Read Ebook: In the Amazon Jungle Adventures in Remote Parts of the Upper Amazon River Including a Sojourn Among Cannibal Indians by Lange Algot Dellenbaugh Frederick Samuel Author Of Introduction Etc Hauser J Odell Editor

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Chapter

A Little Village Built on Poles The Javary River The Mouth of the Itecoahy River Nazareth Trader's Store Remate de Males or "Culmination of Evils" The Street in Remate de Males General View of Remate de Males Sunset on the Itecoahy River An Ant Nest in a Tree The Launch "Carolina" The Banks of the Itecoahy The Mouth of the Ituhy River The Toucan The Banks of the Itecoahy River Clearing the Jungle Urubus "Nova Aurora" "Defumador" or Smoking Hut Matamata Tree The Urucu Plant The Author in the Jungle The Mouth of the Branco Branding Rubber on the Sand-Bar The Landing at Floresta The Banks at Floresta A General View of Floresta Morning Coronel Rosendo da Silva Chief Marques Interior of A Rubber-Worker's Hut Jo?o The Murumuru Palm A "Seringueiro" Tapping a Rubber Tree Smoking the Rubber-Milk Forest Interior A Fig-Tree Completely Overgrown with Orchids Chico, The Monkey Turtle Eggs on the Sand-Bank The Pirarucu The Last Resting-Place of the Rubber-Workers "Seringueiros" Jo?o Floresta Creek Lake Innocence Alligator from Lake Innocence Another Alligator from Lake Innocence Rubber-Workers' Home near Lake Innocence Harpooning a Large Sting-Ray Shooting Fish on Lake Innocence The Pirarucu Amazonian Game-Fish The Track of the Anaconda--The Sucuruju The Paca Rubber-Worker Perreira and Wife in their Sunday Clothes A "New Home" Sewing-Machine in an Indian Hut The Remarkable Pachiuba Palm-Tree Kitchen Interior The Beginning of the Fatal Expedition A Halt in the Forest Jungle Scenery Forest Creek Top of Hill Page Marsh-Deer and Mutum-Bird Jungle Darkness Creek in the Unknown Eating our Broiled Monkey at Tambo No. 5 Hunting The Fatal Tambo No. 9 A Photograph of the Author The Front View of Tambo No. 9 Caoutchouc Process No. 1 Caoutchouc Process No. 2 Caoutchouc Process No. 3 Creek Near Tambo No. 9 The Author's Working Table at Tambo No. 9 Forest Scenery Near Tambo No. 9 Our Parting Breakfast Mangeroma Vase 399

REMATE DE MALES, OR "CULMINATION OF EVILS"

It was the end of January, 1910, that saw me approaching this house, built on Brazilian terra firma--or rather terra aqua, for water was inundating the entire land. I had behind me the Amazon itself, and to the right the Javary River, while the little house that I was heading for was Esperan?a, the official frontier station of Brazil. The opposite shore was Peru and presented an unbroken range of dense, swampy forest, grand but desolate to look upon.

A middle-aged man in uniform came towards me and greeted me cordially, in fact embraced me, and, ordering a servant to pull my baggage out of the water, led me up a ladder into the house. I told him that I intended to go up the Javary River, to a place called Remate de Males, where I would live with a medical friend of mine, whereupon he informed me that a launch was due this same night, which would immediately proceed to my proposed destination. Later in the evening the launch came and I embarked after being once more embraced by the courteous Cor. Monteiro, the frontier official. The captain of this small trading launch was an equally hospitable and courteous man; he invited me into his cabin and tried to explain that this river, and the town in particular, where we were going, was a most unhealthy and forbidding place, especially for a foreigner, but he added cheerfully that he knew of one white man, an Englishman, who had succeeded in living for several years on the Javary without being killed by the fever, but incidentally had drank himself to death.

The night was very dark and damp, and I did not see much of the passing scenery; a towering black wall of trees was my total impression during the journey. However, I managed at length to fall asleep on some coffee-bags near the engine and did not wake till the launch was exhausting its steam supply through its whistle.

