ONthe morning of the 23rd January, while wewere still considering, seeing what the sun waslike, and the languid air, and that we werereduced to tinned beans, fat bacon, and butterwhich was oil and flies, whether it was worthwhile to note our breakfast bell--the steward stoodswinging it, with the gravity of a priest, underthe break of the poop--a shout came from the bridgethat the Rio Madeira was in view.
As far back as Swansea we had heard legends ofthis stream, and they were sufficientlydisturbing. When we arrived at Para we heardmore, and worse. The pilot we engaged therecalled the Madeira the "long cemetery."At Serpa, for the first time, we saw what happenedto frail humanity when it ventured far on theMadeira. One day a river steamer came to Serpa,with a cargo of men from San Antonio. The riversteamers of the Amazon are vessels of broad beamand shallow draft, painted the dingy hue of theriver itself, and they have two tiers of decks,open-air shelves, between the supports of whichthe passengers sling their hammocks. Thepassengers do not sleep in bunks. This paddleboatcame throbbing towards where we were at anchor.It was night, and she was unseen, a palpitation inthe dark accompanied somehow by a fountain ofsparks. Such boats burn wood in their furnaces.When her noise had ceased, and her lightsimperceptibly enlarged as the current dropped herdown abeam of us, a breath of her, a draught ofair, passed our way. I am more familiar now withthe odour malaria causes, but then I thought shemust have a freight of the dead. She anchored.We could see her loaded hammocks in the light ofthe few lamps she carried. Through the binocularsnext morning I inspected with peculiar interestthe row of cadaverous heads, with black tousledhair, lemon-coloured skins, open mouths andvacant eyes, which stared at us over her rails.Each looked as though once it had peered into theeyes of doom, and then was but waiting, caringnothing.
There, ahead, was the Madeira now for us. Wewere then nearly a thousand miles from the sea,well within South America. But that meeting-placeof the Amazon and its chief tributary was anexpanse of water surprising in its immensity. Asmuch light was reflected from the floor as at sea.The water was oceanic in amplitude. The forestboundaries were so far away that one could notrealise, even when the time we had been on theriver was remembered as a prolonged monotony, thatthis was the centre of a continent. The forest onour port side was near enough for us to see itslimbs and its vines; but to the south-west, wherewe were heading for Bolivia, and to the north, theway to the Guianas, and to the east, out of whichwe had come, and to the west, where was Peru, theland was but a low violet harrier, varying inaltitude with distance, and with silver sectionsin it, marking the river roads. In the north-westthere was a broad silver path through the wall,the way to the Rio Negro, Manaôs, and theOrinoco. In the south the near forest, beingflooded, was a puzzle of islands. As weprogressed they opened out as a line of greenheadlands. The Madeira appeared to have threewidely separated mouths, with a complexity ofintermediate and connective minor ditches.Indeed, the gate of the river was a region ofinundated jungle. One began to understand whytravellers here sometimes find themselves on thewrong river.
Our bows turned in to the forest wall, and fora few minutes I could not see any way for usthere. The jungle parted, and we were on a narrowturgid flood, the colour of the main river, butswifter; a majestic forest was near to eitherbeam. We were enclosed. And after we entered theMadeira my dark thoughts of our future at onceleft me. If they returned, it was only to bejoked about, in the dry way one does refer to adread that has been long in the distance, and thenone day takes shape, becomes material, and settlesdown with us. Its form, as you know, nearlyalways allays your alarms. Your simple mind hasexpected something with the lowering face of evil.Lo! evil has even bright eyes. Its nature, itsdark craft which you have dreaded, is not seen,and your mind grows light with surprise. What,only this, then?
I never saw earth look more resplendent andchromatic than on the day when we entered thatriver with a bad name. Presently, I thought--herewas a brief resurgence of the old gloom which hadshrouded my conjectural Madeira--I might be calledupon to pay the price for this surprising gift ofintense colour, light, and luscious heat, for thequickening of the blood, as though the tropic airwere a stimulant as well as a narcotic. Well, itdoes seem but fair, if chance, being happy, givesyou a place in the tropics, to expect to have lesstime there than is given for the job of eking outa meagre existence in the north. It would not beright to look for gain both ways. (You will havenoticed already, I suppose, that I have not beenon the Madeira fifteen minutes.) This, I thought,as I walked to and fro on the "Capella,"is different from that endurance, bitter andprolonged, in the land where there is no sun worthmentioning, where the northeast wind blows, wherethe poor rate is so and so in the pound (and youare one of the fortunate if you pay it), and LordRosebery lectures on Thrift. I mentioned this tothe Doctor. He did not remove his pipe from hismouth.
Because (the idea dawned on me as I sank into adeck chair beside the surgeon under the poopawning, and borrowed his silver tobacco-box),because, as to thrift and parching winds,abstinence and prudence, and lectures by thesolemn on how to thin out your life in coldclimates where all that is worth having isannexed, why praise a man who is willing todeprave his life to sand and frost? There inmerry England the poor wretch is, where the richesof earth are not broadcast largess as I see theyare here, but are stacked on each side of theroad, and guarded by police, leaving to him butthe inclement highway, with nothing but LordRosebery's advice and benediction to help him keepthe wind out of the holes in his trousers; thatbenefit, and the bleak consideration that he mayswink all day for a handful of beans, or gowithout. What is prudence in that man? It is hisgoodwill for the police. To be blue nosed andmeek at heart, and to hoard half the crust of yourstinted bread, is to blaspheme the King of Glory.Some men will touch their crowns to Carnegie inheaven.
Thrift and abstinence! They began to look themost snivelling of sins as I watched, withspacious leisure, the near procession of gigantictrees, that superb wild which did not arise fromsuch nigg*rd and flinty maxims. Frugality andprudence! That is to regard the means to death inlife, the pallor and projecting bones of a warpedexistence, as good men dwell on courage,motherhood, rebellion, and May time, and the otherproofs of vitality and growth. Now, I thought, Isee what to do. All those improving lectures,reform leagues, university settlements, labourexchanges, and other props for crippled humanity,are idle. It is a generative idea that is wanted,a revelation, a vision. It would be easier andquicker to take regiments of folk out of Ancoats,Hanley, Bethnal Green, and the cottages of thecountryside, for one long glance at the kind ofearth I see now. The world would expand as theylooked. They would get the dynamic suggestion.In vain, afterwards, would the monopolists and thesuperior persons chant patriotic verse to drownthe noise of chain forging at the Westminsterfoundry. Not the least good, that. The folkwould not hear. Their minds would be absent andoutward, not locked within to huddle with crampedand respectful thoughts. They would not startinstinctively at the word of command. They wouldbegin with dignity and assurance to compass theirown affairs, and in an enormous way; and theywould make hardly a sound as they moved forward,and they would have uplifted and shining eyes.("Then you think more of `em than I do,"said the surgeon.)
It would be no use, I saw clearly, sending thefolk to Algeria, Egypt, or New York. Such placesnever betray to the traveller that our world isnot a shapeless parcel of fields and buildings,tied up with bylaws, and sealed by the Grand Lamaas his last act in the stupendous work ofcreation. There it is, an angular package in thesky, which the sun reads, and directs on its wayto heaven in advance of its limited syndicate ofproprietors.
Here on the Madeira I had a vision instead ofthe earth as a great and shining sphere. Therewere no fences and private bounds. I saw for thefirst time an horizon as an arc suggesting howwide is our ambit. That bare shoulder of theworld effaced regions and constellations in thesky. Our earth had celestial magnitude. It waswarm, a living body. The abundant rain was vital,and the forest I saw, nobler in stature and withan aspect of intensity beyond what the Amazonforests showed, rose like a sign of lifetriumphant.
You see what that tropical wilderness did forme. and with but a single glance. Whatever comesafter, I shall never be the same again. Thecomplacent length of the ship was before us.Amidships were some of the fellows staringoverside, absorbed. Now and then, when his beatbrought him to the port side, I could see the headof the little pilot on the bridge. His colleaguewas sleeping in one of the hammocks slung betweenthe stanchions of the poop awning. The Doctor wasscrutiising a pair of motuca flies which hoveredabout his ankles, waiting for him to go to sleep.He wanted them for specimens. The Skipper,looking a little anxious, came slowly up the poopladder, crossed over, and stood by our chairs."The river is full of big timber," hesaid. He went to stare overside, and then cameback to us. "The current is about fiveknots, and those trees adrift are as big asbarges. I hope they keep clear of thepropeller." The Skipper's eye was uneasy. Hewas glum with suspicion; he spoke of the way hisfools might meet the wiles of fortune at a timewhen he was below and his ship was without itsacute protective intelligence, lie stood, a sparefigure in white, in a limp grass hat with flappingeaves, gazing forward to the bridge mistrustfully.He had brought us in a valuable vessel to a placeunknown, and now he had to go on, and afterwardsget us all out again. I began to feel a largerespect for this elderly master mariner (who didnot give the beard of an onion for any man'ssympathy) who had skilfully contrived to put uswhere we were, and now was unaware what mischancewould send us to rot under the forest wall, thebottom to fall out of our adventure just when wewere in its narrowest passage and achievement wasalmost within view. "This is no place for aship," the captain mumbled. "It isn'tright. We're disturbing the mud all the time; andlook at those butterflies now, dodging aboutus!" He was continuing this monologue as adirty cap appeared at the head of the ladder, anda long and ragged length of sorrowful sailormounted there, and doffed the cap. The Skipperbrusquely signed to him to approach. He was ayoungster in an advanced stage of some trouble,and he had no English. I think he was a Swede.He demonstrated his sickness, baring his arm,muttering unintelligibly. The limb, like hishand, was distorted with large blisters. Therewas his face, too. I mistrusted my equanimity forsome moments, but braced my eyes, compelling themto be scientific and impersonal. By sigus wegathered he had been sleeping on deck, such wasthe heat of the forecastle, and the mosquitoes,the Doctor said, had poisoned a body alreadytainted from the stews of Rotterdam. Thecorroding spirit of the jungle was beginning topermeate through our flaws.
