Albert R. Mann Library at Cornell University Samuel L. Leonard Fund for Mann Library ' igi ll 61 119 Cornell University Library The original of this book is in the Cornell University Library. There are no known copyright restrictions in the United States on the use of the text. htto://www.archive.org/details/cu31924086561119 THROUGH THE BRAZILIAN WILDERNESS BOOKS BY THEODORE ROOSEVELT PUBLISHED BY CHARLES SCRIBNER’S SONS THROUGH THE BRAZILIAN WILDERNESS. Illustrated. Large 8vo . . . . . . « $3.50 net LIFE-HISTORIES OF AFRICAN GAME ANI- MALS. With Edmund Heller. Illustrated. 2 vols. Large 8vo . « « « © © « « « $10.00 net AFRICAN GAME TRAILS. An account of the African Wanderings of an American Hunter-Naturalist. Illustrated. Large 8vo . . . . . . $4.00 net OUTDOOR PASTIMES OF AN AMERICAN HUNTER. New Edition. Illustrated. 8vo . . . $3.00 net HISTORY AS LITERATURE and Other Essays. WOO ss ee ee ek ew we ee we BO me OLIVER CROMWELL. Illustrated. 8vo . $2.00 nei THE ROUGH RIDERS. Illustrated. 8vo . $1.50 net THE ROOSEVELT BOOK. Selections from the Writ- ings of Theodore Roosevelt. 16mo . 50 cents net THE ELKHORN EDITION. Complete Works of Theodore Roosevelt. 26 volumes. Illustrated. 8vo. Sold by subscription. a Kavevove Taree 7 v Mand © IAL Va ventlé. ov Whi Lever of Loull Colonel Fooseve ¢ row ioe phatognaph by Ghesvria THROUGH THE BRAZILIAN WILDERNESS BY THEODORE ROOSEVELT WITH ILLUSTRATIONS FROM PHOTOGRAPHS BY KERMIT ROOSEVELT AND OTHER MEMBERS OF THE EXPEDITION NEW YORK CHARLES SCRIBNER’S SONS IQI4 CopyYRiIGHT, 1914, BY CHARLES SCRIBNER’S SONS All rights reserved, including that of translation into Soreign languages, including the Scandinavian Published October, 1914 TO H. E. LAURO MULLER SECRETARY OF FOREIGN AFFAIRS FOR BRAZIL, AND TO HIS GOVERNMENTAL COLLEAGUES AND TO COLONEL RONDON GALLANT OFFICER, HIGH-MINDED GENTLEMAN, AND INTREPID EXPLORER AND TO HIS ASSISTANTS CAPTAIN AMILCAR, LIEUTENANT LYRA, LIEUTENANT MELLO, LIEUTENANT LAURIADO, AND DOCTOR CAJAZEIRA, OF THE BRAZILIAN ARMY, AND EUSEBIO OLIVEIRA OUR COMPANIONS IN SCIENTIFIC WORK AND IN THE EXPLORATION OF THE WILDERNESS THIS BOOK IS INSCRIBED, WITH ESTEEM, REGARD, AND AFFECTION BY THEIR FRIEND THEODORE ROOSEVELT — — 80° 70° 60° 50° 40° CARIBREAIN SEA - i RS? Cware os™ e wro | 10} 10 q Buenayenturag iif Zw CH) ; i < en Hah x u Col. Roosevelt's trip is shown with an unbroken a, oe FALKLAND line thus, save on the Unknown River . 30 : > te 18. which is shown by broken line thus,.<+<= 100 oy Fiala’s trip down the Papagaio (never before de- scended) and the Tapajos is shown thus, X XXX otf yo Miller's trip down the Gy-Parana and the Sag Madeira is shown thus,.---_---.----.----- eeeose LLL.POATES CO., NaYo \ / L. 90° 80° Long. 70° West 60° from 60° Green. 40” 30° 20° — ——— = Map showing the entire South American journey of Colonel Roosevelt and members of the expedition PREFACE Tuts is an account of a zoogeographic reconnoissance through the Brazilian hinterland. The official and proper title of the expedition is that given it by the Brazilian Government: Expedicao Scien- tifica Roosevelt-Rondon. When I started from the United States, it was to make an expedition, primarily concerned with mammalogy and ornithology, for the American Mu- seum of Natural History of New York. This was under- taken under the auspices of Messrs. Osborn and Chapman, acting on behalf of the Museum. In the body of this work I describe how the scope of the expedition was en- larged, and how it was given a geographic as well as a zoo- logical character, in consequence of the kind proposal of the Brazilian Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, Gen- eral Lauro Miller. In its altered and enlarged form the expedition was rendered possible only by the generous assistance of the Brazilian Government. Throughout the body of the work will be found reference after reference to my colleagues and companions of the expedition, whose services to science I have endeavored to set forth, and for whom I shall always feel the most cordial friendship and regard. THEODORE ROOSEVELT. SacamoreE Hitt, September 1, 1914. CHAPTER III. CONTENTS THES START? @ G03. Ge Moda Sc8- Bie Noes Up tHE PARAGUAY <6 4) 4% @ Sow Go a ee es A Jacuar-HuntT oN THE TAQUARY . ...... Tue HeapwaTERs OF THE PARAGUAY ..... .; Up THE RIveR oF Tapirs eT ee ee TuroucH THe HicHLaNp WILDERNESS OF WESTERN BRAZIL: ee. eo in we Gand wae Se Glo GE Gan Wir a Mute-Train Across NHAMBIQUARA LAND . Tue River or Doust . ........2..4-. Down an UNKNown RIVER INTO THE EQUATORIAL FOREST. << 4). ol A at ee a ee GS To THE AMAZON AND Home; ZOOLOGICAL AND GEOGRAPH- IcAL RESULTS OF THE EXPEDITION ...... APPENDICES— A. Tue Work oF THE FIELD ZoOLOGIST AND FIELD GEOGRAPHER IN SOUTH AMERICA .... . B. Tue Ovurrir ror TRAVELLING IN THE SOUTH AMERICAN WILDERNESS SO StL) Sot. dn tet Ga, C. My Letrer or May 1 To GENERAL Lauro MULEER o. 40% a eee SL Sr ap ee INDEX S514. Bless & She Be Ge Be, Be Re ee 282 321 343 353 379 373 ILLUSTRATIONS Colonel Roosevelt and Colonel Rondon at Navaité on the River of Doubt. 6 oe a ea eS aw OEE PIECE Photogravure from a photograph by Cherrie. FACING PAGE Group—The mussurama swallowing the jararaca or fer-de-lance, after having just killed it. Method of the mussurama’s attack upon the jararaca. a al wg oe a ae, Ge ee ee eee es 2" Man-eating fish, piranha . . 2. 2 1 1 1 1 1 1 ee ee ee 42 Group—Indian boy with coati (coon-like animal) and parakeet. Tupi girl with young ostrich. Indian girl at cooking-pot 48 Group—Indians rolling logs at wood station. Palms along the bank of THESTIVER “ss - car SS GSS So Se ee GN he Sosa wa oe” alo. CSO Cattle on the upper Paraguay River . . . . . 2 ee ee ee 58 Group—Nips with the marsh deer. Returning to the fazenda (ranch) with the marsh deer onthe saddle . . . . ...... ++ 76 Group—The brown boy on the long-horned trotting steer, which he managed by a string through its nostril and lip. Colonel Roosevelt and the first jaguar... 1 1 ee ee ee ee ew we 80 Group—A South American puma. A South American jaguar . . . . 84 Group—Nine-banded armadillo. Capybaras. Collared peccary . . . 88 The entire party on the way back tothe ranch . . . « - + © + + 92 An Indian village . 2. 1 1 1 ee ee ee ee ee ee 102 We passed an Indian fishing village on the edge of the river, with huts, scaffoldings for drying the fish, hammocks, and rude tables. Group—Wood ibis. South American jabiru. Sariema . . ~~. + + 106 Group—A jabiru’s nest. Atroupial nest . . « - - + - + se « 118 xi xii ILLUSTRATIONS FACING PAGE Snake-birds and cormorants. . ... . a ee ee ee a ©) Mixed flocks of scores of cormorants and daten covered certain trees, both at sunset and after sunrise. Group—The great ant-eater. South American tapir ..... . + 134 Colonel Roosevelt and Colonel Rondon with bush deer . . . . . © 138 We hung the buck in a tree. The return from a day’shunt . . . Sie SS Aa mame Co ae, 8S TAZ Tapir, white-lipped peccary, and isto dee Kermit Roosevelt 2. 2. 2 1 1 1 ee ee ew ee ee ww ww 152 Two pranchas being pulled by launch with our baggage and provisions . 160 The prancha was towed at the end of a hawser and her crew poled. Colonel Roosevelt and Colonel Rondon looking over the vast landscape . 174 The ground was sandy, covered with grass and with a sparse growth of stunted, twisted trees, never more than a few feet high. The Salto Bello Falls . . . . 188 There is a sheer drop of ee or fifty acds, sed a icant penliaed chee times as great. Group—One woman was making a hammock. The mothers carried the child slung against their side or hip, seated in a cloth belt, or sling, which went over the opposite shoulder of the mother. . . . . . 192 ce tg game of ‘headball played by Parecis Indians at ay Falls... ee 194 The ickcoffe a glaives runs fougant Gen: biineel fat on aan aun and butts the ball toward the opposite side. Often it will be sent to and fro a dozen times, from head to head until finally it rises. The Falls of Utiarity . . . : ae 196 I doubt whether, excepting, af course, ‘Miasiek: ina is a watetall 4 in North America which outranks this if both volume and beauty are considered. Group—A lonely grave by the wayside. The Parecisdance. . . . . 108 The dance of the Parecis Indians . . . . es : 200 A number carried pipes through which they blew a kind at flees stifled whistle in time to the dancing. Group—Tres Burity. The kitchen under the ox-hide at Campos Novos. 208 At the Juruena we met a party of Nhambiquaras, very friendly and so- ciable, and very glad to see Colonel Rondon. . de ely. “at Ye ets SOTO ILLUSTRATIONS Xili FACING PAGE Group—Nhambiquara child with a pet monkey. The men had holes pierced through the septum of the nose and mune) the BpEsS Ip» and wore a straw through each hole he : Group—Maloca or beehive hut of the aaa ae Nhambiquara shelter hut and utensils . . ‘ Se eee ears The ant-hills were not infrequently taller than a horseman’s head . Group—A Nhambiquara ee Savana women and a “Adam and Eve” . . : é ‘ Group—Nhambiquara archer. First position. Second position . . . Group—I did my writing in headnet and gauntlets. Colonel Roosevelt’s canoe disappears down the River of Doubt . . Ce me Meebo Colonel Roosevelt’s and Colonel En onaeye canoes at the mouth of the Bandeira. . . . In mid-afternoon we came to “" meath at a big and swift afildeitt: 3 ie It was undoubtedly the Bandeira. The rapids of Navaité. . . iri wit er hate There were many curls, aie one or two een falls. Cherrie holding a rifle to show the width of the rapids at Navaité . . . At one point it was less than two yards across. Portaging around Navaité Rapids . We spent March 3 and 4 and the morning if the sth i in poremeing capa the rapids. Rapids of the Duvida . . . 1. 2 1 1 ew ee ee ee ee Dragging the canoes over a portage by means of ropes and logs. Group—Manner of dragging the canoes across a hilly Bear: ae the big canoe which was soon afterward lost . ae oe Ke Group—The Upper Davida. Cherriein hiscanoe . . . . . . Group—Red-and-yellow macaw. Egret. Curassow. Hyacinthine macaw. Toco toucan. Trumpeter... 2. 6. 2 1 1 ee ee ew The river rushed through a wild gorge, a chasm or canyon, between two mountains. a ee A eH Group—Rapids at the chasm. We bathed and swam in the river al- though in it we caught piranhas . . . . . 2. 2. ew 218 220 222 236 240 244 248 250 252 254 258 262 266 284 290 300 308 xiv ILLUSTRATIONS = FACING PAGE Group—Castanho-tree (Brazil-nut). Pacova-tree . .. . +. + + + 314 Group—At the rubber-man’s house. The canoe rigged with a cover under which Colonel Roosevelt travelled when sick . . . . . » 324 The camaradas, gathered around the monument erected by Colonel Rondon -.-40-« ee & ue aw a ck a we a we MAPS FACING PAGE Map showing the entire South American journey of Colonel Roosevelt and members of the expedition . . . «1. 1 6 + «© ee we Vil Map of the River of Doubt (Divida), christened Rio Roosevelt and sub- sequently Rio Téodoro by direction of the Brazilian Government . 338 THROUGH THE BRAZILIAN WILDERNESS THROUGH THE BRAZILIAN WILDERNESS CHAPTER I THE START One day in 1908, when my presidential term was com- ing to a close, Father Zahm, a priest whom I knew, came in to call on me. Father Zahm and I had been cronies for some time, because we were both of us fond of Dante and of history and of science—I had always commended to theologians his book, “Evolution and Dogma.” He was an Ohio boy, and his early schooling had been ob- tained in old-time American fashion in a little log school; where, by the way, one of the other boys was Januarius Aloysius MacGahan, afterward the famous war correspon- dent and friend of Skobeloff. Father Zahm told me that MacGahan even at that time added an utter fearlessness to chivalric tenderness for the weak, and was the defender of any small boy who was oppressed by a larger one. Later Father Zahm was at Notre Dame University, in Indiana, with Maurice Egan, whom, when I was President, I ap- pointed minister to Denmark. On the occasion in question Father Zahm had just re- turned from a trip across the Andes and down the Ama- zon, and came in to propose that after I left the presidency he and I should go up the Paraguay into the interior of 1 2 THROUGH THE BRAZILIAN WILDERNESS South America. At the time I wished to go to Africa, and so the subject was dropped; but from time to time after- ward we talked it over. Five years later, in the spring of 1913, I accepted invitations conveyed through the govern- ments of Argentina and Brazil to address certain learned bodies in these countries. Then it occurred to me that, instead of making the conventional tourist trip purely by sea round South America, after I had finished my lectures I would come north through the middle of the continent into the valley of the Amazon; and I decided to write Father Zahm and tell him my intentions. Before doing so, however, I desired to see the authorities of the American Museum of Natural History, in New York City, to find out whether they cared to have me take a couple of nat- uralists with me into Brazil and make a collecting trip for the museum. Accordingly, I wrote to Frank Chapman, the curator of ornithology of the museum, and accepted his invitation to lunch at the museum one day early in June. At the lunch, in addition to various naturalists, to my astonishment I also found Father Zahm; and as soon as I saw him I told him I was now intending to make the South American trip. It appeared that he had made up his mind that he would take it himself, and had actually come on to see Mr. Chapman to find out if the latter could recommend a naturalist to go with him; and he at once said he would accompany me. Chapman was pleased when he found out that we intended to go up the Paraguay and across into the valley of the Amazon, because much of the ground over which we were to pass had not been covered by col- lectors. He saw Henry Fairfield Osborn, the president of THE START 3 the museum, who wrote me that the museum would be pleased to send under me a couple of naturalists, whom, with my approval, Chapman would choose. The men whom Chapman recommended were Messrs. George K. Cherrie and Leo E. Miller. I gladly accepted both. The former was to attend chiefly to the ornithology and the latter to the mammalogy of the expedition; but each was to help out the other. No two better men for such a trip could have been found. Both were veterans of the tropical American forests. Miller was a young man, born in Indiana, an enthusiastic naturalist with good lit- erary as well as scientific training. He was at the time in the Guiana forests, and joined us at Barbados. Cherrie was an older man, born in Jowa, but now a farmer in Ver- mont. He had a wife and six children. Mrs. Cherrie had accompanied him during two or three years of their early married life in his collecting trips along the Orinoco. Their second child was born when they were in camp a couple of hundred miles from any white man or woman. One night a few weeks later they were obliged to leave a camp- ing-place, where they had intended to spend the night, be- cause the baby was fretful, and its cries attracted a jaguar, which prowled nearer and nearer in the twilight until they thought it safest once more to put out into the open river and seek a new resting-place. Cherrie had spent about twenty-two years collecting in the American tropics. Like most of the field-naturalists I have met, he was an unusually efficient and fearless man; and willy-nilly he had been forced at times to vary his career by taking part in insurrections. Twice he had been behind the bars in consequence, on one occasion spending three months in a prison of a certain 4 THROUGH THE BRAZILIAN WILDERNESS South American state, expecting each day to be taken out and shot. In another state he had, as an interlude to his ornithological pursuits, followed the career of a gun-runner, acting as such off and on for two and a half years. The particular revolutionary chief whose fortunes he was follow- ing finally came into power, and Cherrie immortalized his name by naming a new species of ant-thrush after him—a delightful touch, in its practical combination of those not normally kindred pursuits, ornithology and gun-running. In Anthony Fiala, a former arctic explorer, we found an excellent man for assembling equipment and taking charge of its handling and shipment. In addition to his four years in the arctic regions, Fiala had served in the New York Squadron in Porto Rico during the Spanish War, and through his service in the squadron had been brought into contact with his little Tennessee wife. She came down with her four children to say good-by to him when the steamer left. My secretary, Mr. Frank Harper, went with us. Jacob Sigg, who had served three years in the United States Army, and was both a hospital nurse and a cook, as well as having a natural taste for adventure, went as the personal attendant of Father Zahm. In south- ern Brazil my son Kermit joined me. He had been bridge building, and a couple of months previously, while on top of a long steel span, something went wrong with the der- rick, he and the steel span coming down together on the rocky bed beneath. He escaped with two broken ribs, two teeth knocked out, and a knee partially dislocated, but was practically all right again when he started with us. In its composition ours was a typical American expe- dition. Kermit and I were of the old Revolutionary stock, THE START 5 and in our veins ran about every strain of blood that there was on this side of the water during colonial times. Cher- rie’s father was born in Ireland, and his mother in Scot- land; they came here when very young, and his father served throughout the Civil War in an Iowa cavalry regi- ment. His wife was of old Revolutionary stock. Father Zahm’s father was an Alsacian immigrant, and his mother was partly of Irish and partly of old American stock, a descendant of a niece of General Braddock. Miller’s father came from Germany, and his mother from France. Fiala’s father and mother were both from Bohemia, being Czechs, and his father had served four years in the Civil War in the Union Army—his Tennessee wife was of old Revolu- tionary stock. Harper was born in England, and Sigg in Switzerland. We were as varied in religious creed as in ethnic origin. Father Zahm and Miller were Catholics, Kermit and Harper Episcopalians, Cherrie a Presbyterian, Fiala