My next impression was that of a low river bank fringed with dirty houses lighted by candles. People were sitting in hammocks smoking cigarettes, dogs were barking incessantly, and frogs and crickets were making a deafening noise when I walked up the main and only street of this little town, which was to be my headquarters for many months to come.

Never shall I forget that first night's experience with mosquitoes and ants. Besides this my debut in a hammock for a bed was a pronounced failure, until a merciful sleep temporarily took me from the sad realities.

Nothing could better summarise the attractions of the place than the name which has become fixed upon it. Translated into English this means "Culmination of Evils," Remate de Males.

Some thirty years ago, a prospector with his family and servants, in all about a score, arrived at this spot near the junction of the Javary and the Itecoahy rivers, close to the equator. They came by the only possible highway, the river, and decided to settle. Soon the infinite variety of destroyers of human life that abound on the upper Amazon began their work on the little household, reducing its number to four and threatening to wipe it out altogether. But the prospector stuck to it and eventually succeeded in giving mankind a firm hold on this wilderness. In memory of what he and succeeding settlers went through, the village received its cynically descriptive name.

Remate de Males, separated by weeks and weeks of journey by boat from the nearest spot of comparative civilisation down the river, has grown wonderfully since its pioneer days. Dismal as one finds it to be, if I can give an adequate description in these pages, it will be pronounced a monument to man's nature-conquering instincts, and ability. Surely no pioneers ever had a harder battle than these Brazilians, standing with one foot in "the white man's grave," as the Javary region is called in South America, while they faced innumerable dangers. The markets of the world need rubber, and the supplying of this gives them each year a few months' work in the forests at very high wages. I always try to remember these facts when I am tempted to harshly judge Remate de Males according to our standards; moreover, I can never look upon the place quite as an outsider. I formed pleasant friendships there and entered into the lives of many of its people, so I shall always think of it with affection. The village is placed where the Itecoahy runs at right angles into the Javary, the right-hand bank of the Itecoahy forming at once its main and its only street. The houses stand facing this street, all very primitive and all elevated on palm-trunk poles as far as possible above the usual high-water mark of the river. Everything, from the little sheet-iron church to the pig-sty, is built on poles. Indeed, if there is anything in the theory of evolution, it will not be many generations before the inhabitants and domestic animals are born equipped with stilts.

Opposite Remate de Males, across the Itecoahy, is a collection of some ten huts that form the village of S?o Francisco, while across the Javary is the somewhat larger village of Nazareth. Like every real metropolis, you see, Remate de Males has its suburbs. Nazareth is in Peruvian territory, the Javary forming the boundary between Brazil and Peru throughout its length of some 700 miles. This same boundary line is a source of amusing punctiliousness between the officials of each country. To cross it is an affair requiring the exercise of the limits of statesmanship. I well remember an incident that occurred during my stay in the village. A sojourner in our town, an Indian rubber-worker from the Ituhy River, had murdered a woman by strangling her. He escaped in a canoe to Nazareth before the Brazilian officials could capture him, and calmly took refuge on the porch of a house there, where he sat down in a hammock and commenced to smoke cigarettes, feeling confident that his pursuers would not invade Peruvian soil. But local diplomacy was equal to the emergency. Our officials went to the shore opposite Nazareth, and, hiding behind the trees, endeavoured to pick off their man with their .44 Winchesters, reasoning that though their crossing would be an international incident, no one could object to a bullet's crossing. Their poor aim was the weak spot in the plan. After a few vain shots had rattled against the sheet-iron walls of the house where the fugitive was sitting, he got up from among his friends and lost himself in the jungle, never to be heard of again.

About sixty-five houses, lining the bank of the Itecoahy River over a distance of what would be perhaps six blocks in New York City, make up Remate de Males. They are close together and each has a ladder reaching from the street to the main and only floor. At the bottom of every ladder appears a rudimentary pavement, probably five square feet in area and consisting of fifty or sixty whiskey and gin bottles placed with their necks downwards. Thus in the rainy season when the water covers the street to a height of seven feet, the ladders always have a solid foundation. The floors consist of split palm logs laid with the round side up. Palm leaves form the roofs, and rusty corrugated sheet-iron, for the most part, the walls. Each house has a sort of backyard and kitchen, also on stilts and reached by a bridge.