The Doctor went to his surgery. The pilot satup in his hammock, glanced indifferently at thesick sailor, yawning and stretching his arms, hisdainty little brown feet dangling just clear ofthe deck. He began to roll a cigarette ofsomething which looked like tea. Then he droppedout, and went forward to release his mate on thebridge, and the senior pilot came up as the Doctorhad finished his job. The junior pilot, afragile, girlish fellow, rather taciturn, greetsus always with a faintly supercilious smile. Hischief is a round, jolly little man, hearty, andlavish with ornamental gestures. We both smiledinvoluntarily as he marched across to us, with hisuniform cap, bearing our ship's badge, stuck onthe back of his head with a bias to the right ear.There is not enough of Portuguese in our ship'scompany to serve one conversation adequately, butwe get on well with this pilot, and he with us.He sits in a hammock, making pantomime explanatoryof Brazil to us strangers, and we pick him up withalacrity, after but brief pauses. While theDoctor beguiled him into dramatic moments, I layback and watched him, searching for Braziliancharacteristics, to report here.
You know that, when you have returned from afar country, you are asked unanswerable questionsabout its people, and especially about its women.We are easily flattered by the suggestion that weare authoritative, with opinions got from uncommonexperience, especially where women with strangeeyes and dark skins are concerned. So, once upona time, I caught myself--or rather, I caught thatcold, critical, and impartial part of me, which isa solemn fake--when answering a question of thiskind, explaining in a comprehensive way thecharacter of the Brazilian people, as though Iwere telling of the objective phenomena of onesimple soul. Presently the wise and ribald partof me woke, caught the note of that inhuman voice,and raised a derisive cry, heard by me with gravedeprecation, but not heard at all by my listener.I stopped. For what do I know of the Braziliancharacter? Very little. Is there such a thing?I suppose the true Brazilian is like the trueEnglishman, or the typical bird which is known byits bones, but may be anything from a crow to anightingale, but is more likely a lark. You canimagine the foreiguer taking his knowledge of theBritish pickpocket who met him at thelanding-stage, the pen-portraits of Bernard Shaw,the Rev. Jeremiah Hardshell, Father O'Flynn, You,Me, the cabman who swore at him, his landlady andher daughter, Lloyd-George, Piccadilly by night,and Tom Bowling, carefully adjusting all thatvaluable British data, just as Professor KarlPearson does his physical statistics, andexplaining the result as the modern English;adding, in the usual footnote, what decadenttendencies are to be deduced, in addition, fromthe facts which could not be worked into the majorpremises.
Now, there was the handsome Brazilian customsofficer, tall, august, with dark eyes haughty andslow with thought, the waves of his romantic blackhair faintly traced in silver, who might have beena poet, or a philosophic revolutionist; but whowas the man, as the first mate told us (after wehad searched everywhere for the articles) who"pinched your bloomin' field-glasses and mymeerschaum."
Take, if you like, the ultra-fashionable ladiesat the Para hotel, who looked at us with sleepyeyes, and who, I suspect, were not Brazilians atall. Supposing they were, there must be countedthe wife of the official at Serpa. She cameaboard there with her husband to see an Englishship; she reminded me of that picture of theMadonna by Sassoferrato in the National Gallery; Iam unable to come nearer to justice to her thanthat. Again, there was a certain vain nativeapothecary, and he had the idea that I wasbottle-washer to the "Capella's"surgeon, much to that fellow's secret delight.The chemist treated me with a studied differencein consequence; and though our surgeon could haveundeceived the mistaken man, having somePortuguese, he refused to do so. I remember thepilot who, when he left us at Serpa, and I badehim farewell, did, before all our ship's company,embrace me heartily, rest his cheek against mine,and make loving noises in his throat. And thereis our present chief guide, now swinging in hishammock, and looking down upon us waggishly.
He had not been a pilot always. Once he was aclown in a circus; that little fact is a clue tomuch which otherwise would have been obscure inhim. When he boarded us at Serpa to take theplace of the man who shrank from the thought ofthe Madeira, the chart-room under the bridge wasgiven to him, and as the mate put it, "hemoved in." He had bundles, boxes, bags,baskets, a tin trunk, a chair, a parrot, ahammock, and some pictures. He was going to bewith us for two months, but his affair had theconclusive character of a migration, a finalseverance from his old life. His friends came tosee him depart, and they wound themselves in eachothers arms, head laid in resignation onshoulders. "Looks as if we're bound for theGolden Shore," commented the boatswain.
This little rounded man, the pilot, with hisunctuous olive skin, tiny moustache of black silk,and impudent eyes, looked ripe in middle age,though actually he was but thirty. He wore a suitof azure cotton, ironed faultlessly, and his tunicfitted with hooks and eyes across his throat. Hisboots were sulphur coloured and Parisian. Amassive gold ring, which carried a carbonadonearly as large as the stopper of a beer bottle,was embedded in a fat finger of his right hand.In the front of his cap he had sewn the badge ofour line, and he was curiously proud of that gaudysymbol. He would wear the cap on one ear, andwalk up and down in display, with a lofty smile,and a carriage supposed to appertain to a Britishofficer in a grand moment. He had a greatadmiration for all that was British, except ourfood. If you were up at sunrise you could see himat his toilet, and the spectacle was worth theeffort. His array of toilet vesicles reminded meof the shelves in a barber's shop. Oiled andfragrant, he took his seat for breakfast with muchformal politeness. He shook our saloon companyinto a sense of its responsibilities, for we hadgrown indifferent as to dress, and sometimes wehad three-day beards. His handkerchiefs and linenwere scented, and dainty with floral designs. Andours--oh, ours--! He took wine at breakfast, andafter idling a little with our foreign dishes hewould wipe his mouth on our tablecloth, and thenleave for the bridge. As he passed across thepoop we would hear him hawk violently, and spit onthe deck. Then the Skipper would glare, and drivehis chair backwards in a dark passion.
Gazing at the foliage as it unfolded, our pilotnamed the paranas, tributaries, and islands, whenthey drew abeam. He told us what the trees were;and then with head shakes and uplifted hands andeyes, indicated what grave things were behind thatscreen of leaves. (Though I don't suppose heknew.) His mimicry was so spontaneous and exactthat it was more entertaining and just asinstructive as speech. He taught us how theIndians kill you, and what some villagers did to anaughty padre, and how the sucuruju swallows adeer, and how to make love to a Brazilian girl.He kicked the slippers from his little feet, andsmuggled into the hammock mesh for a snooze,waving a hand coyly to us over the edge of hisnest.
The dinner bell rang. Because the saloon isnow hot beyond endurance, the steward has fixed atable on deck, and so, as we eat, we can see thejungle pass. That keeps some of our mind fromdwelling over much on the dreary menu. Thepotatoes have begun to ferment. The meat is outof tins; sometimes it is served as fritters,sometimes we recognise it in a hash, andsometimes, shameless, it appears without dress, anaked and shiny lump straight from its metal bed.Often the bread is sour. The butter, too, is outof tins. Feeding is not a joy, but a duty. Butit is soon over. Although everybody now complainsof indigestion, we have far to go yet, and thecheerfulness which faces all circ*mstancesbrazenly must be our manna. Our table, some dealplanks on trestles, is mellowed by a whitetablecloth. We sit round on boxes. Over head thesun flames on the awning, making it golden andtranslucent. I let the soup pass. The next dishis a hot pot of tinned mutton and preservedvegetables. Something must be done, and I do itthen. There is some pickled beef and pickledonions. I watch the forest pass. Then, fordesert, the steward, the hot beads touring aboutthe mounts of his large pale face, brings alongoleaginous fritters of plum duff. The Doctorleaves. I follow him to the chairs again, and weexchange tobacco-boxes and fill our pipes. Thismay seem to you unendurable for long. I did notthink so, though of habits so regular andengrained that my chances of survival, when viewedcomparatively, for my ship mates were hardened andusually were more robust, seemed poor enough. ButI enjoyed it. There was nourishment, a tonicstay, in our desire to greet every onset of themiseries, which now were camped about us,besieging our souls, with sansculotte insolence.We called to the Eumenides with mockery. LikeThoreau, I believe I could live on a tenpennynail, if it comes to that.
See AlsoSWOOOPKrista Soderberg en LinkedIn: Swoop Aero Case Study – Amazon Web Services (AWS)Solutions - Swoop AeroThere is no doubt the forest influences ourmoods in a way you at home could not understand.Our minds take its light and shade, and just asour little company, gathered in the Chief's roomat a time when the seas were running high,recalled sombre legends which told of foredoom, sothis forest, an intrusive presence which is withus morning, noon, and night, voiceless, or makingsuch sounds as we know are not for our ears, nowshadows us, the prescience of destiny, as thoughan eyeless mask sat at table with us, a beingwhich could tell us what we would know, but thoughit stays, makes no sign.
This forest, since we entered the Para River,now a thousand miles away, has not ceased. Therehave been the clearings of the settlements fromPara inwards; but as Spruce says in his Journal,those clearings and campos alter the forest of theAmazon no more than would the culling of a fewweeds alter the aspect of an English cornfield.The few openings I have seen in the forest do notderange my clear consciousness of a limitlessocean of leaves, its deep billows of foliagerolling down to the only paths there are in thiscountry, the rivers, and there overhanging,arrested in collapse. There is no land. One musttravel by boat from one settlement to another.The settlements are but islands, narrow footholds,widely sundered by vast gulfs of jungle.