a Baptist, Sigg a Lutheran, while I belonged to the Dutch Reformed Church. For arms the naturalists took 16-bore shotguns, one of Cherrie’s having a rifle barrel underneath. The firearms for the rest of the party were supplied by Kermit and myself, including my Springfield rifle, Kermit’s two Win- chesters, a 405 and 30-40, the Fox 12-gauge shotgun, and another 16-gauge gun, and a couple of revolvers, a Colt and a Smith & Wesson. We took from New York a couple of canvas canoes, tents, mosquito-bars, plenty of cheese- cloth, including nets for the hats, and both light cots and hammocks. We took ropes and pulleys which proved in- valuable on our canoe trip. Each equipped himself with the clothing he fancied. Mine consisted of khaki, such as 6 THROUGH THE BRAZILIAN WILDERNESS I wore in Africa, with a couple of United States Army flannel shirts and a couple of silk shirts, one pair of hob- nailed shoes with leggings, and one pair of laced leather boots coming nearly to the knee. Both the naturalists told me that it was well to have either the boots or leggings as a protection against snake-bites, and I also had gauntlets because of the mosquitoes and sand-flies. We intended where possible to live on what we could get from time to time in the country, but we took some United States Army emergency rations, and also ninety cans, each con- taining a day’s provisions for five men, made up by Fiala. The trip I proposed to take can be understood only if there is a slight knowledge of South American topography. The great mountain chain of the Andes extends down the entire length of the western coast, so close to the Pacific Ocean that no rivers of any importance enter it. The rivers of South America drain into the Atlantic. South- ernmost South America, including over half of the terri- tory of the Argentine Republic, consists chiefly of a cool, open plains country. Northward of this country, and east- ward of the Andes, lies the great bulk of the South Ameri- can continent, which is included in the tropical and the subtropical regions. Most of this territory is Brazilian. Aside from certain relatively small stretches drained by coast rivers, this immense region of tropical and subtrop- ical America east of the Andes is drained by the three great river systems of the Plate, the Amazon, and the Orinoco. At their headwaters the Amazon and the Ori- noco systems are actually connected by a sluggish natural canal. The headwaters of the northern affluents of the Paraguay and the southern affluents of the Amazon are THE START 7 sundered by a stretch of high land, which toward the east broadens out into the central plateau of Brazil. Geologi- cally this is a very ancient region, having appeared above the waters before the dawning of the age of reptiles, or, indeed, of any true land vertebrates on the globe. This plateau is a region partly of healthy, rather dry and sandy, open prairie, partly of forest. The great and low-lying basin of the Paraguay, which borders it on the south, is one of the largest, and the still greater basin of the Ama- zon, which borders it on the north, is the very largest of all the river basins of the earth. In these basins, but especially in the basin of the Am- azon, and thence in most places northward to the Carib- bean Sea, lie the most extensive stretches of tropical forest to be found anywhere. The forests of tropical West Africa, and of portions of the Farther-Indian region, are the only ones that can be compared with them. Much difficulty has been experienced in exploring these forests, because under the torrential rains and steaming heat the rank growth of vegetation becomes almost impenetrable, and the streams difficult of navigation; while white men suffer much from the terrible insect scourges and the deadly diseases which modern science has discovered to be due very largely to insect bites. The fauna and flora, however, are of great interest. The American museum was particu- larly anxious to obtain collections from the divide between the headwaters of the Paraguay and the Amazon, and from the southern affluents of the Amazon. Our purpose was to ascend the Paraguay as nearly as possible to the head of navigation, thence cross to the sources of one of the affluents of the Amazon, and if possible descend it in 8 THROUGH THE BRAZILIAN WILDERNESS canoes built on the spot. The Paraguay is regularly navi- gated as high as boats can go. The starting-point for our trip was to be Asuncion, in the state of Paraguay. My exact plan of operations was necessarily a little indefinite, but on reaching Rio de Janeiro the minister of foreign affairs, Mr. Lauro Miller, who had been kind enough to take great personal interest in my trip, informed me that he had arranged that on the headwaters of the Paraguay, at the town of Caceres, I would be met by a Brazilian Army colonel, himself chiefly Indian by blood, Colonel Rondon. Colonel Rondon has been for a quarter of a century the foremost explorer of the Brazilian hin- terland. He was at the time in Manaos, but his lieuten- ants were in Caceres and had been notified that we were coming. More important still, Mr. Lauro Miiller—who is not only an efficient public servant but a man of wide culti- vation, with a quality about him that reminded me of John Hay—offered to help me make my trip of much more consequence than I had originally intended. He has taken a keen interest in the exploration and development of the interior of Brazil, and he believed that my expedition could be used as a means toward spreading abroad a more general knowledge of the country. He told me that he would co-operate with me in every way if I cared to un- dertake the leadership of a serious expedition into the un- explored portion of western Matto Grosso, and to attempt the descent of a river which flowed nobody knew whither, but which the best-informed men believed would prove to be a very big river, utterly unknown to geographers. I eagerly and gladly accepted, for I felt that with such help THE START 9 the trip could be made of much scientific value, and that a substantial addition could be made to the geographical knowledge of one of the least-known parts of South America. Accordingly, it was arranged that Colonel Rondon and some assistants and scientists should meet me at or below Corumba, and that we should attempt the descent of the river, of which they had already come across the head- waters. I had to travel through Brazil, Uruguay, the Argentine, and Chile for six weeks to fulfil my speaking engagements. Fiala, Cherrie, Miller, and Sigg left me at Rio, continuing to Buenos Aires in the boat in which we had all come down from New York. From Buenos Aires they went up the Paraguay to Corumba, where they awaited me. The two naturalists went first, to do all the collecting that was possible; Fiala and Sigg travelled more leisurely, with the heavy baggage. Before I followed them I witnessed an incident worthy of note from the standpoint of a naturalist, and of pos- sible importance to us because of the trip we were about to take. South America even more than Australia and Africa, and almost as much as India, is a country of poi- sonous snakes. As in India, although not to the same degree, these snakes are responsible for a very serious mor- tality among human beings. One of the most interesting evidences of the modern advance in Brazil is the estab- lishment near Sao Paulo of an institution especially for the study of these poisonous snakes, so as to secure anti- dotes to the poison and to develop enemies to the snakes themselves. We wished to take into the interior with us 10 THROUGH THE BRAZILIAN WILDERNESS some bottles of the anti-venom serum, for on such an ex- pedition there is always a certain danger from snakes. On one of his trips Cherrie had lost a native follower by snake-bite. The man was bitten while out alone in the forest, and, although he reached camp, the poison was al- ready working in him, so that he could give no intelligible account of what had occurred, and he died in a short time. Poisonous snakes are of several different families, but the most poisonous ones, those which are dangerous to man, belong to the two great families of the colubrine snakes and the vipers. Most of the colubrine snakes are entirely harmless, and are the common snakes that we meet everywhere. But some of them, the cobras for in- stance, develop into what are on the whole perhaps the most formidable of all snakes. The only poisonous colu- brine snakes in the New World are the ring-snakes, the coral-snakes of the genus e/aps, which are found from the extreme southern United States southward to the Ar- gentine. These coral-snakes are not vicious and have small teeth which cannot penetrate even ordinary clothing. They are only dangerous if actually trodden on by some one with bare feet or if seized in the hand. There are harmless snakes very like them in color which are some- times kept as pets; but it behooves every man who keeps such a pet or who handles such a snake to be very sure as to the genus to which it belongs. The great bulk of the poisonous snakes of America, including all the really dangerous ones, belong to a divi- sion of the widely spread family of vipers which is known as the pit-vipers. In South America these include two distinct subfamilies or genera—whether they are called THE START 11 families, subfamilies, or genera would depend, I suppose, largely upon the varying personal views of the individual describer on the subject of herpetological nomenclature. One genus includes the rattlesnakes, of which the big Brazilian species is as dangerous as those of the southern United States. But the large majority of the species and individuals of dangerous snakes in tropical America are included in the genus lachecis. These are active, vicious, aggressive snakes without rattles. They are exceedingly poisonous. Some of them grow to a very large size, being indeed among the largest poisonous snakes in the world —their only rivals in this respect being the diamond rat- tlesnake of Florida, one of the African mambas, and the Indian hamadryad, or snake-eating cobra. The fer-de- lance, so dreaded in Martinique, and the equally danger- ous bushmaster of Guiana are included in this genus. A dozen species are known in Brazil, the biggest one being identical with the Guiana bushmaster, and the most com- mon one, the jararaca, being identical or practically iden- tical with the fer-de-lance. The snakes of this genus, like the rattlesnakes and the Old-World vipers and puff-adders, possess long poison-fangs which strike through clothes or any other human garment except stout leather. Moreover, they are very aggressive, more so than any other snakes in the world, except possibly some of the cobras. As, in addition, they are numerous, they are a source of really frightful danger to scantily clad men who work in the fields and forests, or who for any reason are abroad at night. The poison of venomous serpents is not in the least uniform in its quality. On the contrary, the natural forces 12 THROUGH THE BRAZILIAN WILDERNESS —to use a term which is vague, but which is as exact as our present-day knowledge permits—that have developed in so many different families of snakes these poisoned fangs have worked in two or three totally different fashions. Unlike the vipers, the colubrine poisonous snakes have small fangs, and their poison, though on the whole even more deadly, has entirely different effects, and owes its deadliness to entirely different qualities. Even within the same family there are wide differences. In the jararaca an extraordinary quantity of yellow venom is spurted from the long poison-fangs. This poison is secreted in large glands which, among vipers, give the head its peculiar ace- of-spades shape. The rattlesnake yields a much smaller quantity of white venom, but, quantity for quantity, this white venom is more deadly. It is the great quantity of venom injected by the long fangs of the jararaca, the bush- master, and their fellows that renders their bite so generally fatal. Moreover, even between these two allied genera of pit-vipers, the differences in the action of the poison are sufficiently marked to be easily recognizable, and to render the most effective anti-venomous serum for each slightly different from the other. However, they are near enough alike to make this difference, in practice, of comparatively small consequence. In practice the same serum can be used to neutralize the effect of either, and, as will be seen later on, the snake that isimmune to one kind of venom is also immune to the other. But the effect of the venom of the poisonous colubrine snakes is totally different from, although to the full as deadly as, the effect of the poison of the rattlesnake or jararaca. The serum that is an antidote as regards the THE START 13 pit-viper is wholly or well-nigh useless as regards the colubrines. The animal that is immune to the bite of one may not be immune to the bite of the other. The bite of a cobra or other colubrine poisonous snake is more painful in its immediate effects than is the bite of one of the big vipers. The victim suffers more. There is a greater effect on the nerve-centres, but less swelling of the wound itself, and, whereas the blood of the rattlesnake’s victim coagulates, the blood of the victim of an elapine snake—that is, of one of the only poisonous American col- ubrines—becomes watery and incapable of coagulation. Snakes are highly specialized in every way, including their prey. Some live exclusively on warm-blooded ani- mals, on mammals, or birds. Some live exclusively on batrachians, others only on lizards, a few only on insects. A very few species live exclusively on other snakes. These include one very formidable venomous snake, the Indian hamadryad, or giant cobra, and several non-poisonous snakes. In Africa I killed a small cobra which contained within it a snake but a few inches shorter than itself; but, as far as I could find out, snakes were not the habitual diet of the African cobras. The poisonous snakes use their venom to kill their victims, and also to kill any possible foe which they think menaces them. Some of them are good-tempered, and only fight if injured or seriously alarmed. Others are ex- cessively irritable, and on rare occasions will even attack of their own accord when entirely unprovoked and un- threatened. On reaching Sao Paulo on our southward journey from Rio to Montevideo, we drove out to the “Instituto Serum- 14 THROUGH THE BRAZILIAN WILDERNESS thérapico,” designed for the study of the effects of the venom of poisonous Brazilian snakes. Its director is Doc- tor Vital Brazil, who has performed a most extraordinary work and whose experiments and investigations are not only of the utmost value to Brazil but will ultimately be recognized as of the utmost value for humanity at large. I know of no institution of similar kind anywhere. It has a fine modern building, with all the best appliances, in which experiments are carried on with all kinds of serpents, liv- ing and dead, with the object of discovering all the prop- erties of their several kinds of venom, and of developing various anti-venom serums which nullify the effects of the different venoms. Every effort is made to teach the peo- ple at large by practical demonstration in the open field the lessons thus learned in the laboratory. One notable result has been the diminution in the mortality from snake- bites in the province of Sao Paulo. In connection with his institute, and right by the laboratory, the doctor has a large serpentarium, in which quantities of the common poisonous and non-poisonous snakes are kept, and some of the rarer ones. He has de- voted considerable time to the effort to find out if there are any natural enemies of the poisonous snakes of his country, and he has discovered that the most formidable enemy of the many dangerous Brazilian snakes is a non- poisonous, entirely harmless, rather uncommon Brazilian snake, the mussurama. Of all the interesting things the doctor showed us, by far the most interesting was the op- portunity of witnessing for ourselves the action of the mus- surama toward a dangerous snake. The doctor first showed us specimens of the various THE START 15 important snakes, poisonous and non-poisonous, in alcohol. Then he showed us preparations of the different kinds of venom and of the different anti-venom serums, presenting us with some of the latter for our use on the journey. He has been able to produce two distinct kinds of anti- venom serum, one to neutralize the virulent poison of the rattlesnake’s bite, the other to neutralize the poison of the different snakes of the lachecis genus. These poisons are somewhat different and moreover there appear to be some differences between the poisons of the different spe- cies of lachecis; in some cases the poison is nearly color- less, and in others, as in that of the jararaca, whose poi- son I saw, it is yellow. But the vital difference is that between all these poi- sons of the pit-vipers and the poisons of the colubrine snakes, such as the cobra and the coral-snake. As yet the doctor has not been able to develop an anti-venom serum which will neutralize the poison of these colubrine snakes. Practically this is a matter of little consequence in Brazil, for the Brazilian coral-snakes are dangerous only when mishandled by some one whose bare skin is exposed to the bite. The numerous accidents- and fatalities continually occurring in Brazil are almost always to be laid to the account of the several species of lachecis and the single species of rattlesnake. Finally, the doctor took us into his lecture-room to show us how he conducted his experiments. The various snakes were in boxes, on one side of the room, under the care of a skilful and impassive assistant, who handled them with the cool and fearless caution of the doctor himself. The poisonous ones were taken out by means of a long- 16 THROUGH THE BRAZILIAN WILDERNESS handled steel hook. All that is necessary to do is to in- sert this under the snake and lift him off the ground. He is not only unable to escape, but he is unable to strike, for he cannot strike unless coiled so as to give himself support and leverage. The table on which the snakes are laid is fairly large and