Across the Andes / A Tale of Wandering Days Among the Mountains of Bolivia and the Jungles of the Upper Amazon

CHAPTER XII OFF ON THE LONG DRIFT

SLOWLY THE RAFTS SANK UNDER THE WEIGHT.

A long line of half-naked Leccos trotted across the grass-covered bluff and disappeared over the edge and down the steep path to the river, where our clumsy rafts swung and eddied in the boiling current. They grunted and sweated and laughed as they threw the heavy packages of our outfit on their shoulders, for they could swing a hundred and fifty or two hundred pounds as carelessly as you could handle a valise. Steadily the raised platforms on the rafts piled higher with the accumulating baggage, while slowly the rafts sank under the weight, until the logs were entirely covered by the muddy current. As the last package was put aboard, the Leccos began lashing the cargo in place with our spare rope and the long vines which they used for towing the rafts up-stream. They used as much care in throwing and tightening the lashings as though stowing the pack on a “bad” mule for a mountain-trail, rather than a cargo raft that was only to drift with the current. It seemed absurd.

“Here, good,” grunted a Lecco, waving a hand toward the mill-race current; “below, very bad, patrÓn, muy peligroso—yes.”

When later we struck the “bad places,” and waist-deep in the boiling, angry waters of the caÑons, clung to those same lashings, to keep ourselves from being washed overboard, the need of lashing for the baggage was plain.

THE SHREWISH LEATHER-SKINNED INDIAN WIFE.

The intendente, the jefe politico, and the only postmaster for many leagues of this virgin interior came down to tender us his farewell embraces; for as a strict matter of fact those three functionaries resided in the single person of that one short, stocky Cholo half-breed, who had given all the hospitality in his power during the dreary weeks of waiting in his little palm-thatched domain, but whose AymarÁ wife had viewed us with such sullen hospitality. Officially he noted with approval that we had already complied with the Bolivian regulations in regard to navigation, and at the bow floated the green, yellow, and red flag of Bolivia, and with much curiosity he viewed our American flag fluttering at the stern. It was the first he had ever seen. It gained, too, much approval from the Leccos, its decorative scheme of stars and red and white bars drawing admiring comment, and we could have sold it many times over as dress goods or as strictly high-class shirting. As a special mark of favor the shrewish, leather-skinned Indian wife of the Cholo jefe came down to see us off, and while we patted her lord on the back in our mutually polite embracings, she fluttered in the background, clacking unintelligible, but cordial, AymarÁ farewells.

When first we had dismounted in this tiny settlement of Mapiri this AymarÁ woman had borne us a fierce dislike that was kept from literal and open war only by the strong hand of her Cholo lord. A little later, unfortunately, one of our men, in making his offering of candles in the little mud-walled chapel, had ignited a saint. When I saw the saint shortly after, his vestments were charred shreds, he was as bald as a singed chicken, and his waxen features had coagulated into limp benevolence, out of which his sole remaining glass eye stared mildly. He had been placed on a little table up against a mud wall, and the Indian women were weeping and wailing before him in abject apology. They were hastily offering flowers, candles, and libations, but with this last straw the AymarÁ lady’s dislike had become even a more fixed, fanatical hatred.

Shrewish, unattractive, and savage though she was, she was devoted in her love for her Cholo husband. Some time after the burying of the saint, one night their son developed a difference with his father in which each tried to kill the other. The father had just reached his gun and would have been successful when, being thick-necked, violent, and full-blooded, he toppled over in a stroke of apoplexy. There being no doctor, not even an AymarÁ yatari within three hundred miles, the old lady turned to us in a panic, and, probably despite our amateur efforts, the Cholo pulled through. In the meantime the poor old woman fluttered about in an agony of helpless fear and love, eagerly hanging on the slow words of translation that came to her, for she spoke nothing but AymarÁ, and everything had to be translated first into Spanish and then into her own tongue. That very night she burned a box of candles before the charred saint, while in the morning we had for our breakfast a fine chicken apiece. Her gratitude endured, and in the quivering furnace heat she had come to see us depart, and as we waded aboard she followed us and laid on the cargo a pair of live chickens as a final gift.

The Cholo handed us a small sack of mail, asking us to distribute it on our way down the Rio Mapiri, these irregular trips being the sole means of mail communication with the rubber barracas of this far interior; the Leccos cast off the vine ropes that moored us, and a few strokes of their heavy paddles swung us out into the full, swift current of the river. As we struck it there was no feeling of speed or even of motion, but immediately the green walls on each side of the river began flitting past in a shimmering ribbon of confused green jungle. In a moment, far behind, came the crackling of rifle-shots. It was the Cholo and his Winchester in salute; even while we were pulling our guns to reply he and his wife had dwindled to tiny dots that the sound of our guns could have reached only as a faint echo. Then a bend in the river hid them from view, and my river voyage had begun.