The forest of the Amazons is not merely treesand shrubs. It is not land. It is anotherelement. Its inhabitants are arborean; they havebeen fashioned for life in that medium as fishesto the sea and birds to the air. Its greenapparition is persistent, as the sky is and theocean. In months of travel it is the horizonwhich the traveller cannot reach, and itsunchanging surface, merged through distance into amere reflector of the day, a brightness or agloom, in his immediate vicinity breaks into acomplexity of green surges; then one day thevoyager sees land at last and is released from it.But we have not seen land since Serpa. There aremen whose lives are spent in the chasms of lightwhere the rivers are sunk in the dominant element,but who never venture within its green surface,just as one would not go beneath the waves to walkin the twilight of the sea bottom.
Now I have been watching it for so long I seethe outer aspect of the jungles does vary. When Isaw it first on the Para River it appeared to mywondering eyes but featureless green cliffs. Thenin the Narrows beyond Para I remember animpression of elegance and placidity, for there,the waters still being tidal and saline, the palmswere conspicuous and in profuse abundance. Thegreat palms are the chief feature of that forestelevation, with their graceful columns, and theirgenerous and symmetrical fronds which sometimesare like gigantic green feathers, and again arelike fans. A tall palm, whatever its species,being a definite expression of life--not anagglomeration of leaves, but body and crown, areal personality--the forest of the Narrows,populous with such exquisite beings, had marges ofstraight ascending lines and flourishing andgeometrical crests.
Beyond the river Xingu, on the main stream, theforest, persistent as a presence, again changedits aspect. It was ragged and shapeless, animpenetrable tangle, its front strewn with fallentrees, the vision of outer desolation. By Obydosit was more aerial and shapely again, but not ofthat light and soaring grace of the Narrows. Itwas contained, yet mounted not in straight lines,as in the country of the palms, but in convexmasses. Here on the lower Madeira the forestseems of a nature intermediate between the rollingstructure of the growth by Obydos, and the graceof the palm groves in the estuarine region of theNarrows. It is barbaric and splendid, easilyprodigal with illimitable riches, sinking theriver beneath a wealth of forms.
On the Madeira, as elsewhere in the world ofthe Amazons, some of the forest is on"terra-firma," as that land is calledwhich is not flooded when the waters rise. Therethe trees reach their greatest altitude anddiameter; it is the region of the ca´ apoam,the "great woods" of the Indians. Astretch of terra firma shows as a low, verticalbank of clay, a narrow ribbon of yellow earthdividing the water from the jungle. More rarelythe river cuts a section through some undulatingheights of red conglomerate-heights I call thesecliffs, as heights they are in this flat country,though at home they would attract no moreattention than would the side of a gravel-pit--andagain the bank may be of that cherry and saffronclay which gives a name to Itacoatiara. On suchland the forest of the Madeira is immense, threeor four species among the greater trees lording itin the green tumult expansively, alwaysconspicuous where they stand, their huge bolesshowing in the verdant façade of the jungleas grey and brown pilasters, their crowns risingabove the level roof of the forest in definitecupolas. There is one, having a neat and compactdome and a grey, smooth, and rounded trunk, anddense foliage as dark as that of the holm oak; andanother, resembling it, but with a flattened andsomewhat disrupted dome. I guessed these twogiants to be silk-cottons. Another, which Isupposed to be of the leguminous order, had asilvery bole, and a texture of pale green leafa*geopen and light, which at a distance resembled thatof the birch. These three trees, when assembledand well grown, made most stately riversidegroups. The trunks were smooth and bare tillsomewhere near ninety feet from the ground. Palmswere intermediate, filling the spaces betweenthem, but the palms stood under the exogens,growing in alcoves of the mass, rising no higherthan the beginning of the branches and foliage oftheir lords. The whole overhanging superstructureof the forest--not a window, an inlet, anywherethere--was rolling clouds of leaves from the lowerrims of which vines were catenary, looping fromone green cloud to another, or pendent, like thesundered cordage of a ship's rigging. Two othertrees were frequent, the pao mulatto, with limbsso dark as to look black, and the castanheiro, theBrazil nut tree.
The roof of the woods lowered when we weresteaming past the igapo. The igapo, or aqueousjungle, through which the waters go deeply forsome months of the year, is of a differentcharacter, and perhaps of a lesser height--it seemsless; but then it grows on lower ground. I wastold to note that its foliage is of a lightergreen, but I cannot say I saw that. It is in theigapo that the Hevea Braziliensis flourishes, itspale bole, suggestive of the white poplar, deep inwater for much of the year, and its crownsheltered by its greater neighbours, so that itgrows in a still, heated, and humid twilight.This low ground is always marked by growths ofsmall cecropia trees. These, with their whitestems, their habit of free and regular branching,and their long leaves, digital in the manner ofthe horse-chestnut, have the appearance of greatcandelabra. Sometimes the igapo is prefaced by anarea of cane. The numberless islands, being ofrecent formation, have a forest of a differentnature, and they seldom carry the larger trees.The upper ends of many of the islands terminate insandy pits, where dwarf willows grow. So foreignwas the rest of the vegetation, thatnotwithstanding its volume and intricacy, Idetected those humble little willows at once, asone would start surprised at an English word heardin the meaningless uproar of an alien multitude.
The forest absorbed us; as one's attentionwould be challenged and drawn by the casualregard, never noticeably direct, but neverwithdrawn, of a being superior and mysterious, soI was drawn to watch the still and intent statureof the jungle, waiting for it to become vocal, forsome relaxing of its static form. Nothing everhappened. I never discovered it. Rigid,watchful, enigmatic, its presence was constant,but without so much as one blossom in all itsgreen vacuity to show the least friendlyfamiliarity to one who had found flowers andwoodlands kind. It had nothing that I knew. Itremained securely aloof and indifferent, till Ithought hostility was implied, as the sea impliesits impartial hostility, in a constant presencewhich experience could not fathom, nor interestsoften, nor courage intimidate. We sank graduallydeeper inwards towards its central fastnesses.
By noon on our first day on the Madeira wereached the village of Rozarinho, which is on theleft bank, with the tributary of the same name alittle more up stream, but entering from the otherside. Here, as we followed a loop of the stream,the Madeira seemed circ*mscribed, a tranquil lake.The yellow water, though swift, had so polished asurface that the reflections of the forest werehardly disturbed, sinking below the tops of theinverted trees to the ultimate clouds, giving anillusion of profundity to the apparent lake. Thevillage was but a handful of leaf huts groupedabout the nucleus of one or two larger buildingswith white walls. There was the usual jetty of afew planks to which some canoes were tied. Theforest was a high background to those diminishedhuts; the latter, as we came upon them, suddenlyincreased the height of the trees.
In another place the shelter of a family ofIndians was at the top of a bank, secretive withinthe base of the woods. A row of chocolate babiesstood outside that nest, with four jabiru storksamong them. Each bird, so much taller than thebabies, stood resting meditatively on one leg, asthough waiting the order to take up an infant anddeliver it somewhere. None of them, storks orinfants, took the least notice of us. Perhaps thetime had not yet come for them to be aware ofmundane things. Certainly I had a feeling myself,so strange was the place, and quiet and tranquilthe day, that we had passed world's end, and thatwhat we saw beyond our steamer was the colouredstuff of dreams which, if a wind blew, wouldwreathe and clear; vanish, and leave a shiningvoid. The sunset deepened this apprehension.There came a wonderful sky of orange and mauve.It was over us and came down and under the ship.We moved with glowing clouds beneath our keel.There was no river; the forest girdled the radiantinterior of a hollow sphere.
The pilots could not proceed at night. Shortlyafter sundown we anchored, in nine fathoms. Thetrees were not many yards from the steamer. Whenthe ship was at rest a canoe with two Indians camealongside, with a basket of guavas. They were shyfellows, and each carried in his hand a brightmachete, for they did not seem quite sure of ourcompany. After tea we sat about the poop, tryingto smoke, and, in the case of the Doctor and thePurser, wearing at the same time veils ofbutterfly nets, as protection from the mosquitoswarms. The netting was put over the helmet, andtucked into the neck of the tunic. Yet, when Ipoked the stem of the pipe, which carried thegauze with it, into my mouth, the veil was drawntight on the face. A mosquito jumped to theopportunity, and arrived. Alongside, the frogswere making the deafening clangour of an ironfoundry, and through that sound shrilled thecicadas. I listened for the first time to the dinof a tropical night in the forest. There is noword strong enough to convey this uproar to earswhich have not listened to it.
Jan. 24. A bright still sunrise, promisingheat; and before breakfast the ship's ironwork wastoo hot to touch. The novelty of this Madeira isalready beginning to merge into the yellow of theriver, the blue of the sky, and the green of thejungle, with but the occasional variation of lowroseous cliffs. The average width of the rivermay be less than a quarter of a mile. It isloaded with floating timber, launched upon it by"terras-cahidas," landslides, caused bythe rains, which carry away sections of the foresteach large enough to furnish an English park withtrees. Sometimes we see a bight in the bank wheresuch a collapse has only recently occurred, thewreckage of trees being still fresh. Many of thetrees which charge down on the current are ofgreat bulk, with half their table-like base highout of the water. Occasionally rafts of themappear, locked with creepers, and bearingflourishing gardens of weeds. This characteristicgives the river its Portuguese name, "riverof wood." The Indians know the Madeira as theCayary, "white " river.
Its course to-day serpentines so freely that attimes we steer almost east, and then again gowest. Our general direction is south-west. Ateight this morning, after some anxious momentswhen the river was dangerous with reefs, we passedthe village of Borba, 140 miles from Serpa. Herethere is a considerable clearing, with kinebrowsing over a hummocky sward that is well abovethe river on an occurrence of the red clay. Thisrelease of the eyes was a smooth and gratefulexperience after the enclosing walls. Some stepsdug in the face of the low cliff led to the whitehouses, all roofed with red tiles. The villagefaced the river. From each house ascended theleisurely smoke of early morning. The church wasin the midst of the houses, its bell conspicuouswith verdigris. Two men stood to watch us pass.It was a pleasant assurance to have, those roofsand the steeple rising actually into the light ofthe sky. The dominant forest, in which we weresunk, was here definitely put down by ourfellow-men.