smooth, differing in no way from an ordi- nary table. There were a number of us in the room, including two or three photographers. The doctor first put on the table a non-poisonous but very vicious and truculent colubrine snake. It struck right and left at us. Then the doctor picked it up, opened its mouth, and showed that it had no fangs, and handed it to me. I also opened its mouth and examined its teeth, and then put it down, whereupon, its temper having been much ruffled, it struck violently at me two or three times. In its action and temper this snake was quite as vicious as the most irritable poisonous snakes. Yet it is entirely harmless. One of the innumer- able mysteries of nature which are at present absolutely insoluble is why some snakes should be so vicious and others absolutely placid and good-tempered. After removing the vicious harmless snake, the doctor warned us to get away from the table, and his attendant put on it, in succession, a very big lachecis—of the kind called bushmaster—and a big rattlesnake. Each coiled menacingly, a formidable brute ready to attack anything that approached. Then the attendant adroitly dropped his iron crook on the neck of each in succession, seized it right behind the head, and held it toward the doctor. The snake’s mouth was in each case wide open, and the great fangs erect and very evident. It would not have THE START 17 been possible to have held an African ring-necked cobra in such fashion, because the ring-neck would have ejected its venom through the fangs into the eyes of the onlookers. There was no danger in this case, and the doctor inserted a shallow glass saucer into the mouth of the snake behind the fangs, permitted it to eject its poison, and then himself squeezed out the remaining poison from the poison-bags through the fangs. From the big lachecis came a large quantity of yellow venom, a liquid which speedily crystal- lized into a number of minute crystals. The rattlesnake yielded a much less quantity of white venom, which the doctor assured us was far more active than the yellow lachecis venom. Then each snake was returned to its box unharmed. After this the doctor took out of a box and presented to me a fine, handsome, nearly black snake, an individual of the species called the mussurama. This is in my eyes perhaps the most interesting serpent in the world. It is a big snake, four or five feet long, sometimes even longer, nearly black, lighter below, with a friendly, placid temper. It lives exclusively on other snakes, and is completely im- mune to the poison of the lachecis and rattlesnake groups, which contain all the really dangerous snakes of America. Doctor Brazil told me that he had conducted many experi- ments with this interesting snake. It is not very common, and prefers wet places in which to live. It lays eggs, and the female remains coiled above the eggs, the object being apparently not to warm them, but to prevent too great evaporation. It will not eat when moulting, nor in cold weather. Otherwise it will eat a small snake every five or six days, or a big one every fortnight. 18 THROUGH THE BRAZILIAN WILDERNESS There is the widest difference, both among poisonous and non-poisonous snakes, not alone in nervousness and irascibility but also in ability to accustom themselves to out-of-the-way surroundings. Many species of non-poi- sonous snakes which are entirely harmless, to man or to any other animal except their small prey, are nevertheless very vicious and truculent, striking right and left and biting freely on the smallest provocation—this is the case with the species of which the doctor had previously placed a specimen on the table. Moreover, many snakes, some entirely harmless and some vicious ones, are so nervous and uneasy that it is with the greatest difficulty they can be induced to eat in captivity, and the slightest distur- bance or interference will prevent their eating. There are other snakes, however, of which the mussurama is perhaps the best example, which are very good captives, and at the same time very fearless, showing a complete indifference not only to being observed but to being handled when they are feeding. There is in the United States a beautiful and attractive snake, the king-snake, with much the same habits as the mussurama. It is friendly toward mankind, and not poi- sonous, so that it can be handled freely. It feeds on other serpents, and will kill a rattlesnake as big as itself, being immune to the rattlesnake venom. Mr. Ditmars, of the Bronx Zoo, has made many interesting experiments with these king-snakes. I have had them in my own posses- sion. They are good-natured and can generally be han- dled with impunity, but I have known them to bite, whereas Doctor Brazil informed me that it was almost impossible to make the mussurama bite a man. The king-snake will THE START 19 feed greedily on other snakes in the presence of man—I knew of one case where it partly swallowed another snake while both were in a small boy’s pocket. It is immune to viper poison but it is not immune to colubrine poison. A couple of years ago I was informed of a case where one of these king-snakes was put into an enclosure with an In- dian snake-eating cobra or hamadryad of about the same size. It killed the cobra but made no effort to swallow it, and very soon showed the effects of the cobra poison. I believe it afterward died, but unfortunately I have mis- laid my notes and cannot now remember the details of the incident. Doctor Brazil informed me that the mussurama, like the king-snake, was not immune to the colubrine poison. A mussurama in his possession, which had with impunity killed and eaten several rattlesnakes and representatives of the lachecis genus, also killed and ate a venomous coral- snake, but shortly afterward itself died from the effects of the poison. It is one of the many puzzles of nature that these American serpents which kill poisonous serpents should only have grown immune to the poison of the most dangerous American poisonous serpents, the pit-vipers, and should not have become immune to the poison of the coral- snakes which are commonly distributed throughout their range. Yet, judging by the one instance mentioned by Doctor Brazil, they attack and master these coral-snakes, although the conflict in the end results in their death. It would be interesting to find out whether this attack was exceptional, that is, whether the mussurama has or has not as a species learned to avoid the coral-snake. If it was not exceptional, then not only is the instance highly 20 THROUGH THE BRAZILIAN WILDERNESS curious in itself, but it would also go far to explain the failure of the mussurama to become plentiful. For the benefit of those who are not acquainted with the subject, I may mention that the poison of a poisonous snake is not dangerous to its own species unless injected in very large doses, about ten times what would normally be injected by a bite; but that it is deadly to all other snakes, poisonous or non-poisonous, save as regards the very few species which themselves eat poisonous snakes. The Indian hamadryad, or giant cobra, is exclusively a snake-eater. It evidently draws a sharp distinction between poisonous and non-poisonous snakes, for Mr. Ditmars has recorded that two individuals in the Bronx Zoo which are habitually fed on harmless snakes, and attack them eagerly, refused to attack a copperhead which was thrown into their cage, being evidently afraid of this pit-viper. It would be interesting to find out if the hamadryad is afraid to prey on all pit-vipers, and also whether, it will prey on its small relative, the true cobra—for it may well be that, even if not immune to the viper poison, it is immune to the poison of its close ally, the smaller cobra. All these and many other questions would be speedily settled by Doctor Brazil if he were given the opportunity to test them. It must be remembered, moreover, that not only have his researches been of absorbing value from the standpoint of pure science but that they also have a real utilitarian worth. He is now collecting and breeding the mussurama. The favorite prey of the mussurama is the most common and therefore the most dangerous poison- ous snake of Brazil, the jararaca, which is known in Mar- tinique as the fer-de-lance. In Martinique and elsewhere THE START 21 this snake is such an object of terror as to be at times a genuine scourge. Surely it would be worth while for the authorities of Martinique to import specimens of the mus- surama to that island. The mortality from snake-bite in British India is very great. Surely it would be well worth while for the able Indian Government to copy Brazil and create such an institute as that over which Doctor Vital Brazil is the curator. At first sight it seems extraordinary that poisonous ser- pents, so dreaded by and so irresistible to most animals, should be so utterly helpless before the few creatures that prey on them. But the explanation is easy. Any highly specialized creature, the higher its specialization, is apt to be proportionately helpless when once its peculiar special- ized traits are effectively nullified by an opponent. This is eminently the case with the most dangerous poisonous snakes. In them a highly peculiar specialization has been carried to the highest point. They rely for attack and defence purely on their poison-fangs. All other means and methods of attack and defence have atrophied. They neither crush nor tear with their teeth nor constrict with their bodies. The poison-fangs are slender and delicate, and, save for the poison, the wound inflicted is of a trivial character. In consequence they are utterly helpless in the presence of any animal which the poison does not affect. There are several mammals immune to snake-bite, includ- ing various species of hedgehog, pig, and mongoose—the other mammals which kill them do so by pouncing on them unawares or by avoiding their stroke through sheer quickness of movement; and probably this is the case with most snake-eating birds. The mongoose is very quick, 22 THROUGH THE BRAZILIAN WILDERNESS but in some cases at least—I have mentioned one in the “African Game Trails”—it permits itself to be bitten by poisonous snakes, treating the bite with utter indifference. There should be extensive experiments made to determine if there are species of mongoose immune to both cobra and viper poison. Hedgehogs, as determined by actual experiments, pay no heed at all to viper poison even when bitten on such tender places as the tongue and lips and eat the snake as if it were a radish. Even among animals which are not immune to the poison different species are very differently affected by the different kinds of snake poisons. Not only are some species more resistant than others to all poisons, but there is a wide variation in the amount of immunity each displays to any given venom. One species will be quickly killed by the poison from one species of snake, and be fairly resistant to the poison of another; whereas in another species the conditions may be directly reversed. The mussurama which Doctor Brazil handed me was a fine specimen, perhaps four and a half feet long. I lifted the smooth, lithe bulk in my hands, and then let it twist its coils so that it rested at ease in my arms; it glided to and fro, on its own length, with the sinuous grace of its kind, and showed not the slightest trace of either nervous- ness or bad temper. Meanwhile the doctor bade his at- tendant put on the table a big jararaca, or fer-de-lance, which was accordingly done. The jararaca was about three feet and a half or perhaps nearly four feet long— that is, it was about nine inches shorter than the mussu- rama. The latter, which I continued to hold in my arms, behaved with friendly and impassive indifference, moving THE START 23 easily to and fro through my hands, and once or twice hiding its head between the sleeve and the body of my coat. The doctor was not quite sure how the mus- surama would behave, for it had recently eaten a small snake, and unless hungry it pays no attention whatever to venomous snakes, even when they attack and bite it. However, it fortunately proved still to have a good ap- petite. The jararaca was alert and vicious. It partly coiled itself on the table, threatening the bystanders. I put the big black serpent down on the table four or five feet from the enemy and headed in its direction. As soon as I let go with my hands it glided toward where the threatening, formidable-looking lance-head lay stretched in a half coil. The mussurama displayed not the slightest sign of excite- ment. Apparently it trusted little to its eyes, for it began to run its head along the body of the jararaca, darting out its flickering tongue to feel just where it was, as it nosed its way up toward the head of its antagonist. So placid were its actions that I did not at first suppose that it meant to attack, for there was not the slightest exhibi- tion of anger or excitement. It was the jararaca that began the fight. It showed no fear whatever of its foe, but its irritable temper was aroused by the proximity and actions of the other, and like a flash it drew back its head and struck, burying its fangs in the forward part of the mussurama’s body. Im- mediately the latter struck in return, and the counter-at- tack was so instantaneous that it was difficult to see just what had happened. There was tremendous writhing and struggling on the part of the jararaca; and then, leaning 24 THROUGH THE BRAZILIAN WILDERNESS over the knot into which the two serpents were twisted, I saw that the mussurama had seized the jararaca by the ‘lower jaw, putting its own head completely into the wide- gaping mouth of the poisonous snake. The long fangs were just above the top of the mussurama’s head; and it appeared, as well as I could see, that they were once again driven into the mussurama; but without the slightest ef- fect. Then the fangs were curved back in the jaw, a fact -which I particularly noted, and all effort at the offensive ‘was abandoned by the poisonous snake. Meanwhile the mussurama was chewing hard, and grad- ually shifted its grip, little by little, until it got the top .of the head of the jararaca in its mouth, the lower jaw of -the jararaca being spread out to one side. The venomous ‘serpent was helpless; the fearsome master of the wild life of the forest, the deadly foe of humankind, was itself held ‘in the grip of death. Its cold, baleful serpent’s eyes shone, as evil as ever. But it was dying. In vain it writhed and struggled. Nothing availed it. Once or twice the mussurama took a turn round the middle of the body of its opponent, but it did not seem to press hard, and apparently used its coils chiefly in order to get a better grip so as to crush the head of its antagonist, or to hold the latter in place. This crushing was done by its teeth; and the repeated bites were made with such effort that the muscles stood out on the mussurama’s neck. Then it took two coils round the neck of the jararaca and proceeded deliberately to try to break the backbone of its opponent by twisting the head round. With this pur- pose it twisted its own head and neck round so that the lighter-colored surface was uppermost; and indeed at one The mussurama swallowing the jararaca, or fer-de-lance, after having just killed it From a photograph by Maza Method of the mussurama’s attack upon the jararaca Reproduced by courtesy of Dr Vital Brazil THE START 25 time it looked as if it had made almost a complete single spiral revolution of its own body. It never for a moment relaxed its grip except to shift slightly the jaws. In a few minutes the jararaca was dead, its head crushed in, although the body continued to move convulsively. When satisfied that its opponent was dead, the mussurama began to try to get the head in its mouth. This was a process of some difficulty on account of the angle at which the lower jaw of the jararaca stuck out. But finally the head was taken completely inside and then swallowed. After this, the mussurama proceeded deliberately, but with unbroken speed, to devour its opponent by the simple process of crawling outside it, the body and tail of the jararaca writhing and struggling until the last. During the early portion of the meal, the mussurama put a stop to this writhing and struggling by resting its own body on that of its prey; but toward the last the part of the body that remained outside was left free to wriggle as it wished. Not only was the mussurama totally indifferent to our presence, but it was totally indifferent to being handled while the meal was going on. Several times I replaced the combatants in the middle of the table when they had writhed to the edge, and finally, when the photographers found that they could not get good pictures, I held the mussurama up against a white background with the par- tially swallowed snake in its mouth; and the feast went on uninterruptedly. I never saw cooler.or more utterly unconcerned conduct; and the ease and certainty with which the terrible poisonous snake was mastered gave me the heartiest respect and liking for the easy-going, good- 26 THROUGH THE BRAZILIAN WILDERNESS natured, and exceedingly efficient serpent which I had been holding in my arms. Our trip was not intended as a hunting-trip but as a sciéntific expedition. Before starting on the trip itself, while travelling in the Argentine, I received certain pieces of first-hand information concerning the natural history of the jaguar, and of the cougar, or puma, which are worth recording. The facts about the jaguar are not new in the sense of casting new light on its character, although they are interesting; but the facts about the behavior of the puma in one district of Patagonia are of great interest, because they give an entirely new side of its life-history. There was travelling with me at the time Doctor Fran- cisco P. Moreno, of Buenos Aires. Doctor Moreno is at the present day a member of the National Board of Edu- cation of the Argentine, a man who has worked in every way for the benefit of his country, perhaps especially for the benefit of the children, so that when he was first intro- duced to me it was as the “Jacob Riis of the Argentine” —for they know my deep and affectionate intimacy with Jacob Riis. He is also an eminent man of science, who - has done admirable work as a geologist and a geographer. At one period, in connection with his duties as a boundary commissioner on the survey between Chile and the Argen- tine, he worked for years in Patagonia. It was he who made the extraordinary discovery in a Patagonian cave of the still fresh fragments of skin and other remains of the mylodon, the aberrant horse known as the onohipidium, the huge South American tiger, and the macrauchenia, all of them extinct animals. This discovery showed that some of THE START 27 the strange representatives of the giant South American pleistocene fauna had lasted down to within a compara- tively few thousand years, down to the time when man, substantially as the Spaniards found him, flourished on the continent. Incidentally the discovery tended to show that this fauna had lasted much later in South America than was the case with the corresponding faunas in other parts of the world; and therefore it tended to disprove the claims advanced by Doctor Ameghino for the extreme age, geologically, of this fauna, and for the extreme antiquity of man on the American continent. One day Doctor Moreno handed me a copy of The Outlook containing my account of a cougar-hunt in Ari- zona, saying that he noticed that I had very little faith in cougars attacking men, although I had explicitly stated that such attacks sometimes occurred. I told him, Yes, that I had found that the cougar was practically harmless to man, the undoubtedly authentic instances of attacks on men being so exceptional that they could in practice be wholly disregarded. Thereupon Doctor Moreno showed me a scar on his face, and told me that he had himself been attacked and badly mauled by a puma which was undoubt- edly trying to prey on him; that is, which had started on a career as a man-eater. This was to me most interesting. I had often met men who knew other men who had seen other men who said that they had been attacked by pumas, but this was the first time that I had ever come across a man who had himself been attacked. Doctor Moreno, as I have said, is not only an eminent citizen, but an eminent scientific man, and his account of what occurred is unques- tionably a scientifically accurate statement of the facts. 