AN AMAZONIAN CREEK

I hope you will study a map as we go along. If you look on the western side of the continent you will see a long range of mountains, called the Andes, tipped with sleeping volcanic fires on some, and capped by perpetual snow on others. Nestling away up among these rugged peaks is the highest body of water in the world, called Lake Titicaca, on which float the rush-boats of the Inca Indians, the silent and down-trodden “Children of the Sun.”

How vast China seems; and India, too, how big! Africa we feel we know very little about as yet, in spite of Livingstone and all the books that have been written; but here is South America—so neglected, and so large, that there is more unexplored territory there than in any other part of the world.

Not only so, but the continent is teeming with treasure. Diamonds and gold are hidden away in the earth in Brazil and Peru. Bolivia is a vast storehouse of silver and tin and coal. Petroleum and fertilizing nitrates for cleansing the soil are to be found in Chili. The forests of Peru and Brazil spell rubber—“black gold” it is called by the natives. Chinchona trees flourish in abundance in Peru; also cocaine, which the Indians chew from morning till night, to deaden their sufferings, and their hunger.

Although South America is so large, there are, roughly speaking, only about fifty million people living in it, but the population increases every year through immigrants of all nations pouring into the continent.

Five hundred years ago, South America was the Indian’s land. In the heart of the continent dwelt the savages, but Peru was the home of the highly-civilized Inca race. To the north lived an Indian people called the Chibchas, who came next in culture; and south, in Chili and Argentina, were the Araucanian Indians, who were not so cultured as the Incas or Chibchas, but who, notwithstanding, were a powerful people.

About five hundred years ago the Pope, in his arrogance, “gave” South America to the two Roman Catholic countries of Spain and Portugal. It was a dark day for that land when the Portuguese adventurers and their priests went to Brazil, and Pizarro and his Spanish followers to Peru, the home of the cruel Inquisition.

From that day onward slavery, ill-treatment, and cruel deaths have been the lot of the Indians. La Casas, a Roman Catholic official, more humane than his brethren, was so concerned at the lot of the Indians in Brazil that he suggested that Africans should be brought to help the Indians in the gold mines, and they too suffered from the hands of the merciless Portuguese. Hence, to-day, we see in Brazil the negroes (of whom there are said to be some four millions), the Indians, and the Portuguese-speaking people of many nations, comprising about twenty millions.

In Central and Southern Argentina the population is chiefly European. Buenos Aires, the capital, is largely Italian, though a very large number of British folk are living there. In Peru nearly three-fourths of the people are pure Indian, and Bolivia is mostly Indian as well.

For five long centuries this has indeed been the Land of Darkness and of the “Christless Cross.” Two thousand years ago, nearly, Christ said to the Apostle Peter: “Feed My lambs.” What have the so-called followers of Peter done for the Lambs of South America? Let us see.