The balsas were slender rafts of very buoyant logs spiked together with heavy pins of black palm; they had a rough bow made by the crooked center log, which turned up in a snout-like projection, giving the affair a curiously animal-like and amphibious expression. For the return voyage three of these balsas were lashed side by side with cross-logs and strips of the inner bark of some tree. The callapo, as this combination is called, is entirely submerged and except for the cargo platform and the turned-up snouts, nothing is visible above the muddy river.

As we disappeared around the bend in the swift current, the hills against the background seemed to close in upon us, and as they narrowed, the muddy river snapped and crackled in peevish, little waves. The banks grew steeper, and the air damp and cool, and although directly overhead there was the glaring blue sky of the forenoon, yet we moved swiftly through an atmosphere of evening. Long, trailing creepers drooped from the overhanging trees into the current near the banks and cut the water like the spray from the bow of a trim launch; the soft murmur of rapidly moving water rose, and was broken only now and then by the shrill cries of parrots flying high overhead; sometimes a pair of macaws, with their gaudy plumage flashing in the high sun flitted across the gorge. But though the river doubled and twisted among the hills, there were yet, according to Lecco standards, no “bad places,” and they passed the bottle of caÑassa sociably around among themselves, inspecting their passengers with interest and chuckling over their own comments. They had never seen a man with eye-glasses before, and I was a matter of fine interest and guesswork. What were those panes of glass for? Cautiously they would make a little circle with their fingers and thumbs and peer through it to see what effect of improvement might result. I received my name, “the four-eyed patrÓn,” promptly.

THERE WERE, ACCORDING TO THE LECCO STANDARDS, AS YET NO “BAD PLACES.”

The whole crew of Leccos was amiably drunk; it is the custom of the river, and it seems in no way to impair their efficiency. It has become their right by long custom, and one that it is not prudent to disregard; for a trader, being of a thrifty turn and not caring to buy the caÑassa, decided to run the river on a strict prohibition platform. Every one of his callapos was curiously enough wrecked in the same rapids on the day after he announced his thrifty principles. The general allowances is about two quarts a day for three men, and perhaps, if the day has been a hard one, a small teacupful each in the camp. Money to them has no value compared with caÑassa. Once, when trying to buy a fine bead neckband from a Lecco, I offered him money up to a dollar, Bolivian, the equivalent of eight bottles of caÑassa, and he refused, for his Lecco sweetheart had made it; then I began to barter all over again by offering him a bottle of caÑassa, and at once he handed me the neck-band without question.

While the current was swift, from eight to ten miles an hour, we had not come to the bad rapids. Sometimes the river would open out into broad shallows, where the callapo would bump and scrape along over the bottom, and then would close up into another gorge that in its turn would merge into tortuous caÑons with bluff walls of rock. Drunk though the Leccos were, yet their river skill did not seem to be affected. When we floated along the quieter reaches, they would play like silly children. Occasionally one would be tumbled into the river, and would swim alongside in sheepish embarrassment until he decided to climb aboard, amid the pleased cackles of the rest.

LECCOS LOWERING THE CALLAPO THROUGH SHALLOWS.

One, a young Lecco about seventeen or eighteen years old, who handled one of the stern paddles, accidentally stepped off backward into the river. The others shrieked with delight as the Lecco struck out for shore. We saw him land, pull his machete out from under his shirt, and start chopping down some saplings. Perhaps fifteen minutes later, in the next milder stretch of river, down came the Lecco like a cowpuncher on a pony, only his pony was a bundle of mere sticks lashed together with vine, and in place of a rope he swung a bamboo pole, using it as a paddle. He was standing up like a circus-rider on his frail raft, shifting it with his pole over to where the current was swiftest, and he coasted down the inclined glissade between rocks, avoiding every little eddy and catching only the roughest and swiftest places, until presently he had worked his way alongside and stepped aboard again. His little bundle of sticks did not number ten, and not one was as thick as your wrist, while merely two bits of vine at each end held them together.

THE LECCO OF THE TWIG RAFT.

I asked what would have happened had the vine lashings broke. When that was translated to the Leccos, they roared with laughter. That, it was explained to me, was what they were hoping for, so that then he would have had to swim. Swim! A fine joke to swim rapids and whirlpools that looked like sure death or worse mangling. But I found later that any one of them could have done it on even worse passages. If they are sure to be caught in a whirlpool, they will dive, and the fury of the rapid itself troubles them not the least. A Lecco once, to avoid a whipping by his rubber boss, threw himself into the river and swam six miles in the worst section of the river without a thought. A German later attempted to swim the mildest of these, and his broken body was picked up in an eddy three miles below.

Clyx.com