “Cabo de la Guardia!”, and there poured out upon me five boy soldiers with loaded muskets, who, clutching at me like cats, began pushing me back into the prison. I had been long enough a policeman myself to know the folly of resisting arrest, however unjustified; moreover, there was an entire regiment of these little brown fellows in town, most of whom would be only too happy to give vent to their dislike of gringos. Once I had entered an empty mud room on the first patio, the door was quickly bolted behind me and I stood looking out through the wooden-barred window upon the mud-hole yard, back and forth across which marched the jeering little soldiers and several loungers, grinning at me nastily behind their blackened stumps of teeth. I was in great danger—that I should be late for the dinner to which I had been invited at eleven. For though my arrest was not legal, those responsible for it had the very simple old Latin-American expedient The matter never got as far as the prefect. No sooner did the comandante of the prison learn that a man, who only yesterday had been hobnobbing with the supreme chief of the department, had been visited with the indignity of imprisonment, than he hastened to order me set at liberty. Before we leave Santa Cruz, the story of “Thompson” permits a bit of anticipation. Months later, in far southern Chile, I chanced to pick up a newspaper, among the scant foreign despatches of which my eye fell upon: “Bolivia, 14 May—In Santa Cruz de la Sierra was shot to-day the criminal ’Thompson,’ of English nationality, condemned to the supreme penalty for having assassinated the conductors of money of some local houses.” Another half-year passed before there reached me in Brazil local papers and letters giving details. According to these, the judge wept when he read the sentence, but “Thompson” shook hands with him, telling him the sentence was just, and that the only criticism he had to offer was that the execution had been so long delayed. As his last favor, he asked that jail conditions be improved, that his friends might be more humanly housed. On his last night he got permission to have a few of these—all jailbirds—to dinner with him, but refused to touch liquor himself, “so I shall be able to take in every detail clearly.” In the morning he informed friends that he had parents, brothers, and sisters in London, and a wife and son in the United States. To these he had been writing since his arrest that he was engaged in an enterprise that would in time make him rich, if luck was with him. On the evening before his execution he wrote bidding them all farewell, saying he had suddenly contracted a tropical disease the doctors despaired of, and would be dead by the time they got the letter. He was shot at noon, while the bells of the cathedral were striking, so that nothing should be heard outside the prison. There is one of the sand streets of Santa Cruz de la Sierra which does not run out to nothing in the surrounding jungle, but dwindles to what is known locally as the “camino de Chiquitos,” and pushes on to the Paraguay river, some 400 miles distant. “Road” in the cruceÑo sense, however, means anything but a comfortable highway. As usual, the town was scornful of the suggestion that two lone gringos could make the journey on foot. Disheartening stories assailed us of the dangers from snakes and “tigers,” of the unending pest of insects, of the almost total lack of sleeping-places and even of supplies. For the first week we must carry all food with us; in this rainy season the route was sure to abound with chest-deep mud-holes and miles of swamps; the last twenty leagues, near the Paraguay, would be completely inundated and impassable for months, until the waters subsided. Or, if the rains did not come on at their accustomed time, there was as much danger of the country being wholly waterless for long distances. Moreover, beyond the Rio Guapay, eight leagues east of the capital, stretched the notorious Monte Grande, a dense, unbroken forest in which roamed wild Indians given to shooting six-foot arrows of chonta, or iron-heavy black palm, from their eight-foot bows, with such force that they pass clear through a man at fifty yards. This was said to be quite painful. Nor were these mere idle rumors; we had only to drop in on one of several men in town to be shown arrows taken from the bodies of victims, and a sojourning fellow-countryman had several relics of the tribe he had had the good fortune to see first while prospecting on the banks of the Guapay. Reading Tommy’s real opinion of the journey behind his face, I laid plans to continue alone. Experienced travelers asserted that boiled water, a careful diet, a selected medicine-kit, waterproofs, a tropical helmet, and a woolen cholera-belt for night chills were prime necessities. I had all but