We were beyond Borba, and its parana and islandjust above it, before the pilot had finishedtelling us, where we watched from the"Capella's" bridge, that Borba was asettlement which had suffered much from attacks ofthe Araras Indians. The river took a sharp turnto the east, and again went west. Islands werenumerous. These islands are lancet-shaped, andlie along the banks, separated by side channels,their paranas, from the land. The smaller rivercraft often take a parana instead of the mainstream, to avoid the rush of the current. Thewhole region seems lifeless. There is never aflower to be seen, and rarely a bird. Sometimes,though, we disturb the snowy heron. On one sandyisland, passed during the afternoon, and calledappropriately, lIho do Jacaré, we saw twoalligators. Otherwise we have the silent river toourselves; though I am forgetting the butterflies,and the constant arrival aboard of new wingedshapes which are sometimes so large and grotesquethat one is uncertain about their aggressivequalities. As we idle on the poop we keep by ustwo insect nets, and a killing-bottle. The Doctoris making a collection, and I am supposed toassist. When I came on deck on the morning of ourarrival in the Brazils it was not the orangesunrise behind a forest which was topped by ablack design of palm fronds, nor the warm odour ofthe place, nor the height and intensity of thevegetation, which was most remarkable to me, anew-coiner from the restricted north. It was abutterfly which flickered across our steamer likea coloured flame. No other experience put Englandso remote. A superb butterfly, too bright andquick to be anything but an escape from Paradise,will stay its dancing flight, as though withintelligent surprise at our presence, hover as ifpuzzled, and swoop to inspect us, alighting onsome such incongruous piece of our furniture as acoil of rope, or the cook's refuse pail, pulsingits wings there, plainly nothing to do with us,the prismatic image of joy. Out always rush someof our men at it, as though the sight of it hadmaddened them, as would a revelation of accessibleriches. It moves only at the last moment,abruptly and insolently. They are left to gape atit* mocking retreat. It goes in erratic flashesto the wall of trees and then soars over theparapet, hope at large. Then there are the otherthings which, so far as most of us know, have nonames, though a sailor, wringing his hands inanguish, is usually ready with a name. To-day wehad such a visitor. He looked a fellow the Doctormight require, so I marked him down when hesettled near a hatch on the afterdeck. He was abee the size of a walnut, and habited in dark bluevelvet. In this land it is wise to assume thateverything bites or stings, and that when acreature looks dead it is only carefully watchingyou. I clapped the net over that fellow andinstantly he appeared most dead. Knowing he wasbut shamming, and that he would give me noassistance, I stood wondering what I could donext; then the cook came along. The cook saw thesituation, laughed at my timidity with tropicalforms, went down on his knees, and caught myprisoner. The cook raised a piercing cry. On thebridge I saw them levelling their glasses at us;and some engineers came to their cabin doors tosee us where we stood on the lonely deck, the cookand the Purser, in a tableau of poignant tragedy.The cook walked round and round, nursing hissuffering member, and I did not catch all he said,for I know very little Dutch; but the spirit of itwas familiar, and his thumb was bleeding badly.The bee had resumed death again. The state of thecook's thumb was a surprise till the surgeonexhibited the bee's weapons, when it became clearthat thumbs, especially when Dutch and rosy, likeour cook's, afforded the right medium for anartist who worked with such mandibles, and a tailthat was a stiletto.
In England the forms of insect life soon becomefamiliar. There is the housefly, the lessercabbage white butterfly, and one or two otherlittle things. In the Brazils, though the greathost of forms is surprising enough, it is thevariety in that host which is more surprisingstill. Any bright day on the "Capella"you may walk the length of the ship, carrying anet and a collecting-bottle, and fill the bottle(butterflies, co*ckroaches, and bugs not admitted),and perhaps have not three of a species. The menfrequently bring us something buzzing in a hat;though accidents do happen half-way to where theDoctor is sitting, and the specimen is mangled ina frenzy. A hornet came to us that way. He wasin violet armour, as hard as a crab, was stillstabbing the air with his long needle, and workingon a fragment of hat he held in his jaws. Butsuch knights in mail are really harmless, forafter all they need not be interfered with. It isthe insignificant little fellows whose object inlife it is to interfere with us which really makethe difference.
So far on the river we have not met the famouspium fly. But the motuca fly is a nuisance duringthe afternoon sleep. It is nearly of the size andappearance of a "blue-bottle" fly, butit* wings, having black tips, look as though theirends were cut off. The motucas, while we slept,would alight on the wrists and ankles, and whereeach had fed there would be a wound from which theblood steadily trickled.
The mosquitoes do not trouble us till sundown.But one morning in my cabin I was interested inthe hovering of what I thought was a small, leggyspider which, because of its colouration of blackand grey bands, was evasive to the sight as itdrifted about on its invisible thread. At last Icaught it, and found it was a new mosquito. Inpursuing it I found a number of them in the cabin.When I exhibited the insect to the surgeon he didnot well disguise his concern. "Say nothingabout it," he said, "but this is theyellow-fever brute," So our interest in ournew life is kept alert and bright. The solid teakdoors of our cabins are now permanently fixedback. Shutting them would mean suffocation; butas the cabins must be closed before sundown tokeep out the clouds of gnats, the carpenter hasmade wooden frames, covered with copper gauze, tofit the door openings at night, and rounds ofgauze to cap the open ports; and with a dampcloth, and some careful hunting each morning, oneis able to keep down the mosquitoes which havemanaged to find entry during the night and haveretired at sunrise to rest in dark corners. Forour care notwithstanding the insects do find theirway in to assault our lighted lamps. The Chief,partly because as an old sailor he is a fatalist,and partly because he thinks his massive body mustbe invulnerable, and partly because he has acontempt, anyway, for protecting himself, eachmorning has a new collection of curios, alive anddead, littered about his room. (I do not wonderBates remained in this land so long; it is Elysiumfor the entomologist.) One of the live creaturesfound in his room the Chief retains and cherishes,and hopes to tame, though the object does not yetanswer to his name of Edwin. This creature is agreen mantis or praying insect, about four incheslong, which the Chief came upon where it rested onthe copper gauze of his door-cover, holding a flyin its hands, and. eating it as one would anapple. This mantis is an entertaining freak, andcan easily keep an audience watching it for anhour, if the day is dull. Edwin, in colour andform, is as fresh, fragile, and translucent as aleaf in spring. He has a long thin neck --thestalk to his wings, as it were--which is quite athird of his length. He has a calm, human facewith a pointed chin at the end of his neck; heturns his face to gaze at you without moving hisbody, just as a man looks backwards over hisshoulder. This uncanny mimicry makes the Chiefshake with mirth. Then, if you alarm Edwin, hesprings round to face you, frilling his wingsabroad, standing up and sparring with his longarms, which have hooks at their ends. At othertimes he will remain still, with his hands claspedup before his face, as though in earnest devotion,for a trying period. If a fly alights near him heturns his face that way and regards itattentively. Then sluggishly he approaches it forcloser scrutiny. Having satisfied himself it is agood fly, without warning his arms shoot out andthat fly is hopelessly caught in the hooked hands.He eats it, I repeat, as you do apples, and theauthentic mouthfuls of fly can be seen passingdown his glassy neck. Edwin is fragile as a newleaf in form, has the same delicate colour. andhas fascinating ways; but somehow he gives anobserver the uncomfortable thought that the meansto existence on this earth, though intricately andwonderfully devised, might have been manageddifferently. Edwin, who seems but a prettyfragment of vegetation, is what we call a lie.His very existence rests on the fact that he is adiabolical lie.
Gossamers in the rigging to-day led the captainto prophesy a storm before night. Clouds of anindigo darkness, of immense bulk, and motionless,reduced the sunset to mere runnels of opalinelight about the bases of dark mountains invertedin the heavens. There was a rapid fall oftemperature, but no rain. Our world, and we inits centre on the "Capella," waited forthe storm in an expectant hush. Night fell whilewe waited. The smooth river again deepened intothe nadir of the last of day, and the forest aboutus changed to material ramparts of cobalt. Thepilot made preparations to anchor. The enginebell rang to stand-by, a summons of familiarurgency, but with a new and alarming note whenheard in a place like that. The forest made noresponse. A little later the bell clanged rapidlyagain, and the pulse of our steamer slowed,ceased. We could hear the water uncoiling alongour plates. The forest itself approached us, cameperilously near. The Skipper's voice criedabruptly, "Let go!" and at once thevirgin silence was demolished by the uproar of ourcable. The "Capella" throbbedviolently; she literally undulated in the drag ofthe current. We still drifted slowly down stream.The second anchor was dropped, and held us. Thesilence closed in on us instantly. Far in theforest somewhere, while we were whispering to eachother in the quiet, a tree fell with a deep,significant boom.