Through the roofs and rafters gambol all sorts of wretched pests. Underneath the houses roam pigs, goats, and other domestic animals, which sometimes appear in closer proximity than might be wished, owing to the spaces between the logs of the floor. That is in the dry season. In the winter, or the wet season, these animals are moved into the houses with you, and their places underneath are occupied by river creatures, alligators, water-snakes, and malignant, repulsive fish, of which persons outside South America know nothing.

The hotel, in which I passed several months as a guest, until I finally decided to rent a hut for myself, had points about it which outdid anything that I have ever seen or heard of in comic papers about "summer boarding." The most noticeable feature was the quarter-of-a-story higher than any other house in the village. While this meant a lead as to quantity I could never see that it represented anything in actual quality. I would not have ventured up the ladder which gave access to the extra story without my Winchester in hand, and during the time I was there I never saw anyone else do so. The place was nominally a store-house, but having gone undisturbed for long periods it was an ideal sanctuary for hordes of vermin--and these the vermin of the Amazon, dangerous, poisonous, not merely the annoying species we know. Rats were there in abundance, also deadly scolopendra and centipedes; and large bird-eating spiders were daily seen promenading up and down the sheet-iron walls.

On the main floor the building had two large rooms across the centre, one on the front and one on the rear. At each side were four small rooms. The large front-room was used as a dining-room and had two broad tables of planed palm trunks. The side-rooms were bedrooms, generally speaking, though most of the time I was there some were used for stabling the pigs and goats, which had to be taken in owing to the rainy season.

The following prices which I have had to pay during the wet season in this town will, doubtless, be of interest:

One box of sardines $ 1.20 One pound of unrefined sugar .30 One roll of tobacco 21.30 One basket of farinha retails in Para for .50 13.30 One bottle of ginger ale .60 One pound of potatoes .60 Calico with stamped pattern, pr. yd. .90 One Collins machete, N.Y. price, .00 12.00 One pair of men's shoes 11.00 One bottle of very plain port wine, 22,000 reis or 7.30

Under such circumstances, of course, the food supply is very poor. Except for a few dried cereals and staples, nothing is used but canned goods; the instances where small domestic animals are slaughtered are so few as to be negligible. Furthermore, as a rule, these very animals are converted into jerked meat to be kept for months and months. Some fish are taken from the river, but the Amazon fish are none too palatable generally speaking, with a few exceptions; besides, the natives are not skilful enough to prepare them to suit a civilised palate.

For five months I experienced this torturing menu at the hotel with never-ceasing regularity. The only change I ever noticed was on Sundays or days of feast when beans might occupy the other end of the table.

As illustrating the community life that we enjoyed at the hotel, I will relate a happening that I have set down in my notes as an instance of the great mortality of this region. One afternoon a woman's three-months-old child was suddenly taken ill. The child grew worse rapidly and the mother finally decided that it was going to die. Her husband was up the river on the rubber estates and she did not want to be left alone. So she came to the hotel with the child and besought them to let her in. The infant was placed in a hammock where it lay crying pitifully. At last the wailings of the poor little creature became less frequent and the child died.

It was now getting dark fast, and as the doors were wide open, a great crowd was soon attracted by the brilliant display. All the "400" of the little rubber town seemed to pour in a steady stream into the dining-room. It was a new experience, even in this hotel where I had eaten with water up to my knees, to take a meal with a funeral going on three feet away. We had to partake of our food with the body close by and the candle smoke blowing in our faces, adding more local colour to our jerked beef and beans than was desirable. More and more people came in to pay their respects to the child that hardly any one had known while it was alive. Through it all the mother sat on a trunk in a corner peacefully smoking her pipe, evidently proud of the celebration that was going on in honour of her deceased offspring.

The kitchen boy brought in a large tray with cups of steaming coffee; biscuits also were carried around to the spectators who sat against the wall on wooden boxes. The women seemed to get the most enjoyment out of the mourning; drinking black coffee, smoking their pipes, and paying little attention to the cause of their being there, only too happy to have an official occasion to show off their finest skirts. The men had assembled around the other table, which had been cleared in the meantime, and they soon sent the boy out for whiskey and beer, passing away the time playing cards.