six of this half-dozen requisites. By choice I should have turned rural native entirely and worn a straw hat, a breechclout, a pair of leather sandals, and a towel. But life can Fortunately, the German who had sought my assistance in the matter of the gun license, was bound for at least a few days in the same direction. Heinrich Konanz, born in Karlsruhe, had served the last of three years as a conscript in the expedition against the Chinese Boxers, and had since worked as a carpenter in China and California, until he had concluded to seek a permanent home as a colonist in some region where population was less numerous. He was largely innocent of geography, spoke habitually a painful cross between his once native tongue and what he fondly fancied was English, with a peppering of Chinese, and knew almost no Spanish. The mule that had carried him from Cochabamba he found it necessary to turn into a pack-animal for the tools, materials, and provisions he had purchased in Santa Cruz, and was to continue on foot. He had been placidly making plans to push on alone, when rumors in his own tongue suddenly reached him of the Monte Grande and its playful Indians. His first inclination had been to throw up the sponge and return to Cochabamba. But his capital had been greatly reduced and his hotel room was heaped with the supplies sold him by his local fellow-countrymen, who would not have taken them back at a fourth of the original cost. He made a virtue of necessity, added a new rifle to his revolver and shotgun, and offered to find room on the mule for the heavier portion of my baggage in return for the reassurance of my company. Konanz seated on our baggage in the pelota de cuero, or “leather ball” in which we were both carried across the Rio Guapay The force of one of the four fortines, or “fortresses,” with which the Bolivian government garrisons the Monte Grande against the savages It was a brilliant day when I shouldered the German’s rifle, my own revolver well oiled and freshly loaded, and led the way out of town. Mud-holes, along which we picked our way on rows of the Twice during the day we met a train of heavy, crude ox-carts roofed with sun-dried ox-hides, that recalled the “prairie-schooners” of pioneer days, eight oxen to each, creaking westward with infinite slowness. In the afternoon the forest closed in about us, and we plodded on through deep sand alternating with mud-holes. Soon all the woods about us were screaming like a dozen suffragette meetings in full session and, fancying the uproar came from edible wild fowls, I crept in upon them, rifle in hand. To my astonishment, I found a band of small monkeys shrieking together in a huge tree-top. Even a monkey steak would not have been unacceptable. I fired into the branches. Instantly there fell, not the wherewithal for a sumptuous evening repast, but the most absolute silence. The little creatures did not flee, however, but each sprang a limb or two higher and watched my slightest movement with brilliant, roving eyes. A qualm came upon me and I hurried after the German. That night we camped in a clump of trees about a water-hole. The native who pointed out the trail to it did so in a surly, regretful manner, as if he resented the consumption by strangers who should have remained in their own country of a priceless treasure insufficient for home consumption. Down at the bottom of a deep hole in the sand, strongly fenced with split rails, was an irregular puddle barely four inches deep, full of fallen leaves, wrigglers, and decayed vegetable matter; yet from it radiated trails in all directions. The blocks of crude brown sugar we had purchased that morning had melted during the day and smeared everything within reach; the boiled leg of mutton Monkeys were already howling in the nearby woods when we pulled on our clothes, wet and sticky, in a soggy morning that soon carried out its promise of rain; and parrots now and then screamed at us in dull-weather mood. A heavy shower paused for a new start and became a true jungle deluge. My poncho would have been useless; besides, it was wrapped, in Australian “swag” style, around my possessions on the mule. Past experience told me that the only reliable waterproof in the tropics is to let it rain—and dry out again when opportunity offers. We settled down to splash on indifferently, soaked through and through from hat to shoes, dripping at every seam. The weather was not over warm either, and only the heaviest moments of the storm dispersed the swarms of ravenous mosquitoes. In dense woods punctuated with mud-holes, a yellow youth in two cotton garments overtook us well on in the afternoon, and asked if we would need a “pelota.” We would. He stopped at a jungle hut some distance beyond and emerged with an entire ox-hide, sun-dried and still covered with the long red hair