Jan. 25. We had been under way for more thanan hour when my eyes opened on the illuminatedpanorama of leaves and boles unfolding past thedoor of my cabin. The cicadas were grinding theirscissors loudly in the trees alongside. I spentmuch of this day on the bridge, where I liked tobe, watching the pilot at work. The Skipper wasthere, and in a cantankerous mood. The pilotwants us to make a chart of the river. He hasgiven the captain and me a long list of islands,paranas, tributaries, villages, and sitios. Everymap and reference to the river we have on board isvalueless. A map of the river indicates manysettlements with beautiful names; and at eachpoint, when we arrive, nothing but the forestshows. How the cartographers arrived at suchresults is a mystery. This river, which theirgenerous imaginings have seen .as a tortuous boughof the Amazon, laden with villages which theyindicate on their maps with marks like littleround fruits, is almost barren. Every day we passsmall sitios or clearings; maybe the map-makersmean such places as those. Yet each, clearing isbut a brief security, a raft of land--the size ofthe garden of an English villa--lonely in an oceanof deep leaves, where a rubber man has builthimself a timber house, and some huts for hisserfs. It will have a jetty and a huddle ofcanoes, and usually a few children on the bankwatching us. We salute that place with our syrenas we pass, and sometimes the kiddies spring forhome then as though we were shooting at them. Orwe see a little embowered shack with a pile offuel logs beside it, and a crude name-board, wherethe river boats replenish when traversing thisstream, during the season, for rubber. Our pilotshave much to say of these stations, and of all therubber men on the river and their wealth. Butaway with their rubber! I am tired of it, andwill keep it out of this book if I can. For it isblasphemous that in such a potentially opulentland the juice of one of its wild trees should bedwelt upon--as it is in the states of Amazonas andPara--as though it were the sole act of Providence.The Brazilians can see nothing here but rubber.The generative qualities of this land throughfierce sun and warm showers--for rarely a daypasses without rain, whatever the season--a land ofconstant high summer with a free fecundity whichhas buried the earth everywhere under a wildgrowth nearly two hundred feet deep, isinsignificant to them. They see nothing in it atall but the damnable commodity which is its ruin.Para is mainly rubber, and Manaos. The Amazon isrubber, and most of its tributaries. The Madeiraparticularly is rubber. The whole system ofcommunication, which covers 84,000 miles ofnavigable waters, waters nourishing a humus whichliterally stirs beneath your feet with themovements of spores and seeds, that system wouldcollapse but for the rubber. The passengers onthe river boats are rubber men, and the cargoesare rubber. All the talk is of rubber. There areno manufactures, no agriculture, no fisheries, andno saw-mills, in a region which could feed,clothe, and shelter the population of a continent.There was a book by a Brazilian I saw at Para,recently published, and called the "GreenHell" (Inferno Verde). On its cover was thepicture of a nude Indian woman, symbolical ofAmazonas, and from wounds in her body her bloodwas draining into the little tin cups which therubber collector uses against the incisions on therubber tree. From what I heard of the subject,and I heard much, that picture was littleoverdrawn. I begin to think the usual commercialmind is the most dull, wasteful, and ignorant ofall the sad wonders in the pageant of humanity.
It is only on the "Capella's" bridgethat you feel the stagnant air which is upset bythe steamer's progress. There it spills over us,heavy with the scent of the lairage on the foredeck. The bridge is a narrow, elevated outlook,full in the sun's eye, where I can get a view ofthe complete ship as she serpentines in her narrowway. On the port side of it the Skipper has aseat, and there now he sits all day, gazingmoodily ahead. The dapper little pilot standscentrally, throwing brief commands over hisshoulder into the open window of the wheel-house,where a sailor, gravely chewing tobacco, his handson the wheel, is as rapt as though in a trance. Ithink the pilot finds his way by divination. Thedepth of the river is most variable. In the dryseason I hear the stream becomes but a chain ofpools connected by threads which may be no morethan eighteen inches deep, the rest of its bedbeing dry mud cross-hatched by sun cracks. Therains in far Bolivia, overflowing the swampsthere, during some months of the year increase thedepth of the Madeira by forty-five feet. Thelocal rainy season would make hardly anydifference to it. The river is fed fromreservoirs which stretch beneath the Andes.
There is rarely anything to show why, for aspell, the pilot should take us straight ahead inmidstream, and then again tack to and fro across,sometimes brushing the foliage with our shrouds.I have plucked a bunch of leaves in an unexpectedswoop inshore. And the big timber comes downafloat to meet us in a never-ending procession;there are the propellor blades to be thought of.I see, now and then, the swirls which betray rocksin hiding, and when dodging those dangerous placesthe screw disturbs the mud and the stinks. Butthe pilot takes us round and about, we with our300 feet of length and 23 feet draught, as a manwould steer a motor car. To aid it our rudder hashad fixed to it a false wooden length. The"Capella" is a very good girl, asresponsive to the pilot's word as though she knewthat he alone can save her. She stems thispowerful current at but four knots, and sometimeswe come to places where, if she hesitated for buttwo seconds, we should be put athwart stream toclose the channel. And what would happen to uswith nothing but unexplored malarial forest eachside of us is net useful to brood on.Occasionally the pilot, grasping the top of the"dodger," stares beyond us fixedly towhere the refracted sunshine is blinding betweenthe green cliffs, and gives quick and numerousorders to the wheelhouse without turning his head.The Skipper gets up to watch. The"Capella" makes surprising swerves, thepilot nervously taps the boards with his foot. .. . Then he says something quietly, relaxes, andcomes to us blithely, the funny dog with anonsense story, and the Skipper sinks couchantagain. Once more I watch the front of the junglefor what may show there. Seldom there is anythingnew which shows. It is rare, even when closealongside, that one can trace the shape of a leaf.There are but the conspicuous grey nests of theants and wasps. Yet several times to-day I sawtrees in blossom; domes of lilac in the greenforest roof. Again, to-day we put up a flight ofhundreds of ducks; and another incident was ablack-water stream, the Rio Mataua, the line ofdemarcation between the Madeira's yellow flood andits dark tributary being distinct.
. . . . .
Jan. 26. The forest is lower and more open,and the pao mulatto is more numerous. We saw theimportant village of Manicoré to-day, andOncas, a little place within a portico of thewoods which was veiled in grey smoke, for theywere coagulating rubber there. For awhile beforesunset the sky was scenic with great clouds, andglowing with the usual bright colours. Thewilderness was transformed. Each evening we seemto anchor in a region different, in nature andappearance, under these extraordinary sunsetskies, from the country we have been travellingsince daylight. Transfiguration at eventime weknow in England. Yet sunset there but exalts ourhomeland till it seems more intimately ours thanever, as though then came a luminous revelation ofits rare intrinsic goodness. We see, for somebrief moments, its aura. But this tropicaljungle, at day-fall, is not the earth we know. Itis a celestial vision, beyond physical attaining,beyond knowledge. It is ulterior, glorious,transient, fading before our surprise and wonderfade. We of the "Capella" are its onlywitnesses, except those pale ghosts, the egretsabout the dim aqueous base of the forest.
Darkness comes quickly, the swoop andoverspread of black wings. The stopping of theship's heart, because the pulsations of her bodyhave had unconscious response in yours, as by anincorporeal ligament, is the cessation of your ownlife. At a moment there is a strange quiet, inwhich you begin to hear the whisper of inanimatethings. A log glides past making faint labialsounds. You are suddenly released from prison,and float lightly in an ether impalpable to thecoarse sounds and movements of earth, but which isyet sensitive to the most delicate contact of yourthoughts and emotions. The whispering of yourfellows is but the rustling of their thoughts inan illimitable and inviolate silence.
Then, almost imperceptibly, the frogs begintheir nightlong din. The crickets and cicadasjoin. Between the varying pitch of their voicescome other nocturnes in monotones from creaturesunknown to complete the gamut. There are notes soprofound, but constant, that they are a mereimpression of obscurity to the hearing, as whenone peers listening into an abysm in which nobottom is seen, and others are stridulations soattenuated that they shrill beyond reach.
A few frogs begin it. There are ululations,wells of mellow sound bubbling to overflow in thedark, and they multiply and unite till the qualityof the sound, subdued and pleasant at first, isquite changed. It becomes monstrous. The nighttrembles in the powerful beat of a rhythmicclangour. One cannot think of frogs, hearing thatmetallic din. At one time, soon after it begins,the chorus seems the far hubbub, mingled andlevelled by distance, of a multitude of peoplerunning and disputing in a place where we who arelistening know that no people are. The noisecomes nearer and louder till it is palpitatingaround us. It might be the life of the forest,immobile and silent all day, now released andbeating upwards in deafening paroxysms.
Alongside the engine room casing amidships theengineers have fixed an open-air mess-table, witha hurricane lamp in its midst, having but a briefhalo of light which hardly distinguishes thepickle jar from the marmalade pot. A haze ofmosquitoes quivers round the light. The air ishot and lazy, and the engineers sit about limplyin trousers and shirts, the latter open andshowing bosoms as various as faces. The men cheerthemselves with comical plaints about the heat,the food, the Brazils, and make sudden dabs atbare flesh when the insects bite them. The Chiefrallies his boys as would a cheery dad--Sandy,though, is nearly his own age, but still much of alad, quietly despondent--and the Chief heartilyinsists on food, like it or lump it. I go forwardto the captain's tea table on the poop deck, wherewe have two hurricane lamps, and where the figuresof us round the table, in that dismal glim, arethe thin phantoms of men. The lamps have beenlighted only that moment, and as we take ourseats, the insects come. Just as sharply asthough something derisive and invisible werethrowing them at us, big mole crickets bounce intoour plates. A cicada, though I was then unawareof his identity, a monstrous fly which looked aslarge as a rat, and with a head like a lantern,alighted before me on the cloth, and remainedstill. Picking it up tentatively it sprang astartling police rattle between my finger andthumb, and the other chaps shouted theirmerriment. The steward places a cup of tea beforeeach of us, and in an interval of the talk theSkipper announces a smell of paraffin in his cup.We experiment with ours, and gravely confirm. Thesurgeon, bending close to a light with his cup,the deep characteristics of his face stronglyaccentuated--he seems but a bodiless head in thedark--says he detects globules of fat. The Skippercrudely outlines this horror to the steward, whomakes an inaudible reply in German, and disappearsdown the companion. We get a new and innocentbrew.
There is hash for us. There is our familiarthe pickled beef. There are saucers of brownonions. There are saucers of jam and of butter:To-night the steward has baked some cakes, andtheir grateful smell and crisp brown ruggedsurface, studded with plums, determine in my minda resolution to eat four of them, if I can getthem without open shame. I assert that ourSkipper has a counting eye for the special dishes;though you may eat all the hash you want. Damnhis hash! The bread is sour. I want cakes.