I modestly inquired how long this feast was going to last, because my room adjoined the dining-room and was separated only by a thin sheet-iron partition open at the top. The landlady, with a happy smile, informed me that the mourning would continue till the early hours, when a launch would arrive to transport the deceased and the guests to the cemetery. This was about four miles down the Javary River and was a lonely, half-submerged spot.

Life in the hotel during the rainy season is variegated. I have spoken of having eaten a meal with water up to my knees. That happened often during the weeks when the river was at its highest level. Once when we were having our noon-day meal during the extreme high-water period a man came paddling his canoe in at the open door, sailed past us, splashing a little water on the table as he did so, and navigated through to the back room where he delivered some supplies.

During this feat everybody displayed the cheerful and courteous disposition usual to the Brazilians. At this season you must wear wading boots to eat a meal or do anything else about the house. Sleeping is somewhat easier as the hammocks are suspended about three feet above the level of the water, but an involuntary plunge is a thing not entirely unknown to an amateur sleeping in a hammock; I know this from personal experience.

It must be remembered that during the rainy season an area equal in size to about a third of the United States is entirely submerged. There is a network of rivers that eventually find their way into the Amazon and the land between is completely inundated. In all this immense territory there are only a few spots of sufficient elevation to be left high and dry. Remate de Males, as I have explained, is at the junction of the Itecoahy and the Javary rivers, the latter 700 miles in length, and thirty miles or so below the village the Javary joins the Amazon proper, or Solimo?s as it is called here. Thus we are in the heart of the submerged region. When I first arrived in February, 1910, I found the river still confined to its channel, with the water about ten feet below the level of the street. A few weeks later it was impossible to take a single step on dry land anywhere.

The water that drives the rubber-workers out of the forests also drives all animal life to safety. Some of the creatures seek refuge in the village. I remember that we once had a huge alligator take temporary lodgings in the backyard of the hotel after he had travelled no one knows how many miles through the inundated forest. At all hours we could hear him making excursions under the house to snatch refuse thrown from the kitchen, but we always knew he would have welcomed more eagerly a member of the household who might drop his way.

And now a few words about the people who lived under the conditions I have described, and who keep up the struggle even though, as they themselves have put it, "each ton of rubber costs a human life."

In the first place I must correct any erroneous impression as to neatness that may have been formed by my remarks about the animals being kept in the dwellings during the rainy season. The Brazilians are scrupulous about their personal cleanliness, and in fact, go through difficulties to secure a bath which might well discourage more civilised folk.

No one would dream, for an instant, of immersing himself in the rivers. In nine cases out of ten it would amount to suicide to do so, and the natives have bathhouses along the shores; more literally bathhouses than ours, for their baths are actually taken in them. They are just as careful about clothing being aired and clean. Indeed, the main item of the Brazilian woman's housekeeping is the washing. The cooking is rather happy-go-lucky; and there is no use cleaning and polishing iron walls; they get rusty anyhow.

The people are all occupied with the rubber industry and the town owes its existence to the economic necessity of having here a shipping and trading point for the product. The rubber is gathered farther up along the shores of the Javary and the Itecoahy and is transported by launch and canoe to Remate de Males. Here it is shipped directly or sold to travelling dealers who send it down to Manaos or Para via the boat of the Amazon Steam Navigation Co., which comes up during the rainy season. Thence it goes to the ports of the world.

There are fewer women than men in Remate de Males, and none of the former is beautiful. They are for the most part Indians or Brazilians from the province of Ceara, with very dark skin, hair, and eyes, and teeth filed like shark's teeth. They go barefooted, as a rule. Here you will find all the incongruities typical of a race taking the first step in civilisation. The women show in their dress how the well-paid men lavish on them the extravagances that appeal to the lingering savage left in their simple natures.

THE SOCIAL AND POLITICAL LIFE OF REMATE DE MALES

The social life of the town is in about the same stage of development as it must have been during the Stone Age. When darkness falls over the village, as it does at six o'clock all the year round, life practically stops, and a few hours afterwards everyone is in his hammock.