of its original owner, folded in four like a sheet of writing paper, on his head. For a mile or more he plodded noiselessly behind us. Then suddenly the forest opened out upon the notorious Guapay, or Rio Grande, a yellow-brown stream, wide as the lower Connecticut, flowing swiftly northward to join the MamorÉ on its journey to the Amazon. We splashed a mile or more up along its edge, to offset the distance we should be carried downstream before striking a landing opposite. Here two men of bleached-brown skin, each completely naked but for a palm-leaf hat securely tied on, relieved our companion of his load and set about turning it into a boat. These “pelotas de cuero” (“leather balls”) are the ferries of all this region, being transportable, whereas a wooden boat, left behind, would be stolen by the “indios bravos.” Around the edge of the hide were a dozen loopholes through which was threaded a cord that drew it up into the form of a rude tub. To add firmness to this, the hat-wearers laid a corduroy of green poles in the bottom. Then they piled our baggage into it, set the German atop, and dragged it down the sloping mud bank into the water, while the youth coaxed the mule into the stream and swam with it for the opposite shore. This seemed load enough and to spare. But when I Before and high above us, where the peloteros coaxed the crazy craft ashore, stretching like a Chinese wall of vegetation further than the eye could follow in either direction, stood an impenetrable forest, the famous Monte Grande, or “Great Wilderness,” of Bolivia. Here was the chief haunt of the wild Indians of the penetrating arrow, a region otherwise uninhabited, through which the “road” to the Paraguay squeezes its way for hundreds of miles almost without a shift of direction. We swung our hammocks on the extreme edge of the river, where the breeze promised to blow—and failed of its promise, like most things Latin-American. For though the day was not yet spent, the journey through the Monte Grande is fixed in its itinerary by the four “garrisons” maintained some five leagues apart by the Bolivian government as a theoretical protection against the nomadic Indians. At dusk a man swam the river with his clothing and possessions in the brim of his hat, and soon afterward the stream began to rise so rapidly that it is doubtful if we could have passed it for several days. Almost at once, in the morning, we met a train of nine enormous roofed carts of merchandise from Europe by way of Montevideo, each drawn by eight yoke of gaunt, way-worn oxen, straining hub-deep through the mire at a turtle’s pace. The forest crowded them so closely on either hand that we must back into it, as into the shallow niche of an Inca wall, and stand erect and motionless until the train had crawled by, the wilderness bawling and echoing a half-hour with the cries of the dozen drivers with their long goads dodging in and out, knee-deep in mud, among the panting brutes. We met no other person during the day. Travelers through the Monte Grande go always in bands, and the ox-drivers stared at us setting out alone, as at gringo madmen. We deployed in campaign formation. Our revolvers loose in their holsters, the German marched ahead, closely followed by his affectionate But if the Indians failed us, there were other visitations to make up for them. Every instant of the day we fought swarms of gnats and mosquitos; though the sun rarely got a peep in upon us, its damp, heavy heat kept us half-blinded with the salt sweat in our eyes. The road was really a long tunnel through unbroken forest meeting overhead, into which the thorny undergrowth crowded in spite of the ox-cart traffic. All day long, mud-holes, often waist-deep for long distances, completely occupied the narrow forest lane. The region being utterly flat, the waters of the rainy season gather in the slightest depression, which passing ox-carts plough into a slough beyond description; while the barest suggestion of a stream inundates to a swamp all the surrounding territory. For the first mile we sought, in our inexperience, to tear our way around these through the edge of the forest. But so dense was this that it barred us as effectually as a cactus hedge. We took to wading, now to the knees, now to the waist, sometimes slipping into unseen cart-ruts and plunging to the shoulders in noisome slime. Jim and “Hughtie” Powell, Americans from Texas who have turned Bolivian peons A jungle hair-cut It grew monotonous, but so does life under the best of conditions. Moreover, whatever gloom our surroundings created was more than offset by the German. Not that he was gay, nor, indeed, cheerful under adversity. But the genuine comedian, like an Italian Hamlet, “Oh, py Gott, Mr. Mool! Ven I don’t hat to lug myself der loat all to San Yozay, I rhight avay shoot her der head