28 THROUGH THE BRAZILIAN WILDERNESS I give it exactly as the doctor told it; paraphrasing a letter he sent me, and including one or two answers to questions I put to him. The doctor, by the way, stated to me that he had known Mr. Hudson, the author of the “Naturalist on the Plata,” and that the latter knew nothing whatever of pumas from personal experience and had accepted as facts utterly wild fables. Undoubtedly, said the doctor, the puma in South America, like the puma in North America, is as a general rule a cowardly animal which not only never attacks man but rarely makes any efficient defence when attacked. The Indian and white hunters have no fear of it in most parts of the country, and its harmlessness to man is proverbial. But there is one particular spot in southern Patagonia where cougars, to the doctor’s own personal knowledge, have for years been dangerous foes of man. This curious local change in habits, by the way, is nothing unprece- dented as regards wild animals. In portions of its range, as I am informed by Mr. Lord Smith, the Asiatic tiger can hardly be forced to fight man, and never preys on him, while throughout most of its range it is a most dangerous beast, and often turns man-eater. So there are waters in which sharks are habitual man-eaters, and others where they never touch men; and there are rivers and lakes where crocodiles or caymans are very dangerous, and others where they are practically harmless—I have myself seen this in Africa. In March, 1877, Doctor Moreno with a party of men working on the boundary commission, and with a number of Patagonian horse-Indians, was encamped for some weeks beside Lake Viedma, which had not before been visited THE START 29 by white men for a century, and which was rarely visited even by Indians. One morning, just before sunrise, he left his camp by the south shore of the lake, to make a topographical sketch of the lake. He was unarmed, but carried a prismatic compass in a leather case with a strap. It was cold, and he wrapped his poncho of guanaco-hide round his neck and head. He had walked a few hundred yards, when a puma, a female, sprang on him from behind and knocked him down. As she sprang on him she tried to seize his head with one paw, striking him on the shoul- der with the other. She lacerated his mouth and also his back, but tumbled over with him, and in the scuffle they separated before she could bite him. He sprang to his feet, and, as he said, was forced to think quickly. She had recovered herself, and sat on her haunches like a cat, looking at him, and then crouched to spring again; where- upon he whipped off his poncho, and as she sprang at him he opened it, and at the same moment hit her head with the prismatic compass in its case which he held by the strap. She struck the poncho and was evidently puzzled by it, for, turning, she slunk off to one side, under a bush, and then proceeded to try to get round behind him. He faced her, keeping his eyes upon her, and backed off. She followed him for three or four hundred yards. At least twice she came up to attack him, but each time he opened his poncho and yelled, and at the last moment she shrank back. She continually, however, tried, by taking advan- tage of cover, to sneak up to one side, or behind, to at- tack him. Finally, when he got near camp, she abandoned the pursuit and went into a small patch of bushes. He raised the alarm; an Indian rode up and set fire to the 30 THROUGH THE BRAZILIAN WILDERNESS bushes from the windward side. When the cougar broke from the bushes, the Indian rode after her, and threw his bolas, which twisted around her hind legs; and while she was struggling to free herself, he brained her with his second bolas. The doctor’s injuries were rather painful, but not serious. Twenty-one years later, in April, 1898, he was camped on the same lake, but on the north shore, at the foot of a basaltic cliff. He was in company with four soldiers, with whom he had travelled from the Strait of Magellan. In the night he was aroused by the shriek of a man and the barking of his dogs. As the men sprang up from where they were lying asleep they saw a large puma run off out of the firelight into the darkness. It had sprung on a sol- dier named Marcelino Huquen while he was asleep, and had tried to carry him off. Fortunately, the man was so wrapped up in his blanket, as the night was cold, that he was not injured. The puma was never found or killed. About the same time a surveyor of Doctor Moreno’s party, a Swede named Arneberg, was attacked in similar fashion. The doctor was not with him at the time. Mr. Arneberg was asleep in the forest near Lake San Martin. The cougar both bit and clawed him, and tore his mouth, breaking out three teeth. The man was rescued; but this puma also escaped. The doctor stated that in this particular locality the Indians, who elsewhere paid no heed whatever to the puma, never let their women go out after wood for fuel unless two or three were together. This was because on several occasions women who had gone out alone were killed by pumas. Evidently in this one locality the habit of at THE START 31 least occasional man-eating has become chronic with a species which elsewhere is the most cowardly, and to man the least dangerous, of all the big cats. These observations of Doctor Moreno have a peculiar value, because, as far as I know, they are the first trust- worthy accounts of a cougar’s having attacked man save under circumstances so exceptional as to make the attack signify little more than the similar exceptional instances of attack by various other species of wild animals that are not normally dangerous to man. The jaguar, however, has long been known not only to be a dangerous foe when itself attacked, but also now and then to become a man-eater. Therefore the instances of such attacks furnished me are of merely corroborative value. In the excellent zoological gardens at Buenos Aires the curator, Doctor Onelli, a naturalist of note, showed us a big male jaguar which had been trapped in the Chaco, where it had already begun a career as a man-eater, having killed three persons. They were killed, and two of them were eaten; the animal was trapped, in consequence of the alarm excited by the death of his third victim. This jaguar was very savage; whereas a young jaguar, which was in a cage with a young tiger, was playful and friendly, as was also the case with the young tiger. On my trip to visit La Plata Museum I was accompanied by Captain Vicente Montes, of the Argentine Navy, an accomplished officer of scientific attainments. He had at one time been engaged on a survey of the boundary between the Argen- tine and Parana and Brazil. They had a quantity of dried beef in camp. On several occasions a Jaguar came 32 THROUGH THE BRAZILIAN WILDERNESS into camp after this dried beef. Finally they succeeded in protecting it so that he could not reach it. The result, however, was disastrous. On the next occasion that he visited camp, at midnight, he seized a man. Everybody was asleep at the time, and the jaguar came in so noise- lessly as to elude the vigilance of the dogs. As he seized the man, the latter gave one yell, but the next moment was killed, the jaguar driving his fangs through the man’s skull into the brain. There was a scene of uproar and con- fusion, and the jaguar was forced to drop his prey and flee into the woods. Next morning they followed him with the dogs, and finally killed him. He was a large male, in first-class condition. The only feature of note about these two incidents was that in each case the man-eater was a powerful animal in the prime of life; whereas it frequently happens that the jaguars that turn man-eaters are old animals, and have become too inactive or too feeble to catch their ordinary prey. During the two months before starting from Asuncion, in Paraguay, for our journey into the interior, I was kept so busy that I had scant time to think of natural history. But in a strange land a man who cares for wild birds and wild beasts always sees and hears something that is new to him and interests him. In the dense tropical woods near Rio Janeiro I heard in late October—springtime, near the southern tropic—the songs of many birds that I could not identify. But the most beautiful music was from a shy woodland thrush, sombre-colored, which lived near the ground in the thick timber, but sang high among the branches. At a great distance we could hear the ringing, THE START 33 musical, bell-like note, long-drawn and of piercing sweet- ness, which occurs at intervals in the song; at first I thought this was the song, but when it was possible to approach the singer I found that these far-sounding notes were scattered through a continuous song of great melody. I never list- ened to one that impressed me more. In different places in Argentina I heard and saw the Argentine mocking-bird, which is not very unlike our own, and is also a delightful and remarkable singer. But I never heard the wonderful white- banded mocking-bird, which is said by Hudson, who knew well the birds of both South America and Europe, to be the song-king of them all. Most of the birds I thus noticed while hurriedly pass- ing through the country were, of course, the conspicuous ones. The spurred lapwings, big, tame, boldly marked plover, were everywhere; they were very noisy and active and both inquisitive and daring, and they have a very curious dance custom. No man need look forthem. They will look for him, and when they find him they will fairly yell the discovery to the universe. In the marshes of the lower Parana I saw flocks of scarlet-headed blackbirds on the tops of the reeds; the females are as strikingly colored as the males, and their jet-black bodies and brilliant red heads make it impossible for them to escape observation among their natural surroundings. On the plains to the west I saw flocks of the beautiful rose-breasted starlings; unlike the red-headed blackbirds, which seemed fairly to court attention, these starlings sought to escape observa- tion by crouching on the ground so that their red breasts were hidden. There were yellow-shouldered blackbirds in wet places, and cow-buntings abounded. 34 THROUGH THE BRAZILIAN WILDERNESS But the most conspicuous birds I saw were members of the family of tyrant flycatchers, of which our own king- bird is the most familiar example. This family is very numerously represented in Argentina, both in species and individuals. Some of the species are so striking, both in color and habits, and in one case also in shape, as to at- tract the attention of even the unobservant. The least con- spicuous, and nevertheless very conspicuous, among those that I saw was the bientevido, which is brown above, yellow beneath, with a boldly marked black and white head, and a yellow crest. It is very noisy, is common in the neighborhood of houses, and builds a big domed nest. It is really a big, heavy king-bird, fiercer and more power- ful than any northern king-bird. I saw them assail not only the big but the small hawks with fearlessness, driving them in headlong flight. They not only capture insects, but pounce on mice, small frogs, lizards, and little snakes, rob birds’ nests of the fledgling young, and catch tadpoles and even small fish. Two of the tyrants which I observed are like two with which I grew fairly familiar in Texas. The scissor- tail is common throughout the open country, and the long tail feathers, which seem at times to hamper its flight, at- tract attention whether the bird is in flight or perched on a tree. It has a habit of occasionally soaring into the air and descending in loops and spirals. The scarlet tyrant I saw in the orchards and gardens. The male is a fasci- nating little bird, coal-black above, while his crested head and the body beneath are brilliant scarlet. He utters his rapid, low-voiced musical trill in the air, rising with flut- tering wings to a height of a hundred feet, hovering while THE START 35 he sings, and then falling back to earth. The color of the bird and the character of his performance attract the at- tention of every observer, bird, beast, or man, within reach of vision. The red-backed tyrant is utterly unlike any of his kind in the United States, and until I looked him up in Sclater and Hudson’s ornithology I never dreamed that he be- longed to this family. He—for only the male is so brightly colored—is coal-black with a dull-red back. I saw these birds on December 1 near Barilloche, out on the bare Pata- gonian plains. They behaved like pipits or longspurs, running actively over the ground in the same manner and showing the same restlessness and the same kind of flight. But whereas pipits are inconspicuous, the red-backs at once attracted attention by the contrast between their bold coloring and the grayish or yellowish tones of the ground along which they ran. The silver-bill tyrant, how- ever, is much more conspicuous; I saw it in the same neighborhood as the red-back and also in many other places. The male is jet-black, with white bill and wings. He runs about on the ground like a pipit, but also frequently perches on some bush to go through a strange flight-song performance. He perches motionless, bolt upright, and even then his black coloring advertises him for a quarter of a mile round about. But every few minutes he springs up into the air to the height of twenty or thirty feet, the white wings flashing in contrast to the black body, screams and gyrates, and then instantly returns to his former post and resumes his erect pose of waiting. It is hard to im- agine a more conspicuous bird than the silver-bill; but the next and last tyrant flycatcher of which I shall speak 36 THROUGH THE BRAZILIAN WILDERNESS possesses on the whole the most advertising coloration of any small bird I have ever seen in the open country, and moreover this advertising coloration exists in both sexes and throughout the year. It is a brilliant white, all over, except the long wing-quills and the ends of the tail-feathers, which are black. The first one I saw, at a very long dis- tance, I thought must be an albino. It perches on the top of a bush or tree watching for its prey, and it shines in the sun like a silver mirror. Every hawk, cat, or man must see it; no one can help seeing it. These common Argentine birds, most of them of the open country, and all of them with a strikingly advertis- ing coloration, are interesting because of their beauty and their habits. They are also interesting because they offer such illuminating examples of the truth that many of the most common and successful birds not merely lack a con- cealing coloration, but possess a coloration which is in the highest degree revealing. The coloration and the habits of most of these birds are such that every hawk or other foe that can see at all must have its attention attracted to them. Evidently in their cases neither the coloration nor any habit of concealment based on the coloration is a sur- vival factor, and this although they live in a land teeming with bird-eating hawks. Among the higher vertebrates there are many known factors which have influence, some in one set of cases, some in another set of cases, in the development and preservation of species. Courage, intel- ligence, adaptability, prowess, bodily vigor, speed, alert- ness, ability to hide, ability to build structures which will protect the young while they are helpless, fecundity—all, and many more like them, have their several places; and THE START 37 behind all these visible causes there are at work other and often more potent causes of which as yet science can say nothing. Some species owe much to a given attribute which may be wholly lacking in influence on other species; and every one of the attributes above enumerated is a sur- vival factor in some species, while in others it has no sur- vival value whatever, and in yet others, although of bene- fit, it is not of sufficient benefit to offset the benefit conferred on foes or rivals by totally different attributes. Intelli- gence, for