The people of the Amazon love to gamble. One night three merchants and a village official came to the hotel to play cards. They gathered around the dining-room table at eight o'clock, ordered a case of Pabst beer, which sells, by the way, at four dollars and sixty cents a bottle in American gold, and several boxes of our National Biscuit Company's products, and then began on a game, which resembles our poker. They played till midnight, when they took a recess of half an hour, during which large quantities of the warm beer and many crackers were consumed. Then, properly nourished, they resumed the game, which lasted until six o'clock the next morning. This was a fair example of the gambling that went on.

The stakes were high enough to do honours to the fashionable gamblers of New York, but there was never the slightest sign of excitement. At first I used to expect that surely the card table would bring forth all sorts of flashes of tropic temperament--even a shooting or stabbing affair. But the composure was always perfect. I have seen a loser pay, without so much as a regretful remark, the sum of three million and a half reis, which, though only 50 in our money, is still a considerable sum for a labourer to lose.

Once a month a launch comes down from Iquitos in Peru, about five days' journey up the Amazon. This launch is sent out by Iquitos merchants, to supply the wants of settlers of the rubber estates on the various affluents. It is hard to estimate what suffering would result if these launches should be prevented from reaching their destinations, for the people are absolutely dependent upon them, the region being non-producing, as I have said, and the supplies very closely calculated. In Remate de Males, the superintendent, or the mayor of the town, generally owns a few head of cattle brought by steamer, and when these are consumed no meat can be had in the region but Swift's canned "Corned Beef."

These boats occasionally bring immigrants from the eastern portions of Brazil, where they have heard of the fortunes to be made in working the rubber, and who have come, just as our prospectors came into the West, hoping to take gold and their lives back with them. Besides passengers, these boats carry cattle and merchandise and transport the precious rubber back to Para and Manaos. They are welcomed enthusiastically. As soon as they are sighted, every man in town takes his Winchester down from the wall and runs into the street to empty the magazine as many times as he feels that he can afford in his exuberance of feeling at the prospect of getting mail from home and fresh food supplies.

On some occasions, marked with a red letter on the calendar, canoes may be seen coming down the Itecoahy River, decorated with leaves and burning candles galore. They are filled with enthusiasts who are setting off fireworks and shouting with delight. They are devotees of some up-river saint, who are taking this conventional way of paying the headquarters a visit.

The priest, who occupies himself with saving the hardened souls of the rubber-workers, is a worthy-looking man, who wears a dark-brown cassock, confined at the waist with a rope. He is considered the champion drinker of Remate de Males. The church is one of the neatest buildings in the town, though this may be because it is so small as to hold only about twenty-five people. It is devoid of any article of decoration, but outside is a white-washed wooden cross on whose foundation candles are burned, when there is illness in some family, or the local patron saint's influence is sought on such a problem as getting a job. The religion is, of course, Catholic, but, as in every case where isolation from the source occurs, the natives have grafted local influences into their faith, until the result is a Catholicism different from the one we know.

The administration of the town is in the hands of the superintendent, who is a Federal officer not elected by the villagers. His power is practically absolute as far as this community is concerned. Under him are a number of Government officials, all of whom are extremely well paid and whose duty seems to consist in being on hand promptly when the salaries are paid.

The police force consists of one man, and a very versatile one, as will be seen, for he is also the rank and file of the military force. I saw this remarkable official only once. At that time he was in a sad condition from over-indulgence in alcoholic beverages. There are exact statistics of comparison available for the police and military forces. The former is just two-thirds of the latter in number. Expressed in the most easily understood terms, we can put it that our versatile friend has a chief to command him when a policeman, and a coronel and lieutenant when he is a soldier. Whether there is any graft in it or not, I do not know, but money is saved by the police-military force being one man with interchangeable uniforms, and the money must go into somebody's pocket. It might be thought that when the versatile one had to appear in both capacities at once, he might be at a loss. But not a bit of it. The landing of one of the down-river steamers offers such an occasion. As soon as the gangplank is out, the policeman goes aboard with the official papers. He is welcomed, receives his fee, and disappears. Not two minutes afterwards, the military force in full uniform is seen to emerge from the same hut into which the policeman went. He appears on the scene with entire unconcern, and the rough and ready diplomacy of Remate de Males has again triumphed.