After tea the pilots get into their hammocksand under their curtains, out of the way of themosquitoes. We know where they are because of thered ends of their cigarettes. We sit aroundanywhere, the Skipper, the Chief, the Doctor andthe Purser. There is little to be said. We talkof the mosquitoes, in ejacul*tions, for the littlewretches quite easily penetrate linen, and canmanage even worsted socks. Occasionally flyinginsects bump into the tin lamp placed above us onthe ice chest. (No; there is no ice.) Thindivergent arrows of light, the fireflies, lace thegloom, and the trees alongside are gemmed withthem. We find still less to say to each other,but fear to retire to our heated berths, for as itis just possible to breathe in the open wecontinue to defy the mosquitoes. The first mateserenades us on his accordion. At last there isno help for it. The steward comes to tell themaster that his cot is ready. The "oldman" sleeps in a cot draped with netting, andslung from the awning beams on the starboard side.Nightly he turns in there, and unfailingly a raincloud bursts in the very early morning, poundingon the awning till the cool spray compels him, andhe retreats in his pyjamas for shelter, taking hispillow with him. It is for that reason I do notuse the cot he made for me, which hangs on theport side; though it is delightful for theafternoon nap.
The Skipper disappears. The Doctor and I gobelow to the surgery, and from the settee there heremoves books, tobacco tins, fishing tackle,phials, india rubber tubing, and small leathercases, making room for us both, and first we havesome out of his bottle, and then we try some outof mine. The stuff is always tepid, for the waterin the carafe has a temperature of 80 degrees.The perspiration begins a steady permeation as wetalk, for now we can talk, and talk, beingtogether, and talking is better than sleep, whichat its best is but a fitful doze in the tropics.We fall, as it were, on each other's necks.Though the Doctor's breast--I say nothing ofmine-is not one which appears to invite the weaktear of a fellow mortal who is harassed bysolitude. You might judge it too cold, too hardand unresponsive a support, for that; and I haveseen his eye even repellent. He is not elderly,but he is grey, and pallid through too much of thetropics. The lines descending his face show hehas been observing things for long, and does notthink much of them. When disputing with him, hedoes not always reply to you; he smiles tohimself; a habit which is an annoyance to somepeople, whose simple minds are suspicious, and whoare unaware that the surgeon is sometimesforgetful that his weaker brethren, when they aremost heated and disputative with him, then mostlack confidence in their case, and need theconfirmation of the wit they know is superior.That is no time when one should look at the wall,and smile quietly. The "Capella's"company feel that the surgeon stands where heoverlooks them, and they see, where he standsunassumingly superior, that he looks upon thempolitely. They do not know he is really sad andforgetful; they think he is amused, but that heprefers to pretend he is well bred. I mustconfess it is known he has prescience having acertain devilish quality of penetration. Therewas one of our stokers, and one night he was drunkon stolen gin, and latitudinous, and so attempteda curious answer to the second engineer, whosought him out in the forecastle concerning work.Now the second engineer is a young man who has anumber of photographs of himself which displayhim, clad but in vanity and shorts, back, front,and profile, arms folded tightly to swell his verylarge muscles. He has really a model figure, andhe knows it. The cut over the stoker's nose was abad one.
To the surgeon the stoker went, early nextmorning, actually for a hair of the dog, but witha story that he was then to go on duty, and sowould miss his ration of quinine, which is notserved till eleven o'clock. The quinine, as youknow, is given in gin. The surgeon complimentedthe man on such proper attention to his health,and willingly gave him the quinine--in water. Healso stood at the door of the alleyway to watchthe man retained the quinine as far as the engineroom entrance.
Eight bells! Presently I also must go andpretend to sleep. The surgeon's last cheerycomment on the cosmic scheme remains but as a wrysmile on our faces. We grope in our mindsdesperately for a topic to keep the talk afloat.There goes one bell!
I arrive at my haunt of co*ckroaches, where thesecond mate is already asleep on the upper shelf.The brown light of the oil lamp has its familiarflavour, and the cabin is like an oven. What aprospect for sleep! Raising the mosquito curtaincarefully I slip through the opening like anacrobat, hoping to be ahead of the insidiouslittle malaria carriers. A drove of co*ckroachesscuttles wildly over my warm mattress as I arrive.Striking matches within what the sailor overheadcalls my meat safe, I examine my enclosurecarefully for mosquitoes, but none seems to bethere, though I know very well I shall find atleast a dozen, gorged with blood, in the morning.The iron bulkhead which separates my bed from theengine room is, of course, hot to the touch. Theair is a passive weight. The old insect bitesbegin to irritate and burn. I kick the miserablesheet to the foot, and lie on my back without amovement, for I fear I may suffocate in that shutbox. My chest seems in bonds, and for long thereis no relief, though the body presently growsindifferent to the misery, and the anxiety goes.It is remarkable to what brutality the body willsubmit, when it knows it must. Yet nothing but acontinuous effort of will kept the panicsuppressed, and me in that box, till the feelingof anxiety had passed. Thenceforward thesleepless mind, like a petty balloon giddy on athin but unbreakable thread of thought, would tugat my consciousness, revolving and dodging about,in spite of my resolution to keep it still. If Icould only break that thread, I said to myself,turning over again, away it would fly out ofsight, and I should forget all this . . . allthis . . . And presently it broke loose, anddwindled into oblivion.
Then I knew nothing more till I saw, fixedwhere I was in hopeless horror, the baby face ofone I dwell much upon, in moments of solitude, andit had fallen wan and thin, and was full of woeunutterable, and its appealing eyes were blind. Iwoke with a cry, sitting up suddenly, the heartgoing like a rapid hammer. There was thecurtained box about me. The clothes were on thehooks. I could see the black shape of the cabindoorway. By my watch it was four o'clock. Theair had cooled, and as I sat waiting for the nextthing in the silence the mate snored profoundlyoverhead. Ah! So that was all right.
. . . . .
Jan. 27. This has been a day of anxiousnavigation, for the river has had frequent reefs.We remain in a stagnant chasm of trees. Thesurgeon and I, accompanied by a swarm of flies,went forward into the cattle stew this morning tosee how the beasts fared. The patient brutes weresuffering badly, and some, quite plainly, weredying. The change from the lush green stuff ofthe Itacoatiara swamps to compressed American hayput under their noses on an iron deck, and thestifling heat under partial awnings, had ruinedthem. Some stood, heads down, legs straddled, tooindifferent to disperse the loathly clouds ofparasites. Most were plagued by ticks, which hadthe tenacity and appearance of iron bolt heads.But the little black cow, the rebel, blared at us,bound and suffering as she was. Vive larevolution! We drove the flies from her hide, andshe tried to kick us, the darling. We found asteer with his shoulder out of joint, lying inertin the sun, indifferent to further outrage. Thathad to be seen to, and we told the Skipper, whoordered it to be killed. We wanted some freshmeat badly, he added. The boatswain explainedthat he knew the business, and he brought a longknife, and quite calmly thrust it into the frontof the prone creature, and seemed to be trying tofind its heart. Nothing happened, except a littleblood and some convulsive movements. Anothersailor produced a short knife and a hammer, andtapped away behind the horns as though he were amason and this were stone. The frowning surgeonsupposed the fellow was trying to sever thevertebrae. I don't know. Yet another fellowjumped on its abdomen. At last it died. I putdown merely what happened. No two voyages arealike, and as this episode came into mine, here itis, to be worked in with the sunsets and things.There was some cheerful talk at the prospect ofthe first fresh meat since England, and later,passing the cook's galley, I saw an iron bin, andlifted its cover to see what was there. And therewas, as I judged there would be, liver for teathat evening. But I learned that though I am acarnivore yet I have not the pluck to be avulture.
The next day we passed the Cidada de Humayta,the chief town on the Madeira. Actually it was ofthe size of an unimportant home village. Therewas nothing there to support the pilot's sonoroustitle of cidada. For some reason we were visitedto-day by an extraordinary number of butterflies.One large specimen was of an olive green, barredwith black. Another had wings of a bluish grey,striped with vermilion. Helicons came, and once amorpho, the latter a great rarity away from theinterior of the woods. At four in the afternoonthe sky grew ominous. We had just time to noticethe trees astern suddenly convulsed, writhingwhere they stood, and the storm sprang at us,roaring, ripping away awnings and loose gear. Thenoise in the forest round us was that ofcataclysm. The rain was an obscurity of fallingwater, and the trees turned to shadows in a greyfog. The ship became full of waterspouts, largestreams and jets curving away from everyprominence. This lasted for but twenty minutes;but the impending clouds remained to hasten nightwhen we were in a place which, more than anythingI have seen, was the world before the coming ofman. The river had broadened and shallowed. Theforest enclosed us. There were islands, and therank growth of swamps. We could see, throughbreaks in the igapo, extensive lagoons beyond,with the high jungle brooding over empty silverareas. Herons, storks, and egrets were white andstill about the tangle of aqueous roots. It wasall as silent and other world as a picture.
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Jan. 29. When shouting awakened me thismorning I saw the Chief hurry by my cabin,half-dressed, and looking very anxious. By thealmost stationary foliage I could see the ship hadmerely way on her. Out I jumped. On theforecastle head a crowd was gathered, peeringoverside. A large tree was balanced accuratelyathwart our stem, and refused to move. Whatworried the staff was that it would, when free,sidle along our plates till it fouled thepropeller. The propeller had to be kept moving,for the river was narrow and its current unusuallyrapid. There the log obstinately remained for themost of an hour, but suddenly made up its mind,and went, clearing the stern by inches. Afterthat the engines were driven full, for the pilothoped to get us to Porto Velho by nightfall. Inthe late afternoon, when passing the Rio Jamary,the clouds again banked astern, bringing nightbefore its time, and another violent stormcompelled an early anchorage. The forest wasremarkably quiet after the tumult of the squall,and the "Capella" had been put over tothe left bank, when close to us on the oppositeshore there was a landslip. We saw a section ofthe jungle wall sway, as though that part wastaken by a local tempest, and then the green cliffand its supports fell bodily into the river,raising thunderous submarine explosions. Suchlandslides, terras cahidas, can be rarelyforeseen, and are a grave danger to craft whenthey come close in to rest at night. To-day wepassed a small raft drifting down. A hut waserected in its middle, and we saw two men within.