instance, is of course a survival factor; but to-day there exist multitudes of animals with very little intelligence which have persisted through immense periods of geologic time either unchanged or else without any change in the direction of increased intelligence; and dur- ing their species-life they have witnessed the death of countless other species of far greater intelligence but in other ways less adapted to succeed in the environmental complex. The same statement can be made of all the many, many other known factors in development, from fecundity to concealing coloration; and behind them lie forces as to which we veil our ignorance by the use of high-sounding nomenclature—as when we use such a con- venient but far from satisfactory term as orthogenesis. CHAPTER II UP THE PARAGUAY On the afternoon of December 9 we left the attractive and picturesque city of Asuncion to ascend the Paraguay. With generous courtesy the Paraguayan Government had put at my disposal the gunboat-yacht of the President him- self, a most comfortable river steamer, and so the open- ing days of our trip were pleasant in every way. The food was good, our quarters were clean, we slept well, below or on deck, usually without our mosquito-nettings, and in daytime the deck was pleasant under the awnings. It was hot, of course, but we were dressed suitably in our exploring and hunting clothes and did not mind the heat. The river was low, for there had been dry weather for some weeks—judging from the vague and contradictory information I received there is much elasticity to the terms wet season and dry season at this part of the Para- guay. Under the brilliant sky we steamed steadily up the mighty river; the sunset was glorious as we leaned on the port railing; and after nightfall the moon, nearly full and hanging high in the heavens, turned the water to shim- mering radiance. On the mud-flats and sand-bars, and among the green rushes of the bays and inlets, were stately water-fowl; crimson flamingoes and rosy spoonbills, dark- colored ibis and white storks with black wings. Darters, with snakelike necks and pointed bills, perched in the trees on the brink of the river. Snowy egrets flapped across the 38 UP THE PARAGUAY 39 marshes. Caymans were common, and differed from the crocodiles we had seen in Africa in two points: they were not alarmed by the report of a rifle when fired at, and they lay with the head raised instead of stretched along the sand. For three days, as we steamed northward toward the Tropic of Capricorn, and then passed it, we were within the Republic of Paraguay. On our right, to the east, there was a fairly well-settled country, where bananas and or- anges were cultivated and other crops of hot countries raised. On the banks we passed an occasional small town, or saw a ranch-house close to the river’s brink, or stopped for wood at some little settlement. Across the river to the west lay the level, swampy, fertile wastes known as the Chaco, still given over either to the wild Indians or to cattle-ranching on a gigantic scale. The broad river ran in curves between mud-banks where terraces marked suc- cessive periods of flood. A belt of forest stood on each bank, but it was only a couple of hundred yards wide. Back of it was the open country; on the Chaco side this was a vast plain of grass dotted with tall, graceful palms. In places the belt of forest vanished and the palm-dotted prairie came to the river’s edge. The Chaco is an ideal cattle country, and not really unhealthy. It will be cov- ered with ranches at a not distant day. But mosquitoes and many other winged insect pests swarm over it. Cherrie and Miller had spent a week there collecting mammals and birds prior to my arrival at Asuncion. They were veter- ans of the tropics, hardened to the insect plagues of Guiana and the Orinoco. But they reported that never had they been so tortured as in the Chaco. The sand-flies crawled 40 THROUGH THE BRAZILIAN WILDERNESS through the meshes in the mosquito-nets, and forbade them to sleep; if in their sleep a knee touched the net the mosquitoes fell on it so that it looked as if riddled by birdshot; and the nights were a torment, although they had done well in their work, collecting some two hundred and fifty specimens of birds and mammals. Nevertheless for some as yet inscrutable reason the river served as a barrier to certain insects which are men- aces to the cattlemen. With me on the gunboat was an old Western friend, Tex Rickard, of the Panhandle and Alaska and various places in between. He now has a large tract of land and some thirty-five thousand head of cattle in the Chaco, opposite Concepcion, at which city he was to stop. He told me that horses did not do well in the Chaco but that cattle throve, and that while ticks swarmed on the east bank of the great river, they would not live on the west bank. Again and again he had crossed herds of cattle which were covered with the loathsome bloodsuckers; and in a couple of months every tick would be dead. The worst animal foes of man, indeed the only dangerous foes, are insects; and this is especially true in the tropics. Fortunately, exactly as certain differences too minute for us as yet to explain render some insects deadly to man or domestic animals, while closely allied forms are harmless, so, for other reasons, which also we are not as yet able to fathom, these insects are for the most part strictly limited by geographical and other con- siderations. The war against what Sir Harry Johnston calls the really material devil, the devil of evil wild nature in the tropics, has been waged with marked success only during the last two decades. The men, in the United States, in a UP THE PARAGUAY 41 England, France, Germany, Italy—the men like Doctor Cruz in Rio Janeiro and Doctor Vital Brazil in Si0 Paulo —who work experimentally within and without the labora- tory in their warfare against the disease and death bearing insects and microbes, are the true leaders in the fight to make the tropics the home of civilized man. Late on the evening of the second day of our trip, just before midnight, we reached Concepcion. On this day, when we stopped for wood or to get provisions—at pic- turesque places, where the women from rough mud and thatched cabins were washing clothes in the river, or where ragged horsemen stood gazing at us from the bank, or where dark, well-dressed ranchmen stood in front of red-roofed houses—we caught many fish. They belonged to one of the most formidable genera of fish in the world, the pi- ranha or cannibal fish, the fish that eats men when it can get the chance. Farther north there are species of small piranha that go in schools. At this point on the Para- guay the piranha do not seem to go in regular schools, but they swarm in all the waters and attain a length of eigh- teen inches or over. They are the most ferocious fish in the world. Even the most formidable fish, the sharks or the barracudas, usually attack things smaller than them- selves. But the piranhas habitually attack things much larger than themselves. They will snap a finger off a hand incautiously trailed in the water; they mutilate swimmers —in every river town in Paraguay there are men who have been thus mutilated; they will rend and devour alive any wounded man or beast; for blood in the water excites them to madness. They will tear wounded wild fowl to pieces; and bite off the tails of big fish as they grow ex- 42 THROUGH THE BRAZILIAN WILDERNESS hausted when fighting after being hooked. Miller, before I reached Asuncion, had been badly bitten by one. Those that we caught sometimes bit through the hooks, or the double strands of copper wire that served as leaders, and got away. Those that we hauled on deck lived for many minutes. Most predatory fish are long and slim, like the alligator-gar and pickerel. But the piranha is a short,. deep-bodied fish, with a blunt face and a heavily under- shot or projecting lower jaw which gapes widely. The razor-edged teeth are wedge-shaped like a shark’s, and the jaw muscles possess great power. The rabid, furious snaps drive the teeth through flesh and bone. The head with its short muzzle, staring malignant eyes, and gaping, cruelly armed jaws, is the embodiment of evil ferocity; and the actions of the fish exactly match its looks. I never wit- nessed an exhibition of such impotent, savage fury as was shown by the piranhas as they flapped on deck. When fresh from the water and thrown on the boards they ut- tered an extraordinary squealing sound. As they flapped about they bit with vicious eagerness at whatever presented itself. One of them flapped into a cloth and seized it with a bulldog grip. Another grasped one of its fellows; an- other snapped at a piece of wood, and left the teeth-marks deep therein. They are the pests of the waters, and it is necessary to be exceedingly cautious about either swim- ming or wading where they are found. If cattle are driven into, or of their own accord enter, the water, they are commonly not molested; but if by chance some unusually big or ferocious specimen of these fearsome fishes does bite an animal—taking off part of an ear, or perhaps of a teat from the udder of a cow—the blood brings up every Man-eating fish, piranha Note the razor-edged teeth From photographs by Harper UP THE PARAGUAY 43 member of the ravenous throng which is anywhere near, and unless the attacked animal can immediately make its escape from the water it is devoured alive. Here on the Paraguay the natives hold them in much respect, whereas the caymans are not feared at all. The only redeeming feature about them is that they are themselves fairly good to eat, although with too many bones. At daybreak of the third day, finding we were still moored off Concepcion, we were rowed ashore and strolled off through the streets of the quaint, picturesque old town; a town which, like Asuncion, was founded by the con- quistadores three-quarters of a century before our own En- glish and Dutch forefathers landed in what is now the United States. The Jesuits then took practically complete possession of what is now Paraguay, controlling and Chris- tianizing the Indians, and raising their flourishing missions to a pitch of prosperity they never elsewhere achieved. They were expelled by the civil authorities (backed by the other representatives of ecclesiastical authority) some fifty years before Spanish South America became independent. But they had already made the language of the Indians, Guarany, a culture-tongue, reducing it to writing, and printing religious books in it. Guarany is one of the most wide-spread of the Indian tongues, being originally found in various closely allied forms not only in Paraguay but in Uruguay and over the major part of Brazil. It remains here and there, as a Jingua geral at least, and doubtless in cases as an original tongue, among the wild tribes. In most of Brazil, as around Para and around Sao Paulo, it has left its traces in place-names, but has been completely superseded as a language by Portuguese. In Paraguay 44 THROUGH THE BRAZILIAN WILDERNESS it still exists side by side with Spanish as the common language of the lower people and as a familiar tongue among the upper classes. The blood of the people is mixed, their language dual; the lower classes are chiefly of In- dian blood but with a white admixture; while the upper classes are predominantly white, with a strong infusion of Indian. There is no other case quite parallel to this in the annals of European colonization, although the Goa- nese in India have a native tongue and a Portuguese creed, while in several of the Spanish-American states the In- dian blood is dominant and the majority of the population speak an Indian tongue, perhaps itself, as with the Qui- chuas, once a culture-tongue of the archaic type. Whether in Paraguay one tongue will ultimately drive out the other, and, if so, which will be the victor, it is yet too early to prophesy. The English missionaries and the Bible Society have recently published parts of the Scriptures in Guarany; and in Asuncion a daily paper is published with the text in parallel columns, Spanish and Guarany—just as in Oklahoma there is a similar paper published in English and in the tongue which the extraordinary Cherokee chief Sequoia, a veritable Cadmus, made a literary lan- guage. The Guarany-speaking Paraguayan is a Christian, and as much an inheritor of our common culture as most of the peasant populations of Europe. He has no kinship with the wild Indian, who hates and fears him. The Indian of the Chaco, a pure savage, a bow-bearing savage, will never come east of the Paraguay, and the Paraguayan is only beginning to venture into the western interior, away from the banks of the river—under the lead of pioneer set- UP THE PARAGUAY 45 tlers like Rickard, whom, by the way, the wild Indians thoroughly trust, and for whom they work eagerly and faithfully. There is a great development ahead for Para- guay, as soon as they can definitely shake off the revolu- tionary habit and establish an orderly permanence of gov- ernment. The people are a fine people; the strains of blood—white and Indian—are good. We walked up the streets of Concepcion, and inter- estedly looked at everything of interest: at the one-story houses, their windows covered with gratings of fretted ironwork, and their occasional open doors giving us glimpses into cool inner courtyards, with trees and flowers; at the two-wheel carts, drawn by mules or oxen; at an occa- sional rider, with spurs on his bare feet, and his big toes thrust into the small stirrup-rings; at the little stores, and the warehouses for matté and hides. Then we came to a pleasant little inn, kept by a Frenchman and his wife, of old Spanish style, with its patio, or inner court, but as neat as an inn in Normandy or Brittany. We were sitting at coffee, around a little table, when in came the colonel of the garrison—for Concepcion is the second city in Para- guay. He told me that they had prepared a reception for me! I was in my rough hunting-clothes, but there was nothing to do but to accompany my kind hosts and trust to their good nature to pardon my shortcomings in the matter of dress. The colonel drove me about in a smart open carriage, with two good horses and a liveried driver. It was a much more fashionable turnout than would be seen in any of our cities save the largest, and even in them probably not in the service of a public official. In all the South American countries there is more pomp and cere- 46 THROUGH THE BRAZILIAN WILDERNESS mony in connection with public functions than with us, and at these functions the liveried servants, often with knee-breeches and powdered hair, are like those seen at similar European functions; there is not the democratic simplicity which better suits our own habits of life and ways of thought. But the South Americans often surpass us, not merely in pomp and ceremony but in what is of real importance, courtesy; in civility and courtesy we can well afford to take lessons from them. We first visited the barracks, saw the troops in the setting-up exercises, and inspected the arms, the artillery, the equipment. There was a German lieutenant with the Paraguayan officers; one of several German officers who are now engaged in helping the Paraguayans with their army. The equipments and arms were in good condition; the enlisted men evidently offered fine material; and the officers were doing hard work. It is worth while for anti- militarists to ponder the fact that in every South Ameri- can country where a really efficient army is developed, the increase in military efficiency goes hand in hand with a decrease in lawlessness and disorder, and a growing reluc- tance to settle internal disagreements by violence. They are introducing universal military service in Paraguay; the officers, many of whom have studied abroad, are grow- ing to feel an increased esprit de corps, an increased pride in the army, and therefore a desire to see the army made the servant of the nation as a whole and not the tool of any faction or individual. If these feelings grow strong enough they will be powerful factors in giving Paraguay what she most needs, freedom from revolutionary disturbance and therefore the chance to achieve the material prosperity UP THE PARAGUAY 47 without which as a basis there can be no advance in other and even more important matters. Then I was driven to the City Hall, accompanied by the intendente, or mayor, a German long settled in the coun- try and one of the leading men of the city. There was a breakfast. When I had to speak I impressed into my ser- vice as interpreter a young Paraguayan who was a gradu- ate of the University of Pennsylvania. He was able to render into Spanish my ideas—on such subjects as orderly liberty and the far-reaching mischief done by the revolu- tionary habit—with clearness and vigor, because he thor- oughly understood not only how I felt but also the American way of looking at such things. My hosts were hospitality itself, and I enjoyed the unexpected greeting. We steamed on up the river. Now and then we passed another boat—a steamer, or, to my surprise, perhaps a bar- kentine or schooher. The Paraguay is a highway of traffic. Once we passed a big beef-canning factory. Ranches stood on either bank a few leagues apart, and we stopped at wood-yards on the west bank. Indians worked around them. At one such yard the Indians were evidently part of the regular force. Their squaws were with them, cook- ing at queer open-air ovens. One small child had as pets a parrot and a young coati—a kind of long-nosed rac- coon. Loading wood, the Indians stood in a line, tossing the logs from one to the other. These Indians wore clothes. On this day we got into the tropics. Even in the heat of the day the deck was pleasant under the awnings; the sun rose and set in crimson splendor; and the nights, with the moon at the full, were wonderful. At night Orion 48 THROUGH THE BRAZILIAN WILDERNESS blazed overhead; and the Southern Cross hung in the star- brilliant heavens behind us. But after the moon rose the constellations paled; and clear in her light the tree-clad banks stood on either hand as we steamed steadily against the swirling current of the great river. At noon on the twelfth we were