But if we curse the mosquito, what are we to say of certain other pests that add to the miseries of life in that out-of-the-way corner of the globe, and are more persistent in their attentions than even the mosquito? In the first place, there are the ants. They are everywhere. They build their nests under the houses, in the tables, and in the cracks of the floors, and lie in ambush waiting the arrival of a victim, whom they attack from all sides. They fasten themselves on one and sometimes it takes hours of labour to extract them. Many are the breakfasts I have delayed on awaking and finding myself to be the object of their attention. It proved necessary to tie wads of cotton covered with vaseline to the fastenings of the hammock, to keep the intruders off. But they even got around this plan. As soon as the bodies of the first arrivals covered the vaseline, the rest of the troops marched across them in safety and gained access to the hammock, causing a quick evacuation on my part. Articles of food were completely destroyed by these carnivorous creatures, within a few minutes after I had placed them on the table.

I present here a list of the various species of ants known to the natives, together with the peculiarities by which they distinguish them. I collected the information from Indians on the Seringal "Floresta" on the Itecoahy River.

OTHER INCIDENTS DURING MY STAY IN REMATE DE MALES

By-and-bye one would get used to the sound and it would lose attention. The water in the river floated slowly on its long journey towards the ocean, almost 2500 miles away. Large dolphins sometimes came to the surface, saluting the calm evening with a loud snort, and disappeared again with a slow, graceful movement. Almost every evening I could hear issuing from the forest a horrible roar. It came from the farthest depths and seemed as if it might well represent the mingled cries of some huge bull and a prowling jaguar that had attacked him unawares. Yet it all came, I found, from one throat, that of the howling monkey. He will sit alone for hours in a tree-top and pour forth these dreadful sounds which are well calculated to make the lonely wanderer stop and light a camp-fire for protection.

On the other hand, is heard the noise of the domestic animals of the village. Cows, calves, goats, and pigs seemed to make a habit of exercising their vocal organs thoroughly before retiring. Dogs bark at the moon; cats chase rats through openings of the palm-leaf roofs, threatening every moment to fall, pursued and pursuers, down upon the hammocks. Vampires flutter around from room to room, occasionally resting on the tops of the iron partitions, and when they halt, continuing to chirp for a while like hoarse sparrows. Occasionally there will come out of the darkness of the river a disagreeable sound as if some huge animal were gasping for its last breath before suffocating in the mud. The sound has its effect, even upon animals, coming as it does out of the black mysterious night, warning them not to venture far for fear some uncanny force may drag them to death in the dismal waters. It is the night call of the alligator.

Slowly the days went by and, with their passing, the river fell lower and lower until the waters receded from the land itself and were confined once more to their old course in the river-bed. As the ground began to dry, the time came when the mosquitoes were particularly vicious. They multiplied by the million. Soon the village was filled with malaria, and the hypodermic needle was in full activity.

A crowd of about fifty Indians from the Curu?a River had been brought to Remate de Males by launch. They belonged to the territory owned by Mons. Danon and slept outside the store-rooms of this plutocrat. Men, women, and children arranged their quarters in the soft mud until they could be taken to his rubber estate some hundred miles up the Javary River. They were still waiting to be equipped with rubber-workers' outfits when the malaria began its work among them. The poor mistreated Indians seemed to have been literally saturated with the germs, as they always slept without any protection whatever; consequently their systems offered less resistance to the disease than the ordinary Brazilian's. In four days there were only twelve persons left out of fifty-two.

During the last weeks of my stay in Remate de Males, I received an invitation to take lunch with the local Department Secretary, Professor Silveiro, an extremely hospitable and well educated Brazilian. The importance of such an invitation meant for me a radical change in appearance--an extensive alteration that could not be wrought without considerable pains. I had to have a five-months' beard shaved off, and then get into my best New York shirt, not to forget a high collar. I also considered that the occasion necessitated the impressiveness of a frock-coat, which I produced at the end of a long search among my baggage and proceeded to don after extracting a tarantula and some stray scolopendra from the sleeves and pockets. The sensation of wearing a stiff collar was novel, and not altogether welcome, since the temperature was near the 100? mark. The reward for my discomfort came, however, in the shape of the best meal I ever had in the Amazon region.

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