through. To-morrow, py Gott, I bind her der dree on, der ...” At sunset we waded through a barred gate into the pascana, or tiny natural clearing, of CaÑada Larga, the first of the four fortines. Five miserable thatched huts, some without walls and the others of open-work poles set upright, were occupied by eight boyish soldiers in faded rags of khaki and ancient cork helmets of the same color, and a slattern female belonging to the lieutenant. The latter was a haughty fellow of twenty-five, sallow with fever and gaunt from long tropical residence, a graduate of the Bolivian West Point in La Paz, and permanently in command of all the garrisons of the Monte Grande. The others were two-year conscripts between nineteen and twenty-one, assigned to the forts for a year, usually to be forgotten by the government and left there months longer. Our official paper ordered the commander to “give us all facilities, wood and water, and to sell us food—provided there was any.” He waved a hand in a bored, tropical way, and two of the handsomest children in uniform brought us wood, and soon came lugging a huge bucket of water on a pole across their shoulders. What food could he sell us? Not a thing. Some yucas, at least? SeÑor, we have only half rations of rice for ourselves. But the prefect said we could depend.... The prefect, seÑor, has not sent us any supplies for more than a month. There was nothing left but to cook some of our own rice and charqui, and try to be thankful for even that miserable substitute for food. Its staying powers were slight. Twice during the The lieutenant insisted on sending along a soldier to “protect” us from the savages. He was a girlish-looking boy of Indian features, armed with an ancient Winchester of broken butt, thick with rust inside and out. Most of the day he lagged far behind, for the sun-dried stretches of road between the swamps and mud-holes hurt even his calloused feet. We tramped unbrokenly for seven hours, the endless forest-wall close on either hand, without sighting another human being, until the jungle opened out slightly on the little pascana of Tres Cruces. The sergeant in command dragged himself out a few yards to meet us, a rifle-shot having warned him of our approach. He had four soldiers and a gnat-bitten female. They called the bucketful they brought us from a swamp, “excellent water.” It was clear, to be sure, and a decided improvement on what we had drunk from the mud-holes during the day, the swampy taste not quite overwhelming. But it was lukewarm from lying out under the sun, and had at least a hundred tadpoles swimming merrily about in it. One dipped up a cupful, picked out the tadpoles gently but firmly, and forced as much of their vacated bath as possible down the feverish throat. The gnats of Tres Cruces quickly got wind of the arrival of fresh supplies and attacked us in battalions. The previous camp had been gnatless compared to this. Known to the natives as jejenes, they are almost invisible, yet they can bite through a woolen garment or a cloth hammock so effectively that the mosquito’s puny efforts pass unnoticed in comparison. Wherever they alight they leave a red spot the size of a mustard-seed that itches and burns for days afterward. What such a host of them had hoped to feed on, had we not unexpectedly turned up, I cannot guess; surely they were taking long chances of starvation here in the unpeopled wilderness. Under no circumstances did they give us a moment of respite. Even the soldiers, tropical born and long accustomed to them, ate their supper plate in hand, marching swiftly up and down the “parade-ground” and striking viciously at themselves with the free hand. We could not leave off fighting them long enough to lift a kettle off the fire, Tramping doggedly back and forth in the dusk, I heard the sergeant in his hut singing and apparently happy. I raced to his door. Eureka! Necessity is the mother of invention, even among the uninventive. He was swinging swiftly back and forth in his hammock. I grasped a pack-rope and was soon rushing swiftly through the half-arc of a circle. The relief was startling. But to work incessantly with the arms was little better than tramping the pascana. If only the inventor of perpetual motion had not put his invention off so long. The relief from torture quickly made me drowsy. But if the swinging flagged for an instant, the jejenes at once brought me wide awake. Before long, too, a few hardy gnats solved the problem of catching their prey on the fly, like experienced “hoboes.” More and more learned the trick, until I gave up in despair and took once more to tramping the parade-ground; kept it up, indeed, most of the brilliant, moonlit night. In the morning I found that ants had eaten into decorative fringes the edges of my leather leggings. Vampire bats had smeared our