at the Brazilian bound- ary. On this day we here and there came on low, conical hills close to the river. In places the palm groves broke through the belts of deciduous trees and stretched for a mile or so right along the river’s bank. At times we passed cattle on the banks or sand-bars, followed by their herders; or a handsome ranch-house, under a cluster of shady trees, some bearing a wealth of red and some a wealth of yellow blossoms; or we saw a horse-corral among the trees close to the brink, with the horses in it and a barefooted man in shirt and trousers leaning against the fence; or a herd of cattle among the palms; or a big tannery or factory or a little native hamlet came in sight. We stopped at one tannery. The owner was a Spaniard, the manager an “Oriental,” as he called himself, a Uru- guayan, of German parentage. The peons, or workers, who lived in a long line of wooden cabins back of the main building, were mostly Paraguayans, with a few Brazilians, and a dozen German and Argentine foremen. There were also some wild Indians, who were camped in the usual squalid fashion of Indians who are hangers-on round the white man but have not yet adopted his ways. Most of the men were at work cutting wood for the tannery. The women and children were in camp. Some individuals of both sexes were naked to the waist. One little girl had a young ostrich as a pet. Vupi girl with young ostrich Indian boy with coati (coon-like animal) from photographs by Kermit Rovsvecel and parakeet UP THE PARAGUAY 49 Water-fowl were plentiful. We saw large flocks of wild muscovy ducks. Our tame birds come from this wild spe- cies and its absurd misnaming dates back to the period when the turkey and guinea-pig were misnamed in similar fashion—our European forefathers taking a large and hazy view of geography, and including Turkey, Guinea, India, and Muscovy as places which, in their capacity of being outlandish, could be comprehensively used as including America. The muscovy ducks were very good eating. Darters and cormorants swarmed. They waddled on the sand-bars in big flocks and crowded the trees by the water’s edge. Beautiful snow-white egrets also lit in the trees, often well back from the river. A full-foliaged tree of vivid green, its round surface crowded with these birds, as if it had suddenly blossomed with huge white flowers, is a sight worth seeing. Here and there on the sand-bars we saw huge jabiru storks, and once a flock of white wood-ibis among the trees on the bank. On the Brazilian boundary we met a shallow river steamer carrying Colonel Candido Mariano da Silva Ron- don and several other Brazilian members of the expedition. Colonel Rondon immediately showed that he was all, and more than all, that could be desired. It was evident that he knew his business thoroughly, and it was equally evi- dent that he would be a pleasant companion. He was a classmate of Mr. Lauro Miller at the Brazilian Military Academy. He is of almost pure Indian blood, and is a Positivist—the Positivists are a really strong body in Brazil, as they are in France and indeed in Chile. The colonel’s seven children have all been formally made members of the Positivist Church in Rio Janeiro. Brazil possesses the 50 THROUGH THE BRAZILIAN WILDERNESS same complete liberty in matters religious, spiritual, and intellectual as we, for our great good fortune, do in the United States, and my Brazilian companions included Catholics and equally sincere men who described them- selves as “libres penseurs.”” Colonel Rondon has spent the last twenty-four years in exploring the western high- lands of Brazil, pioneering the way for telegraph-lines and railroads. During that time he has travelled some four- teen thousand miles, on territory most of which had not previously been traversed by civilized man, and has built three thousand miles of telegraph. He has an exceptional knowledge of the Indian tribes and has always zealously endeavored to serve them and indeed to serve the cause of humanity wherever and whenever he was able. Thanks mainly to his efforts, four of the wild tribes of the region he has explored have begun to tread the road of civiliza- tion. They have taken the first steps toward becoming Christians. It may seem strange that among the first- fruits of the efforts of a Positivist should be the conver- sion of those he seeks to benefit to Christianity. But in South America Christianity is at least as much a status as a theology. It represents the indispensable first step up- ward from savagery. In the wilder and poorer districts men are divided into the two great classes of “Christians” and “Indians.” When an Indian becomes a Christian he is accepted into and becomes wholly absorbed or partly assimilated by the crude and simple neighboring civiliza- tion, and then he moves up or down like any one else among his fellows. Among Colonel Rondon’s companions were Captain Amilcar de Magalhaes, Lieutenant Jodo Lyra, Lieutenant Indians rolling logs at wood station From a photosraph bs Kermit Roosevelt Palms along the bank of the river From a photograph by Kermit Roosevelt UP THE PARAGUAY 51 Joaquin de Mello Filho, and Doctor Euzebio de Oliveira, a geologist. The steamers halted; Colonel Rondon and several of his officers, spick and span in their white uniforms, came aboard; and in the afternoon I visited him on his steamer to talk over our plans. When these had been fully dis- cussed and agreed on we took tea. I happened to mention that one of our naturalists, Miller, had been bitten by a piranha, and the man-eating fish at once became the sub- ject of conversation. Curiously enough, one of the Bra- zilian taxidermists had also just been severely bitten by a piranha. My new companions had story after story to tell of them. Only three weeks previously a twelve-year- old boy who had gone in swimming near Corumba was attacked, and literally devoured alive by them. Colonel Rondon during his exploring trips had met with more than one unpleasant experience in connection with them. He had lost one of his toes by the bite of a piranha. He was about to bathe and had chosen a shallow pool at the edge of the river, which he carefully inspected until he was satisfied that none of the man-eating fish were in it; yet as soon as he put his foot into the water one of them attacked him and bit off a toe. On another occasion while wading across a narrow stream one of his party was attacked; the fish bit him on the thighs and buttocks, and when he put down his hands tore them also; he was near the bank and by a rush reached it and swung himself out of the water by means of an overhanging limb of a tree; but he was terribly injured, and it took him six months before his wounds healed and he recovered. An extraordinary inci- dent occurred on another trip. The party were without 52 THROUGH THE BRAZILIAN WILDERNESS food and very hungry. On reaching a stream they dyna- mited it, and waded in to seize the stunned fish as they floated on the surface. One man, Lieutenant Pyrineus, having his hands full, tried to hold one fish by putting its head into his mouth; it was a piranha and seemingly stunned, but in a moment it recovered and bit a big sec- tion out of his tongue. Such a hemorrhage followed that his life was saved with the utmost difficulty. On another occasion a member of the party was off by himself on a mule. The mule came into camp alone. Following his track back they came to a ford, where in the water they found the skeleton of the dead man, his clothes uninjured but every particle of flesh stripped from his bones. Whether he had drowned, and the fishes had then eaten his body, or whether they had killed him it was impossible to say. They had not hurt the clothes, getting in under them, which made it seem likely that there had been no struggle. These man-eating fish are a veritable scourge in the waters they frequent. But it must not be understood by this that the piranhas—or, for the matter of that, the New- World caymans and crocodiles—ever become such dreaded foes of man as for instance the man-eating crocodiles of Africa. Accidents occur, and there are certain places where swimming and bathing are dangerous; but in most places the people swim freely, although they are usually careful to find spots they believe safe or else to keep together and make a splashing in the water. During his trips Colonel Rondon had met with various experiences with wild creatures. The Paraguayan caymans are not ordinarily dangerous to man; but they do some- times become man-eaters and should be destroyed when- UP THE PARAGUAY 53 ever the opportunity offers. The huge caymans and croc- odiles of the Amazon are far more dangerous, and the colonel knew of repeated instances where men, women, and children had become their victims. Once while dynamit- ing a stream for fish for his starving party he partially stunned a giant anaconda, which he killed as it crept slowly off. He said that it was of a size that no other. anaconda‘he had ever seen even approached, and that in his opinion such a brute if hungry would readily attack a full-grown man. Twice smaller anacondas had attacked his dogs; one was carried under water—for the anaconda is a water-loving serpent—but he rescued it. One of his men was bitten by a jararaca; he killed the venomous snake, but was not discovered and brought back to camp until it was too late to save his life. The puma Colonel Rondon had found to be as cowardly as I have always found it, but the jaguar was a formidable beast, which occasion- ally turned man-eater, and often charged savagely when brought to bay. He had known a hunter to be killed by a jaguar he was following in thick grass cover. All such enemies, however, he regarded as utterly triv- ial compared to the real dangers of the wilderness—the torment and menace of attacks by the swarming insects, by mosquitoes and the even more intolerable tiny gnats, by the ticks, and by the vicious poisonous ants which oc- casionally cause villages and even whole districts to be deserted by human beings. These insects, and the fevers they cause, and dysentery and starvation and wearing hardship and accidents in rapids are what the pioneer ex- plorers have to fear. The conversation was to me most interesting. The colonel spoke French about to the ex- 54 THROUGH THE BRAZILIAN WILDERNESS tent I did; but of course he and the others preferred Portu- guese; and then Kermit was the interpreter. In the evening, soon after moonrise, we stopped for wood at the little Brazilian town of Porto Martinho. There are about twelve hundred inhabitants. Some of the build- ings were of stone; a large private house with a castellated tower was of stone; there were shops, and a post-office, stores, a restaurant and billiard-hall, and warehouses for matté, of which much is grown in the region roundabout. Most of the houses were low, with overhanging, sloping eaves; and there were gardens with high walls, inside of which trees rose, many of them fragrant. We wandered through the wide, dusty streets, and along the narrow sidewalks. It was a hot, still evening; the smell of the tropics was on the heavy December air. Through the open doors and windows we caught dim glimpses of the half- clad inmates of the poorer houses; women and young girls sat outside their thresholds in the moonlight. All whom we met were most friendly: the captain of the little Bra- zilian garrison; the intendente, a local trader; another trader and ranchman, a Uruguayan, who had just received his newspaper containing my speech in Montevideo, and who, as I gathered from what I understood of his rather voluble Spanish, was much impressed by my views on de- mocracy, honesty, liberty, and order (rather well-worn top- ics); and a Catalan who spoke French, and who was ac- companied by his pretty daughter, a dear little girl of eight or ten, who said with much pride that she spoke three languages—Brazilian, Spanish, and Catalan! Her father expressed strongly his desire for a church and for a school in the little city. UP THE PARAGUAY 55 When at last the wood was aboard we resumed our journey. The river was like glass. In the white moon- light the palms on the edge of the banks stood mirrored in the still water. We sat forward and as we rounded the curves the long silver reaches of the great stream stretched ahead of us, and the ghostly outlines of hills rose in the distance. Here and there prairie fires burned, and the red glow warred with the moon’s radiance. Next morning was overcast. Occasionally we passed a wood-yard, or factory, or cabin, now on the eastern, the Brazilian, now on the western, the Paraguayan, bank. The Paraguay was known to men of European birth, bore sol- diers and priests and merchants as they sailed and rowed up and down the current of its stream, and beheld little towns and forts rise on its banks, long before the Mississippi had become the white man’s highway. Now, along its upper course, the settlements are much like those on the Mississippi at the end of the first quarter of the last cen- tury; and in the not distant future it will witness a burst of growth and prosperity much like that which the Missis- sippi saw when the old men of to-day were very young. In the early forenoon we stopped at a little Paraguayan hamlet, nestling in the green growth under a group of low hills by the river-brink. On one of these hills stood a pic- turesque old stone fort, known as Fort Bourbon in the Spanish, the colonial, days. Now the Paraguayan flag floats over it, and it is garrisoned by a handful of Para- guayan soldiers. Here Father Zahm baptized two children, the youngest of a large family of fair-skinned, light-haired small people, whose father was a Paraguayan and the mother an “Oriental,” or Uruguayan. No priest had 56 THROUGH THE BRAZILIAN WILDERNESS visited the village for three years, and the children were respectively one and two years of age. The sponsors in- cluded the local commandante and a married couple from Austria. In answer to what was supposed to be the per- functory question whether they were Catholics, the parents returned the unexpected answer that they were not. Fur- ther questioning elicited the fact that the father called him- self a “free-thinking Catholic,’ and the mother said she was a “Protestant Catholic,” her mother having been a Protestant, the daughter of an immigrant from Normandy. However, it appeared that the older children had been baptized by the Bishop of Asuncion, so Father Zahm at the earnest request of the parents proceeded with the cere- mony. They were good people; and, although they wished liberty to think exactly as they individually pleased, they also wished to be connected and to have their children connected with some church, by preference the church of the majority of their people. A very short experience of communities where there is no church ought to convince the most heterodox of the absolute need of a church. I earnestly wish that there could be such an increase in the personnel and equipment of the Catholic Church in South America as to permit the establishment of one good and earnest priest in every village or little community in the far interior. Nor is there any inconsistency between this wish and the further wish that there could be a marked ex- tension and development of the native Protestant churches, such as I saw established here and there in Brazil, Uru- guay, and Argentina, and of the Y. M. C. Associations. The bulk of these good people who profess religion will continue to be Catholics, but the spiritual needs of a more UP THE PARAGUAY 57 or less considerable minority will best be met by the es- tablishment of Protestant churches, or in places even of a Positivist Church or Ethical Culture Society. Not only is the establishment of such churches a good thing for the body politic as a whole, but a good thing for the Catholic Church itself; for their presence is a constant spur to activity and clean and honorable conduct, and a constant reflection on sloth and moral laxity. The government in each of these commonwealths is doing everything possible to further the cause of education, and the tendency is to treat education as peculiarly a function of government and to make it, where the government acts, non-sectarian, ob- ligatory, and free—a cardinal doctrine of our own great democracy, to which we are committed by every principle of sound Americanism. There must be absolute religious liberty, for tyranny and intolerance are as abhorrent in matters intellectual and spiritual as in matters political and material; and more and more we must all realize that conduct is of infinitely greater importance than dogma. But no democracy can afford to overlook the vital impor- tance of the ethical and spiritual, the truly religious, ele- ment in life; and in practice the average good man grows clearly to understand this, and to express the need in concrete form by saying that no community can make much headway if it does not contain both a church and a school. We took breakfast—the eleven-o’clock Brazilian break- fast—on Colonel Rondon’s boat. Caymans were becom- ing more plentiful. The ugly brutes lay on the sand-flats and mud-banks like logs, always with the head raised, sometimes with the jaws open. They are often dangerous 58 THROUGH THE BRAZILIAN WILDERNESS to domestic animals, and are always destructive to fish, and it is good to shoot them. I killed half a dozen, and missed nearly as many more—a throbbing boat does not improve one’s aim. We passed forests of palms that ex- tended for leagues, and vast marshy meadows, where storks, herons, and ibis were gathered, with flocks of cormorants and darters on the sand-bars, and stilts, skimmers, and clouds of beautiful swaying terns in the foreground. About noon we passed the highest point which the old Spanish con- quistadores and explorers, Irala and Ayolas, had reached in the course of their marvellous journeys in the first half of the sixteenth century—at a time when there was not a set- tlement in what is now the United States, and when hardly a single English sea captain had ventured so much as to cross the Atlantic. By the following day the country on the east bank had become a vast marshy plain dotted here and there by tree-clad patches of higher land. The morning was rainy; a contrast to the fine weather we had