Jan. 30. Talk enough there has been of aplace called Porto Velho, a name I heard firstwhen I signed the articles of the"Capella" at Swansea, and of what wouldhappen to us when we arrived. But I am lookingupon it all as a strange myth. There has beentime to prove those superstitions of Porto Velho.And what has happened? There was a month we hadof the vacant sea, and one day we came upon a lowcoast where palms grew. There has been a monthwhich has striped the vacant mind in threecolours, constant in relative position, butwithout form, yellow floor, green walls, and ablue ceiling. Plainly we have got beyond all theworks of man now. We have intrigued an oceansteamer thousands of miles along the deviouswaterways of an uninhabited continental jungle,and now she must be near the middle of the puzzle,with voiceless regions of unexplored forestreeking under the equatorial sun at every point ofthe compass. The more we advance up the Amazonand Madeira rivers the less the likelihood, itseems to me, of getting to any place where ourship and cargo could be required. We shall steamand steam till the river shallows, the forestcloses in, and we are trapped. Yet the Madeiralooks now much the same as when we entered it,still as broad and deep. I was thinking thismorning we might go on so for ever; that thisadventure was all of the casual improbabilities ofa dream was in my mind when, smoking the afterbreakfast pipe on the bridge, we turned a cornersharply, and there was the end of the passagewithin a mile of us, Porto Velho at last.
The forest on the port side ahead was upliftedon an unusually high cliff of the red rock.Beyond that cliff was a considerable clearing,with many buildings of a character different fromany we had seen in the country. At the end of theclearing the forest began again, unconqueredstill, standing across our course as a highbarrier; for, leaving Porto Velho, the riverturned west almost at a right angle, and vanished;as though now it were done with us. We hadarrived. A rough pier was being thrown out onpalm boles to receive us, but it was not ready.We anchored in five fathoms, about thirty yardsfrom the shore, and in the quiet which came withthe stop of the ship's life we waited for the nextthing, all hands lining the "Capella's"side surveying this place of which we had heard somuch.
Plainly this was not the usual village. Manyacres of trees had been newly cleared, leaving agreat bay in the woods. The earth was still rawfrom a recent attack on what had been inviolatefrom time's beginning. Trenches, new red gashes,scored it, and holes were gouged in the hill side.You could think man had attacked the forest herein a fury, but had spent his force on one smallspot, as though he had struck one wound again andagain. The fight was over. The footing had beenwon, a base perhaps for further campaigns becausewooden emergency houses, sheds and barracks, hadbeen built. The assailant evidently had made uphis mind to settle on his advantage, though he wastolerating a little quickly rebellious scrub.Just then he was resting, as if the whole affairhad been over but five minutes before we came, andnow the conqueror was sleeping on his firstsuccess. Completely round the conquered space thejungle stood indifferently regarding the trifle ofground it had lost. The jungle on the nearopposite shore rose straight and uninterruptedfrom the river, the front rank, lost each way indistance, of an innumerable army. At the upperend of the clearing the jungle began again on ourside, and turned to run across our bows, thecomplement of the host across the water, and bothranks continued up stream, dark and indeterminatelines converging, till, three miles away, adelicate flickering of light, a mere dimmer, faintbut constant, bridged the two walls. No doubtthat delicate light would be the San Antoniocataracts, the first of the nineteen rapids of theMadeira.
Porto Velho behaved as though we were notthere. A pitiless sun flamed over that deep redwound in the forest, and they who had made it werein their shelters, resting out of sight after sucha recent riot of exertion. Nothing was being donethen. Two or three white men stood on thedismantled foreshore, placidly regarding us. Wemight have been something they were not quite surewas there, a possibility not sufficientlyinteresting for them to verify. There was a hintof mockery, after all our anxiety and travail, inthis quiet disregard. Had we arrived too late tohelp, and so were not wanted? I confess I shouldnot have been surprised to have heard suppressedlaughter, some light hilarity from the unseen, atus innocently puzzling as to what was to happennext. There was a violent scream in the forestnear our bows, and we turned wondering to thatgreen wall. A locomotive ran out from the base ofthe trees, still screaming.
In a little while a man left a house, stridingdown over the debris to the foreshore, and somehalfbreeds brought him in a canoe to the"Capella." He was a tall youngster, anAmerican, and his slow body itself was but a thinsallow drawl; only his eyes were alert, and theydarted at ours in quick scrutiny. His solemnoccupying assurance and accent precipitatedreality. He was a doctor and he ordered us to bemustered on the after deck for inspection foryellow fever. We were passed; and then thisdoctor went below to the saloon, distributing hislong limbs and body over several chairs and partof the table, and began with lazy words andgestures to give us a place in the scene. Welearned we should stay as we were till the pierwas finished and that the railway was actually inbeing for a short distance. He said somethingabout Porto Velho being hell.
He left us. We sat about on deck furniture,and waited on the unknown gods of the land to seewhat they would send us. All day in the clearingfigures moved about on some mysterious business,but seldom looked at us. We had nothing to do butto watch the raft of timber and flotsam expandabout our hawsers, a matter of some concern to us,for the current ran at six knots. Our brief senseof contact got from the medical inspection hadgone by night. Reality contracted, closing inupon the "Capella" with rapidlydiminishing radii as the light went, till we hadlost everything but our steamer.
Into the saloon, where some of us sat listeningin sympathy to the Skipper's growls that night,burst our cook, disrespectful and tousled, sayinghe had seen a canoe, which bore a light, overturnin the river. There was a stampede. We eachseized a lantern and leaned overside with it, withthat fatuous eagerness to help which makes a manstrike matches when looking for one who is lost ona moor. Ghostly logs came floating noiselesslyout of darkness into the brief domain of ourlanterns, and faded into night again. Fromsomewhere in the collection of driftwood beyondour bows we thought we heard an occasional cry,though that might have been the noise of watersucking through the rubbish, or the creaking oftimbers. Our chief mate got out a small boat, andvanished; and we were already growing anxious forhim when his luminous grin appeared below in therange of my lantern, and with him came theponderous figure of a man. The latter, deft andagile, came up the rope ladder, and stepped aboardwith innocent inconsequence, shocking my sense ofthe gravity of the affair; for this streamingobject, lifted from the grip of the boney one justin time, was chuckling. "Say," saidthis big ruddy man to our gaping crowd, "Imet a nigg*r ashore with a letter for the captainof this packet. Said he didn't know how to get.So I brought it, but a tree overturned the canoe.I came up under the timber jam all right, allright, but it took me quite a piece to get my headthrough." In the saloon, with a pool ofwater spreading round him, while we got him somedry clothes, he produced this pulpy letter."Dear Captain" (it ran), "I'm asdry as hell, have you brought drinks in theship?" The bland indifference of Porto Velhoto the "Capella," which had done somuch to get there; the locomotive which ranscreaming out of those woods where, till then, wasthe same unbroken front which from Para inwardshad surrendered nothing; the inconsequentialdoctor who carefully examined us for what we hadnot got; the ruddy man who rose to us streamingout of the deeps, as though that were his usualapproach, bearing another stranger's unreasonableletter complaining of thirst, were most puzzling.I even felt some anxiety and suspicion. What,then, were all the other incidents of ourdifficult six thousand mile voyage? What was thisplace to which we had come on urgent business longand carefully deliberated, where men merely lookedat the whites of our eyes, or changed wet clothesin the saloon, or lightly referred to hell--theyall did that--as if hell were an unremarkablefeature of their day? Were all these unrelatedshadows and movements but part of a long andwitless jest? The point of it I could not see.Was there any point to it or did casual episodesappear at unexpected places till they came, justas unexpectedly, to an empty end? The man themate had rescued sat at the saloon table oppositeme, leaning a yard wide chest, which was almostbare, on the red baize, his bulging arms restingbefore him, and his hairy paws easily clasped. Ithought that perhaps this imperturbable being, whocould come with easy assurance, his brightfriendly eyes merely amused, his large firm mouthmerely mocking, and his face heated, from adesperate affair in which his life nearly went, toannounce to strangers, "Boys, I'm old manJim," must have had the point of the jokerevealed to him long since, and so now had norespect for its setting, and could have no careand understanding of my anxious innocence. He satthere for hours in quiet discourse. I listened tohim with my ears only, his words jostling mythoughts, as one would puzzle over and listen to asuperior being which had unbent to be intimate,but was outside our experience. I heard he hadbeen at this place since 1907. He began the workhere. Porto Veiho did not then exist. Off wherewe were anchored, the jungle rose. He had hisyoung son with him, a cousin, and two negroes, andhe began the railway. Inside the trees, he said,they could not see three yards, but down it allhad to come. There is a small stingless bee here,which "old man Jim" called the sweatbee. It alights in swarms on the face and hands,and prefers death to being dislodged from itsenjoyment. The heat, these bees, the ants, thepium flies, the mosquitoes, made the existence ofJim and his mates a misery. Jim merely drawledabout in a comic way. Fever came, and mistrust ofnatives compelled him to dress a dummy, put thatin his hammock at night, while he slept in acorner of the hut, one eye open, nursing a gun. Icould not see "old man Jim" ever havingfaith that trains would run, or needed to run,where Indians lurked in the bush, and jaguarsnosed round the hut at night. Why thesesufferings then? But we learned the line nowpenetrated into the forest for sixty miles, andthat beyond it there were camps, where surveyorswere seeing that further way was made, and beyondthem again, among the trees of the interior, thesurveyors were still, planning the way the lineshould run when it had got so far.