white mule with her own blood. For a long time I could not make the German understand what had happened to the animal, until I dug up out of the depths of memory the word “Fledermaus.” To watch him pack was always amusing—also a torture. He had learned to do everything in the German style of systematized routine, in which the longest way round is always the shortest way between two points; and he knew nothing of “efficiency,” of that dovetailing of work in such a way as to hasten the process. Instead of lighting a fire first and The sergeant insisted, languidly and tropically, on sending one of his armed boys along. We refused. Should anything have happened to the child, such as a sprained ankle in “protecting” us from the savages, we could never have forgiven ourselves. All day long we tramped due eastward through unbroken forest. Monotonously the swamps and mud-holes continued. It would not have been so bad could we have waded all the way barefoot; but the sun-dried stretches between made shoes imperative. Never a patch of clearing, never a sign of human existence—though I still glanced frequently over my shoulder—never the suggestion of a breeze to temper the heat or to break the ranks of the swarming insects! We threw ourselves face-down at any mud-hole or cart-rut, gratefully, to drink. “It was crawlin’ an’ it stunk, but”—anything that can by any stretch of the word be called water is only too welcome in tropical Bolivia. The red-hot poison with which the gnats of days past had inoculated us from head to foot itched murderously. Amateur wilderness travelers have a theory that “dope” smeared over the body will afford protection in such cases, but it would be a strong concoction indeed that could rout the jejenes of the Monte Grande. The only method is to get bit and heal again, as one gets wet and dries again, or goes astray and finds oneself again. The one absolute rule is, Don’t scratch! Not to scratch may drive the sufferer mad, but to do so will drive him doubly insane; and swamp water is infectious to any abrasion of the skin, and an open sore is the greatest peril of tropical travel. Let it not be fancied, however, that life was sad even with these drawbacks. The song of the jungle was unbroken, the brilliant sunshine joyful, for all its heat. In places the road was completely veiled by clouds of beautiful white butterflies. Sweating freely, there was a spontaneous play of the mental spirits and a sense of splendid physical well-being, not the mind-paralyzing gloom of our northern winters. Up on the high plateau the mind might work as freely, but A toilsome eighteen miles ended at Pozo del Tigre—there was something fetching about the name of this third fortÍn,—the “Tiger’s Drinking-place.” Here were four boys, a cossack post in command of a corporal; also at last there was something for sale, for some one had planted a patch of corn back in the forest. Two soldiers brought us choclos and huiro,—green-corn for ourselves and stalks of the same for the mule. The conscripts preferred coffee and rice in payment, for money is of slight value beyond the Rio Grande, but demanded five times what the stuff was worth. It was not sweet-corn, and was either half-grown or overripe, but was welcome for all that. We threw the ears into the fire and raked them out, to munch what was not entirely burned or still raw. The jejenes made it impossible to hold them over the fire to toast. We squatted so closely over the blaze it all but burned our garments, yet the relief was so great, in spite of the smoke in our eyes, that we all but fell asleep into the fire. The life of these garrisons is dismal in the extreme. The soldiers had absolutely no drill or other fixed duty. In most cases they were too apathetic to plant anything, even to dig a well, however heavily time hung on their hands, preferring to starve on half-rations, to choke in the dry season and drink mud in the wet, rather than to exert themselves. Each “fort” had in the center of the “parade-ground” a crude horizontal-bar made of a sapling. But it was used only for a languid moment, when utter ennui drove some one to it. The impossibility of “team-work” among Latin-Americans was never more clearly demonstrated than by the fact that each soldier cooked his own food separately three times a day over his own stick fire. There was not faith enough among them even to permit division of labor in bringing fire-wood. Each set his marmita, a soldier’s tin cook-pot shaped to fit between the shoulders, on the ends of burning sticks and sat constantly on his heels beside it, lest it spill over as one of the Toward morning I slept an hour or two from utter exhaustion. It was astonishing how one recuperated for all the day ahead with so short a rest. After all, tramping is not like mental labor; a brief repose is all that is