hitherto encountered. We passed wood-yards and cattle-ranches. At one of the latter the owner, an Argentine of Irish parentage, who still spoke English with the accent of the land of his parents’ nativity, remarked that this was the first time the Ameri- can flag had been seen on the upper Paraguay; for our gunboat carried it at the masthead. Early in the after- noon, having reached the part where both banks of the river were Brazilian territory, we came to the old colonial Portuguese fort of Coimbra. It stands where two steep hills rise, one on either side of the river, and it guards the water-gorge between them. It was captured by the Para- guayans in the war of nearly half a century ago. Some UP THE PARAGUAY 59 modern guns have been mounted, and there is a garrison of Brazilian troops. The white fort is perched on the hill- side, where it clings and rises, terrace above terrace, with bastion and parapet and crenellated wall. At the foot of the hill, on the riverine plain, stretches the old-time village with its roofs of palm. In the village dwell several hun- dred souls, almost entirely the officers and soldiers and their families. There is one long street. The one-story, daub- and-wattle houses have low eaves and steep sloping roofs of palm-leaves or of split palm-trunks. Under one or two old but small trees there are rude benches; and for a part of the length of the street there is a rough stone sidewalk. A little graveyard, some of the tombs very old, stands at one end. As we passed down the street the wives and the swarming children of the garrison were at the doors and windows; there were women and girls with skins as fair as any in the northland, and others that were predomi- nantly negro. Most were of intervening shades. All this was paralleled among the men; and the fusion of the colors was going on steadily. Around the village black vultures were gathered. Not long before reaching it we passed some rounded green trees, their tops covered with the showy wood-ibis; at the same time we saw behind them, farther inland, other trees crowded with the more delicate forms of the shining white egrets. The river now widened so that in places it looked like a long lake; it wound in every direction through the endless marshy plain, whose surface was broken here and there by low mountains. The splendor of the sunset I never saw surpassed. We were steaming east toward clouds of storm. The river ran, a broad highway of mol- 60 THROUGH THE BRAZILIAN WILDERNESS ten gold, into the flaming sky; the far-off mountains loomed purple across the marshes; belts of rich green, the river banks stood out on either side against the rose-hues of the rippling water; in front, as we forged steadily onward, hung the tropic night, dim and vast. On December 15 we reached Corumba. For three or four miles before it is reached the west bank, on which it stands, becomes high rocky ground, falling away into cliffs. The country roundabout was evidently well peopled. We saw gauchos, cattle-herders—the equivalent of our own cowboys—riding along the bank. Women were washing clothes, and their naked children bathing, on the shore; we were told that caymans and piranhas rarely ventured near a place where so much was going on, and that acci- dents generally occurred in ponds or lonely stretches of the river. Several steamers came out to meet us, and accom- panied us for a dozen miles, with bands playing and the passengers cheering, just as if we were nearing some town on the Hudson. Corumba is on a steep hillside, with wide, roughly paved streets, some of them lined with beautiful trees that bear scarlet flowers, and with well-built houses, most of them of one story, some of two or three stories. We were greeted with a reception by the municipal council, and were given a state dinner. The hotel, kept by an Italian, was as com- fortable as possible—stone floors, high ceilings, big win- dows and doors, a cool, open courtyard, and a shower-bath. Of course Corumba is still a frontier town. The vehicles are ox-carts and mule-carts; there are no carriages; and oxen as well as mules are used for riding. The water comes from a big central well; around it the water-carts gather, UP THE PARAGUAY 61 and their contents are then peddled around at the different houses. The families showed the mixture of races charac- teristic of Brazil; one mother, after the children had been photographed in their ordinary costume, begged that we return and take them in their Sunday clothes, which was accordingly done. In a year the railway from Rio will reach Corumba; and then this city, and the country round- about, will see much development. At this point we rejoined the rest of the party, and very glad we were to see them. Cherrie and Miller had already collected some eight hundred specimens of mam- mals and birds. CHAPTER III A JAGUAR-HUNT ON THE TAQUARY Tue morning after our arrival at Corumba I asked Colonel Rondon to inspect our outfit; for his experience of what is necessary in tropical travelling has been gained through a quarter of a century of arduous exploration in the wilderness. It was Fiala who had assembled our food- tents, cooking-utensils, and supplies of all kinds, and he and Sigg, during their stay in Corumba, had been putting everything in shape for our start. Colonel Rondon at the end of his inspection said he had nothing whatever to sug- gest; that it was extraordinary that Fiala, without per- sonal knowledge of the tropics, could have gathered the things most necessary, with the minimum of bulk and maximum of usefulness. Miller had made a special study of the piranhas, which swarmed at one of the camps he and Cherrie had made in the Chaco. So numerous were they that the members of the party had to be exceedingly careful in dipping up water. Miller did not find that they were cannibals to- ward their own kind; they were “cannibals” only in the sense of eating the flesh of men. When dead piranhas, and even when mortally injured piranhas, with the blood flowing, were thrown among the ravenous living, they were left unmolested. Moreover, it was Miller’s experience, the direct contrary of what we had been told, that splashing and a commotion in the water attracted the piranhas, 62 A JAGUAR-HUNT ON THE TAQUARY 63 whereas they rarely attacked anything that was motionless unless it was bloody. Dead birds and mammals, thrown whole and unskinned into the water were permitted to float off unmolested, whereas the skinned carcass of a good-sized monkey was at once seized, pulled under the water, and completely devoured by the blood-crazy fish. A man who had dropped something of value waded in after it to above the knees, but went very slowly and quietly, avoid- ing every possibility of disturbance, and not venturing to put his hands into the water. But nobody could bathe, and even the slightest disturbance in the water, such as that made by scrubbing the hands vigorously with soap, immediately attracted the attention of the savage little creatures, who darted to the place, evidently hoping to find some animal in difficulties. Once, while Miller and some Indians were attempting to launch a boat, and were making a great commotion in the water, a piranha attacked a naked Indian who belonged to the party and mutilated him as he struggled and splashed, waist-deep in the stream. Men not making a splashing and struggling are rarely attacked; but if one is attacked by any chance, the blood in the water maddens the piranhas, and they assail the man with frightful ferocity. At Corumba the weather was hot. In the patio of the comfortable little hotel we heard the cicadas; but I did not hear the extraordinary screaming whistle of the locomotive cicada, which I had heard in the gardens of the house in which I stayed at Asuncion. This was as re- markable a sound as any animal sound to which I have listened, except only the batrachian-like wailing of the tree hyrax in East Africa; and like the East African mammal 64 THROUGH THE BRAZILIAN WILDERNESS this South American insect has a voice, or rather utters a sound which, so far as it resembles any other animal sound, at the beginning remotely suggests batrachian affinities. The locomotive-whistle part of the utterance, however, re- sembles nothing so much as a small steam siren; when first heard it seems impossible that it can be produced by an insect. On December 17 Colonel Rondon and several members of our party started on a shallow river steamer for the ranch of Senhor de Barros, “Las Palmeiras,’ on the Rio Taquary. We went down the Paraguay for a few miles, and then up the Taquary. It was a beautiful trip. The shallow river—we were aground several times—wound through a vast, marshy plain, with occasional spots of ‘higher land on which trees grew. There were many water-birds. Darters swarmed. But the conspicuous and attractive bird was the stately jabiru stork. Flocks of these storks whitened the marshes and lined the river banks. They were not shy, for such big birds; before flying they had to run a few paces and then launch them- selves on the air. Once, at noon, a couple soared round overhead in wide rings, rising higher and higher. On an- other occasion, late in the day, a flock passed by, gleam- ing white with black points in the long afternoon lights, and with them were spoonbills, showing rosy amid their showy companions. Caymans, always called jacarés, swarmed; and we killed scores of the noxious creatures. They were singularly indifferent to our approach and to the sound of the shots. Sometimes they ran into the water erect on their legs, looking like miniatures of the monsters of the prime. One showed by its behavior how little an ordinary A JAGUAR-HUNT ON THE TAQUARY _ 65 shot pains or affects these dull-nerved, cold-blooded crea- tures. As it lay on a sand-bank, it was hit with a long 22 bullet. It slid into the water but found itself in the midst of a school of fish. It at once forgot everything except its greedy appetite, and began catching the fish. It seized fish after fish, holding its head above water as soon as its jaws had closed on a fish; and a second bullet killed it. Some of the crocodiles when shot performed most extraor- dinary antics. Our weapons, by the way, were good, ex- cept Miller’s shotgun. The outfit furnished by the Amer- ican museum was excellent—except in guns and cartridges; this gun was so bad that Miller had to use Fiala’s gun or else my Fox 12-bore. In the late afternoon we secured a more interesting creature than the jacarés. Kermit had charge of two hounds which we owed to the courtesy of one of our Ar- gentine friends. They were biggish, nondescript animals, obviously good fighters, and they speedily developed the utmost affection for all the members of the expedition, but especially for Kermit, who took care of them. One we named “Shenzi,” the name given the wild bush natives by the Swahili, the semicivilized African porters. He was good-natured, rough, and stupid—hence his name. The other was called by a native name, “Trigueiro.” The chance now came to try them. We were steaming between long stretches of coarse grass, about three feet high, when we spied from the deck a black object, very conspicuous against the vivid green. It was a giant ant-eater, or ta- mandua bandeira, one of the most extraordinary creatures of the latter-day world. It is about the size of a rather small black bear. It has a very long, narrow, toothless 66 THROUGH THE BRAZILIAN WILDERNESS snout, with a-tongue it can project a couple of feet; it is covered with coarse, black hair, save for a couple of white stripes; it has a long, bushy tail and very powerful claws on its fore feet. It walks on the sides of its fore feet with these claws curved in under the foot. The claws are used in digging out ant-hills; but the beast has courage, and in a grapple is a rather unpleasant enemy, in spite of its toothless mouth, for it can strike a formidable blow with these claws. It sometimes hugs a foe, gripping him tight; but its ordinary method of defending itself is to strike with its long, stout, curved claws, which, driven by its muscular forearm, can rip open man or beast. Several of our com- panions had had dogs killed by these ant-eaters; and we came across one man with a very ugly scar down his back, where he had been hit by one, which charged him when he came up to kill it at close quarters. As soon as we saw the giant tamandua we pushed off in a rowboat, and landed only a couple of hundred yards distant from our clumsy quarry. The tamandua through- out most of its habitat rarely leaves the forest, and it isa helpless animal in the open plain. The two dogs ran ahead, ‘followed by Colonel Rondon and Kermit, with me behind carrying the rifle. In a minute or two the hounds over- took the cantering, shuffling creature, and promptly began a fight with it; the combatants were so mixed up that I had to wait another minute or so before I could fire without risk of hitting a dog. We carried our prize back to the bank and hoisted it aboard the steamer. The sun was just about to set, behind dim mountains, many miles dis- tant across the marsh. Soon afterward we reached one of the outstations of A JAGUAR-HUNT ON THE TAQUARY 67 the huge ranch we were about to visit, and hauled up alongside the bank for the night. There was a landing- place, and sheds and corrals. Several of the peons or gauchos had come to meet us. After dark they kindled fires, and sat beside them singing songs in a strange minor key and strumming guitars. The red firelight flickered over their wild figures as they squatted away from the blaze, where the light and the shadow met. It was still and hot. There were mosquitoes, of course, and other insects of all kinds swarmed round every light; but the steamboat was comfortable, and we passed a pleasant night. At sunrise we were off for the “fazenda,” the ranch of M. de Barros. The baggage went in an ox-cart—which had to make two trips, so that all of my belongings reached the ranch a day later than I did. We rode small, tough ranch horses. The distance was some twenty miles. The whole country was marsh, varied by stretches of higher ground; and, although these stretches rose only three or four feet above the marsh, they were covered with thick jungle, largely palmetto scrub, or else with open palm for- est. For three or four miles we splashed through the marsh, now and then crossing boggy pools where the little horses labored hard not to mire down. Our dusky guide was clad in a shirt, trousers, and fringed leather apron, and wore spurs on his bare feet; he had a rope for a bridle, and two or three toes of each foot were thrust into little iron stirrups. The pools in the marsh were drying. They were filled with fish, most of them dead or dying; and the birds had gathered to the banquet. The most notable dinner guests were the great jabiru storks; the stately creatures dotted 68 THROUGH THE BRAZILIAN WILDERNESS the marsh. But ibis and herons abounded; the former ut- tered queer, querulous cries when they discovered our presence. The spurred lapwings were as noisy as they always are. The ibis and plover did not pay any heed to the fish; but the black carrion vultures feasted on them in the mud; and in the pools that were not dry small alligators, the jacaré-tinga, were feasting also. In many places the stench from the dead fish was un- pleasant. Then for miles we rode through a beautiful open forest of tall, slender caranda palms, with other trees scattered among them. Green parakeets with black heads chattered as they flew; noisy green and red parrots climbed among the palms; and huge macaws, some entirely blue, others almost entirely red, screamed loudly as they perched in the trees or took wing at our approach. If one was wounded its cries kept its companions circling around overhead. The naturalists found the bird fauna totally different from that which they had been collecting in the hill country near Corumba, seventy or eighty miles distant; and birds swarmed, both species and individuals. South America has the most extensive and most varied avifauna of all the continents. On the other hand, its mammalian fauna, although very interesting, is rather poor in number of spe- cies and individuals and in the size of the beasts. It pos- sesses more mammals that are unique and distinctive in type than does any other continent save Australia; and they are of higher and much more varied types than in Australia. But there is nothing approaching the majesty, beauty, and swarming mass of the great mammalian life of Africa and, in a less degree, of tropical Asia; indeed, it does A JAGUAR-HUNT ON THE TAQUARY 69 not even approach the similar mammalian life of North America and northern Eurasia, poor though this is com- pared with the seething vitality of tropical life in the Old World. During a geologically recent period, a period ex- tending into that which saw man spread over the world in substantially the physical and cultural stage of many exist- ing savages, South America possessed a varied and striking fauna of enormous beasts—sabre-tooth tigers, huge lions, mastodons, horses of many kinds, camel-like pachyderms, giant ground-sloths, mylodons the size of the rhinoceros, and many, many other strange and wonderful creatures. From some cause, concerning the nature of which we can- not at present even hazard a guess, this vast and giant fauna vanished completely, the tremendous catastrophe (the dura- tion of which is unknown) not being consummated until within a few thousand or a few score thousand years. When the white man reached South America he found the same weak and impoverished mammalian fauna that exists practically unchanged to-day. Elsewhere civilized man has been even more destructive than his very destructive uncivilized brothers of the magnificent mammalian life of the wilderness; for ages he has been rooting out the higher forms of beast life in Europe, Asia, and North Africa; and in our own day he has repeated the feat, on a very large scale, in the rest of Africa and in North America. But in South America, although he is in places responsible for the wanton slaughter of the most interesting and the largest, or the most beautiful, birds, his advent has meant a positive enrichment of the wild mammalian fauna. None of the native grass-eating mammals, the