Though we could not get ashore, there wasenough to watch, if it were only the men leisurelydriving palm boles into the river, making a pierfor us. While at breakfast to-day a canoe ofhalfbreeds came flying towards us in pursuit of anobject which kept a little ahead of them in theriver. It passed close under our stern, and wesaw it was a peccary. The canoe ran level with itthen, and a man leaned over, catching the wild pigby a hind leg, keeping its snout under water whileanother secured its feet with rope. It wasbrought aboard in bonds as a present for theSkipper, who begged the natives to convey it belowto the bunkers and there release it. He said hewould tame it. I saw the eye of the beast as itlay on the deck champing its tusks viciously, andguessed we should have some interesting momentswhile kindness tried to reduce that light in itseye. The peccary disappeared for a few days.
There being nothing to do this fine morning, wewatched the cattle put ashore. This was not sodifficult a business as shipping them, for thebeasts now submitted quietly to the noose whichwas put on their horns. The steam tackle hoistedthem, they were pushed overside, and dropped intothe river. Some natives in a canoe cleared thehorns, and the brute, swimming desperately in thestrong current, was guided to the bank. Some ofthe beasts being already near death they weremerely jettisoned. The current bore them downstream, making feeble efforts to swim--food for thealligators. We waited for the turn of the blackheifer. She was one of the last. She was not ledto the ship's side. The tackle was attached toher horns, and made taut before her head wasloosed. She made a furious lunge at the men whenher nose was free, but the winch rattled, and shewas brought up on her hind legs, blaring at usall. In that ugly manner she was walked on twolegs across the deck, a heroine in shameful guise,while the men laughed. She was hoisted, andlowered into the river. She fought at the waitingcanoe with her feet, but at last the men releasedher horns from the tackle. With only her faceabove water she heaved herself, open mouthed, atthe canoe, frying to bite it, and then made somealmost successful efforts to climb into it. Thecanoe men were so panic-stricken that they didnothing but muddle one another's efforts. Thecanoe rocked dangerously. This wicked animal hadno care for its own safety like other cattle. Itsurprised its tormentors because it showed itsonly wish was to kill them. Just in time the menpaddled off for their lives, the cow after them.Seeing she could not catch them, she swam ashore,climbed the bank, looking round then for a sightof the enemy--but they were all in hiding--and thenbegan browsing in the scrub.
As leisurely as though life were without end,the work on the pier proceeded; and we on the"Capella," who could not get ashore,with each of our days a week long, looked roundupon this remote place of the American tropicstill it seemed we had never looked upon anythingelse. The days were candent and vaporous, theheat by breakfast-time being such as we know athome in an early afternoon of the dog-days. Theforest across the river, about three hundred yardsaway, from sunrise till eight o'clock, often wasveiled in a white fog. There would be a clearriver, and a sky that was full day, but not theleast suspicion of a forest. We saw what seemed alimitless expanse of bright water, which mergedinto the opalescent sky walls. Such an invisiblefog melted from below, and then the revelation ofthe dark base of the forest, in mid-distance, wasas if our eyes were playing tricks. The forestappeared in the way one magic-lantern picturegrows through another. The last of the vapourwould roll upwards from the tree-tops for sometime, and you could believe the woods weresmouldering heavily. Thenceforward the quiet daywould be uninterrupted, except for the plunge of aheavy fish, the passing of a canoe, a visit froman adventurous visitor from the shore, or thegrowing of a cloud in the sky. We tried fishing,though never got anything but some grey scalelesscreatures with feelers hanging about their gills.It was not till the evening when the visitorsusually came that the day began really to move.The new voices gave our saloon and cabinsvivacity, and the stories we heard carried us farand swiftly towards the next breakfast-time. Theywere strange characters, those visitors, usuallyAmericans, but sometimes we got an Englishman or aFrenchman. They took possession of the ship.
There was an elderly man, Neil O'Brien, who wasoften with us. At first I thought he was a veryexceptional character. He was one of the first tovisit our ship. I even felt a little timiditywhen alone with him, for he had a habit of sittinglimply, looking at nothing in particular, anddumb, and plainly he was a man whose thoughts ranin ways I could not even surmise. His pale blueeyes would turn upon me with that searchingopenness which may mean childish innocence ormadness, and I could not forget the whispers I hadheard of his dangerously inflammable nature. Icould not find common footing with him for sometime. My trouble was that I had come out directfrom a country where few men are free, and so mostof us live in doubt of what would happen to us ifwe were to act as though we were free men. Where,if a self-reliant man contemptuously dares to ableak and perilous extremity, he makes all hislawful fellows in-draw their timid breaths; thatland where even a reward has been instituted, asfor merit, for uncomplaining endurance underlife-long hardships, and called an old-agepension. You cannot live much of your life withnatural servants, the judicious and impartial, thelight shy, and those who look twice carefully, butnever leap, without betraying some reflectedpallor of their anæmia. O'Brien, the quietmaster of his own time, with his eyes I could notread, and his gun, betrayed obliquely in ourcasual talks together such an ingenuousindifference to accepted things and authority,that I had nothing to work with when gauging him.He was his own standard of conduct. I judged hisbearing towards the authority of officials wouldbe tolerant, and even tender, as men use withwilful children. He was not a rebel, as weunderstand it, one who at last grows impatient andangry, and so votes for the other party. Isuppose he was not opposed to authority, unless itwere opposed to him. He was outside any authoritybut his own. He lived without State aid. Hehimself carried the gun, always the symbol ofauthority, whether of a man or of a State, and ifany man had attempted to rob him of his substance,certainly O'Brien would have shot that manaccording to his own law and his own prophecy, andwould then have cooked his supper. He surprisedme for a day or two. I puzzled much over thisphenomenon of a free man, who took his freedom soquietly and naturally that he never even discussedthe subject, as we do, with enthusiasm, inEngland. What else? It was long since he wasseparated from his mother. Soon I found he wasbut a type. I met others like him in thiscountry. Their innocence of the limitations of acareful man like myself was disconcerting. OnceO'Brien casually proposed that I should "beatit," cut the ship, and make a traverse ofthat wild place to distant Colombia, to someunknown spot by the approximate source of acertain Amazon tributary, where he knew there wasgold. First I laughed, and then found, from hisglance of resentful candour, that he was quiteserious. He generously meant this honour for me;and I think it was an honour for an elderly,quiet, and seasoned privateer like O'Brien, toinvite me to be his only companion in a regionwhere you must travel with alert courage and wideexperience, or perish. I have learned since hehas gone to that far place alone. But what a timehe will have. He will have all of it to himself.Well--I was thinking, when I refused him, of my oldage pension. I should like to get it.
Men like O'Brien are called here, quiterespectfully, "bad men," and "landsailors." The lawless lands of the SouthAmerican republics--lawless in this sense, thattheir laws need be little reckoned by the daring,the strong, and the unscrupulous--seemparticularly attractive to men of the O'Brientype. I got to like them. I found them, whenonce used to their feral minds, alwaysentertaining, and often instructive, for theirnaïve opinions cut our conventions across themiddle, showing the surprising insides. Theydwell without bounds. As I have read somewhere,we do not think of the buffalo, which treats acontinent as pasturage, as we do of the cow whichkicks over the pail at milking time and jumps theyard fence. These men regard priest, magistrateand soldier with an indifference which is not evencontemptible indifference. They are merelycallous to the calculated effect of uniforms.When in luck, they are to be found in the cities,shy and a little miserable, having a good time.Their money gone, they set out on lonely journeysacross this continent which show our fuss overauthentic explorers to be a little overdone.O'Brien was such a man. He told me he had notslept under a roof for years. He had no home, heconfessed to me once. Any place on the map wasthe same to him. He had spent his life driftingalone between Patagonia and Canada, looking forwhat he never found, if he knew what he waslooking for. His travels were insignificant tohim. He might have been a tramp talking ofEnglish highways. As he droned on one evening Ibegan to doubt he was unaware that his was anextraordinary narrative. I guessed his unconcernmust be an air. It would have been, in my case.I looked straight over at him, and he hesitatednervously, and stopped. Was he wasting my time,he asked? Prospecting for his illusion, his lastjourney was over the Peruvian Andes into Colombia.He broke an arm in a fall on the mountains, set ithimself, and continued. On the Rio Yapura anIndian shot an arrow through his leg, and O'Briendropped in the long grass, breaking the arrowshort each side of the limb, and in an ensuinglong watchful duel presently shot the Indianthough the throat. And then, coming out on theAmazon, his canoe overturned, and the pickle jarfull of gold dust was lost. He put no emphasis onany particular, not even on the loss of his gold.
He was pointed out to me first as a singularfellow who kept doves; a tall, gaunt man, with adeliberate gait, perhaps fifty years of age, inold garments, long boots laced to the knees, and abattered pith helmet. He strolled along with hiseyes cast down. If you met him abroad, andstopped him, he answered you with a few mumbleswhile looking away over your shoulder. His bigmouth drew down a grizzled moustache cynically,and one of his front teeth was gold plated.Before he passed on he looked at you with thehaughty but doubtful stare of an animal. Heseemed too slow and dull to be combustible. Iceased to credit those tales of his berserkerrage. He always moved in that deliberate way, asif he were careful, but bored. Or he stood beforehis doves, and made bubbling noises in his loose,stringy throat. He embarrassed me with a presentof many of the trophies he had secured in years oftravel in the wilds. One day a negro and O'Brienwere in mild dispute on the jetty, and the negrocalled the white a Yankee. The river was twentyfeet below swiftly carrying its logs. O'Brientook the big black, and with vicious ease threwhim into the water. The negro missed the floatingrubbish, and struck out for the bank. No onecould help him. By good luck he managed to get tothe water-side; yet O'Brien meanwhile had hurriedhis long legs over the ties of the skeletonstructure, his face transfigured, and was waitingfor the negro to emerge, a spade in his hand. Butunder other circ*mstances I have not the leastdoubt he would have fought the Brazilian armysingle-handed, and so finished, in defence of thatsame negro.
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