necessary. The savages having deceived us for three days, we lessened our burdens by fastening rifle and shotgun within quick reach on the mule, though still keeping our revolvers handy. Wild animals are commonly hidden away in the silence of the forest, even in such wildernesses, and rarely cross a path used by man; but they are not always unseen. We were tramping side by side when I pointed excitedly at the narrowing vista of the road ahead. “Deer!” I cried. The German, his mind perhaps on Indians, all but sprang over his mule. Some two hundred yards ahead a reddish fawn stood grazing, and fresh meat would have been more acceptable just then than eternal riches. As a three-year soldier it was surely my companion’s place to shoot; besides, the rifle and cartridges were his. But he marched stolidly forward. With no officer behind to give a stentorian command, his mind refused to work. Every step was increasing the probability of seeing a splendid venison repast for ourselves and for the soldiers ahead bound away into the trackless forest. “SchÜsse doch!” I cried, in a hoarse whisper. Alas! I had overlooked the preliminary routine of “Ready! Load! Aim!” The German snatched hastily and blindly at the pack, leveled a gun, and fired. A discharge of bird-shot sprinkled the nearby tree-trunks, and the startled deer sprang with one leap into the unknown. Konanz had caught up the shotgun instead of the rifle! It must not be gathered, however, that he was not an effective hunter, given prey fitted to his abilities. All this region is noted for its petas, a large land-turtle, with the empty charred shells of which any camping-ground is sure to be scattered. During the afternoon the German actually ran one down. Tied on the pack, it arrived at the fourth and last fortÍn of the Monte Grande, Guayritos, a larger clearing surrounded by matorrales or palm-tree swamps, and noted for attacks by the savages. The corporal ordered one of his three men to prepare the turtle. He split it open with a machete and, removing all the meat, spitted the liver, the chief delicacy, on a stick, while I set the rest to boiling. When it had cooked for an hour, the addition of a handful of rice and a chip A tropical shower was raging when we finished loading. Even the soldiers were in a snarling mood. The going was so slippery that it was painful. For long distances there were camelones or barriales, as the interminable corduroy-like mud ridges with troughs of slime between them are called. Every step was perilous, until we were splashed and soaked from hat-crown down; after that a misstep and a sprawl did not matter. Skeletons of oxen were numerous along the way. When the rain ceased, the day remained thick, and the heat was heavy enough to cut with a spade. For long stretches we waded waist-deep through swamps of long green grasses. A few slight pascanas began to break the endless forest. In one of them, and scattered far beyond, we met the first travelers since entering the woods,—four rusty and mud-plastered wagons, hopelessly mired, others with their several yokes of oxen lying indifferently in water, mud, or on dry land. That afternoon our journey seemed to have come ignominiously to an end. An immense swamp or lake a half-mile wide spread across the trail and far away in both directions into the now thinner forest, the notorious “curiche de TunÁ.” We attempted to flank it, only to have a faint side path end in the impassable tangles of an even greater swamp. Wandering in this for an hour, we regained the road at last, and, putting everything damageable in our hats and strapping our revolvers about our necks, attempted the crossing. The lake proved only chest-deep, but the glue-like mud-bottom all but swallowed up The sun was getting low when we sighted a little wooded hill above the sea-flat forest ahead. The road dodged the hillock, however, and we slushed hopelessly on through endless virgin forest. Night was coming on. The insignificance of man in these primeval woods was appalling. Suddenly a large, rail-fenced cornfield appeared in a clearing beside the “road,” but this plunged on again into the wilderness without disclosing any other sign of humanity. Darkness was upon us when a man in white rode out of the gloom ahead, and all but fell from his mule in astonishment. We had passed unseen the branch trail to the scattered hamlet of El Cerro, a score of thatched huts, constituting the first civilian dwelling of man beyond the Rio Grande. The old stone and brick church and monastery of San JosÉ, erected by the Jesuits, typical of the architecture of their “reductions” throughout “Guarani Land” The fatherly old cura of San JosÉ standing before the Jesuit sun-dial in the patio of the ruined monastery, now the free abode of travelers. The all-but-horizontal shadow across the dial shows 6:30 A. M. |