graminivores, ap- proach in size and beauty the herds of wild or half-wild 70 THROUGH: THE BRAZILIAN WILDERNESS cattle and horses, or so add to the interest of the land- scape. There is every reason why the good people of South America should waken, as we of North America, very late in the day, are beginning to waken, and as the peoples of northern Europe—not southern Europe—have already partially wakened, to the duty of preserving from impov- erishment and extinction the wild life which is an asset of such interest and value in our several lands; but the case against civilized man in this matter is grewsomely heavy anyhow, when the plain truth is told, and it is harmed by exaggeration. After five or six hours’ travelling through this country of marsh and of palm forest we reached the ranch for which we were heading. In the neighborhood stood giant fig- trees, singly or in groups, with dense, dark-green foliage. Ponds, overgrown with water-plants, lay about; wet meadow, and drier pastureland, open or dotted with palms and varied with tree jungle, stretched for many miles on every hand. There are some thirty thousand head of cattle on the ranch, besides herds of horses and droves of swine, and a few flocks of sheep and goats. The home buildings of the ranch stood in a quadrangle, sur- rounded by a fence or low stockade. One end of the quadrangle was formed by the ranch-house itself, one story high, with whitewashed walls and red-tiled roof. Inside, the rooms were bare, with clean, whitewashed walls and palm-trunk rafters. There were solid wooden shutters on the unglazed windows. We slept in hammocks or on cots, and we feasted royally on delicious native Brazilian dishes. On another side of the quadrangle stood another long, low white building with a red-tiled roof; this held the A JAGUAR-HUNT ON THE TAQUARY 71 kitchen and the living-rooms of the upper-grade peons, the headmen, the cook, and jaguar-hunters, with their families: dark-skinned men, their wives showing varied strains of white, Indian, and negro blood. The children tumbled merrily in the dust, and were fondly tended by their mothers. Opposite the kitchen stood a row of build- ings, some whitewashed daub and wattle, with tin roofs, others of erect palm-logs with palm-leaf thatch. These were the saddle-room, storehouse, chicken-house, and stable. The chicken-house was allotted to Kermit and Miller for the preparation of the specimens; and there they worked industriously. With a big skin, like that of the giant ant-eater, they had to squat on the ground; while the ducklings and wee chickens scuffled not only round the skin but all over it, grabbing the shreds and scraps of meat and catching flies. The fourth end of the quad- rangle was formed by a corral and a big wooden scaffold- ing on which hung hides and strips of drying meat. Ex- traordinary to relate, there were no mosquitoes at the ranch; why I cannot say, as they ought to swarm in these vast “pantanals,” or swamps. Therefore, in spite of the heat, it was very pleasant. Near by stood other build- ings: sheds, and thatched huts of palm-logs in which the ordinary peons lived, and big corrals. In the quadrangle were flamboyant trees, with their masses of brilliant red flowers and delicately cut, vivid-green foliage. Noisy oven-birds haunted these trees. In a high palm in the garden a family of green parakeets had taken up their abode and were preparing to build nests. They chattered incessantly both when they flew and when they sat or crawled among the branches. Ibis and plover, crying and 72 THROUGH THE BRAZILIAN WILDERNESS wailing, passed immediately overhead. Jacanas frequented the ponds near by; the peons, with a familiarity which to us seems sacrilegious, but to them was entirely inoffensive and matter of course, called them “the Jesus Christ birds,’’ be- cause they walked on the water. There was a wealth of strange bird life in the neighborhood. There were large pa- pyrus-marshes, the papyrus not being a fifth, perhaps not a tenth, as high as in Africa. In these swamps were many blackbirds. Some uttered notes that reminded me of our own redwings. Others, with crimson heads and necks and thighs, fairly blazed; often a dozen sat together on a sway- ing papyrus-stem which their weight bent over. There were all kinds of extraordinary bird’s-nests in the trees. There is still need for the work of the collector in South America. But I believe that already, so far as birds are concerned, there is infinitely more need for the work of the careful observer, who to the power of appreciation and observation adds the power of vivid, truthful, and inter- esting narration—which means, as scientists no less than historians should note, that training in the writing of good English is indispensable to any learned man who expects to make his learning count for what it ought to count in the effect on his fellow men. The outdoor natu- ralist, the faunal naturalist, who devotes himself primarily to a study of the habits and of the life-histories of birds, beasts, fish, and reptiles, and who can portray truthfully and vividly what he has seen, could do work of more use- fulness than any mere collector, in this upper Paraguay country. The work of the collector is indispensable; but it is only a small part of the work that ought to be done; and after collecting has reached a certain point the work A JAGUAR-HUNT ON THE TAQUARY 73 of the field observer with the gift for recording what he has seen becomes of far more importance. The long days spent riding through the swamp, the “pantanal,” were pleasant and interesting. Several times we saw the tamandua bandeira, the giant ant-bear. Ker- mit shot one, because the naturalists eagerly wished for a second specimen; afterward we were relieved of all neces- sity to molest the strange, out-of-date creatures. It was a surprise to us to find them habitually frequenting the open marsh. They were always on muddy ground, and in the papyrus-swamp we found them in several inches of water. The stomach is thick-walled, like a gizzard; the stomachs of those we shot contained adult and larval ants, chiefly termites, together with plenty of black mould and frag- ments of leaves, both green and dry. Doubtless the earth and the vegetable matter had merely been taken inciden- tally, adhering to the viscid tongue when it was thrust into the ant masses. Out in the open marsh the taman- dua could neither avoid observation, nor fight effectively, nor make good its escape by flight. It was curious to see one lumbering off at a rocking canter, the big bushy tail held aloft. One, while fighting the dogs, suddenly threw itself on its back, evidently hoping to grasp a dog with its paws; and it now and then reared, in order to strike at its assailants. In one patch of thick jungle we saw a black howler monkey sitting motionless in a tree top. We also saw the swamp-deer, about the size of our blacktail. It is a real swamp animal, for we found it often in the papyrus-swamps, and out in the open marsh, knee-deep in the water, among the aquatic plants. The tough little horses bore us well through the marsh. 74 THROUGH THE BRAZILIAN WILDERNESS Often in crossing bayous and ponds the water rose almost to their backs; but they splashed and waded and if nec- essary swam through. The dogs were a wild-looking set. Some were of distinctly wolfish appearance. These, we were assured, were descended in part from the big red wolf of the neighborhood, a tall, lank animal, with much smaller teeth than a big northern wolf. The domestic dog is undoubtedly descended from at least a dozen different species of wild dogs, wolves, and jackals, some of them probably belonging to what we style different genera. The degree of fecundity or lack of fecundity between dif- ferent species varies in extraordinary and inexplicable fash- ion in different families of mammals. In the horse family, for instance, the species are not fertile inter se; whereas among the oxen, species seemingly at least as widely sep- arated as the horse, ass, and zebra—species such as the domestic ox, bison, yak, and gaur—breed freely together and their offspring are fertile; the lion and tiger also breed together, and produce offspring which will breed with either parent stock; and tame dogs in different quarters of the world, although all of them fertile inter se, are in many cases obviously blood kin to the neighboring wild, wolf-like or jackal-like creatures which are specifically, and possibly even generically, distinct from one another. The big red wolf of the South American plains is not closely related to the northern wolves; and it was to me unexpected to find it interbreeding with ordinary domestic dogs. In the evenings after dinner we sat in the bare ranch dining-room, or out under the trees in the hot darkness, and talked of many things: natural history with the na- turalists, and all kinds of other subjects both with them A JAGUAR-HUNT ON THE TAQUARY 75 and- with our Brazilian friends. Colonel Rondon is not simply “an officer and a gentleman” in the sense that is honorably true of the best army officers in every good military service. He is also a peculiarly hardy and com- petent explorer, a good field naturalist and scientific man, a student and a philosopher. With him the conversation ranged from jaguar-hunting and the perils of exploration in the “matto grosso,”’ the great wilderness, to Indian anthropology, to the dangers of a purely materialistic in- dustrial civilization, and to Positivist morality. The colo- nel’s Positivism was in very fact to him a religion of hu- manity, a creed which bade him be just and kindly and useful to his fellow men, to live his life bravely, and no less bravely to face death, without reference to what he believed, or did not believe, or to what the unknown here- after might hold for him. The native hunters who accompanied us were swarthy men of mixed blood. They were barefooted and scantily clad, and each carried a long, clumsy spear and a keen’ machete, in the use of which he was an expert. Now and then, in thick jungle, we had to cut out a path, and it was interesting to see one of them, although cumbered by his unwieldy spear, handling his half-broken little horse with complete ease while he hacked at limbs and branches. Of the two ordinarily with us one was much the younger; and whenever we came to an unusually doubtful-looking ford or piece of boggy ground the elder man always sent the younger one on and sat on the bank until he saw what befell the experimenter. In that rather preposterous book of our youth, the “Swiss Family Robinson,” mention is made of a tame monkey called Nips, which was used to 76 THROUGH THE BRAZILIAN WILDERNESS test all edible-looking things as to the healthfulness of which the adventurers felt doubtful; and because of the obvious resemblance of function we christened this younger hunter Nips. Our guides were not only hunters but cattle-herders. The coarse dead grass is burned to make room for the green young grass on which the cattle thrive. Every now and then one of the men, as he rode ahead of us, without leaving the saddle, would drop a lighted match into a tus- sock of tall dead blades; and even as we who were behind rode by tongues of hot flame would be shooting up and a local prairie fire would have started. Kermit took Nips off with him for a solitary hunt one day. He shot two of the big marsh-deer, a buck and a doe, and preserved them as museum specimens. They were in the papyrus growth, but their stomachs contained only the fine marsh-grass which grows in the water and on the land along the edges of the swamps; the papyrus was used only for cover, not for food. The buck had two big scent-glands beside the nostrils; in the doe these were rudi- mentary. On this day Kermit also came across a herd of the big, fierce white-lipped peccary; at the sound of their grunting Nips promptly spurred his horse and took to his heels, explaining that the peccaries would charge them, hamstring the horses, and kill the riders. Kermit went into the jungle after the truculent little wild hogs on foot and followed them for an hour, but never was able to catch sight of them. In the afternoon of this same day one of the jaguar- hunters—merely ranch hands, who knew something of the chase of the jaguar—who had been searching for tracks, rode in with the information that he had found fresh sign nrsrsooy jrusay # ” - | ‘. |Pes y #* cated “ig uv Often it will be sent to and fro a dozen times, from head to head until finally it rises From a photograph by Fiala The game of headball played by Parecis Indians at Utiarity Falls THE HIGHLAND WILDERNESS 195 course, in the right, but the colonel could not afford to have his men take sides in a tribal quarrel. It was only a two hours’ march across to the Papa- gaio at the Falls of Utiarity, so named by their discoverer, Colonel Rondon, after the sacred falcon of the Parecis. On the way we passed our Indian friends, themselves bound thither; both the men and the women bore burdens—the burdens of some of the women, poor things, were heaavy— and even the small naked children carried the live hens. At Utiarity there is a big Parecis settlement and a tele- graph station kept by one of the employees of the com- mission. His pretty brown wife is acting as schoolmis- tress to a group of little Parecis girls. The Parecis chief has been made a major and wears a uniform accordingly. The commission has erected good buildings for its own employees and has superintended the erection of good houses for the Indians. Most of the latter still prefer the simplicity of the loin-cloth, in their ordinary lives, but they proudly wore their civilized clothes in our honor. When in the late afternoon the men began to play a regu- lar match game of headball, with a scorer or umpire to keep count, they soon discarded most of their clothes, coming down to nothing but trousers or a loin-cloth. Two or three of them had their faces stained with red ochre. Among the women and children looking on were a couple of little girls who paraded about on stilts. The great waterfall was half a mile below us. Lovely though we had found Salto Bello, these falls were far su- perior in beauty and majesty. They are twice as high and twice as broad; and the lay of the land is such that the various landscapes in which the waterfall is a feature are 196 THROUGH THE BRAZILIAN WILDERNESS more striking. A few hundred yards above the falls the river turns at an angle and widens. The broad, rapid shallows are crested with whitecaps. Beyond this wide expanse of flecked and hurrying water rise the mist col- umns of the cataract; and as these columns are swayed and broken by the wind the forest appears through and between them. From below the view is one of singular grandeur. The fall is over a shelving ledge of rock which goes in a nearly straight line across the river’s course. But at the left there is a salient in the cliff-line, and here accordingly a great cataract of foaming water comes down almost as a separate body, in advance of the line of the main fall. I doubt whether, excepting, of course, Niagara, there is a waterfall in North America which outranks this if both volume and beauty are considered. Above the fall the river flows through a wide valley with gently slop- ing sides. Below, it slips along, a torrent of whity-green water, at the bottom of a deep gorge; and the sides of the gorge are clothed with a towering growth of tropical forest. Next morning the cacique of these Indians, in his major’s uniform, came to breakfast, and bore himself with entire propriety. It was raining heavily—it rained most of the time—and a few minutes previously I had noticed the cacique’s two wives, with three or four other young women, going out to the mandioc fields. It was a pic- turesque group. The women were all mothers, and each carried a nursing child. They wore loin-cloths or short skirts. Each carried on her back a wickerwork basket supported by a head-strap which went around her fore- head. Each carried a belt slung diagonally across her body, over her right shoulder; in this the child was car- The Falls of Utiarity I doubt whether, excepting, of course, Niagara, there is a waterfall in North America which outranks this if both volume and beauty are considered From a photograph by Cherrie THE HIGHLAND WILDERNESS 197 ried, against and perhaps astride of her left hip. They were comely women, who did not look jaded or cowed; and they laughed cheerfully and nodded to us as they passed through the rain, on their way to the fields. But the contrast between them and the chief in his soldier’s uniform seated at breakfast was rather too striking; and incidentally it etched in bold lines the folly of those who idealize the life of even exceptionally good and pleasant- natured savages. Although it was the rainy season, the trip up to this point had not been difficult, and from May to October, when the climate is dry and at its best, there would be practically no hardship at all for travellers and visitors. This is a healthy plateau. But, of course, the men who do the first pioneering, even in country like this, encounter dangers and run risks; and they make payment with their bodies. At more than one halting-place we had come across the forlorn grave of some soldier or laborer of the commission. The grave-mound lay within a rude stock- ade; and an uninscribed wooden cross, gray and weather- beaten, marked the last resting-place of the unknown and forgotten man beneath, the man who had paid with his humble life the cost of ‘pushing the frontier of civilization into the wild savagery of the wilderness. Farther west the conditions become less healthy. At this station Colo- nel Rondon received news of sickness and of some deaths among the employees of the commission in the country to the westward, which we were soon to enter. Beriberi and malignant malarial fever were the diseases which claimed the major number of the victims. Surely these are “the men who do the work for which 198 THROUGH THE BRAZILIAN WILDERNESS they draw the wage.” Kermit had with him the same copy of Kipling’s poems which he had carried through Africa. At these falls there was one sunset of angry splen- dor; and we contrasted this going down of the sun, through broken rain-clouds and over leagues of wet tropical forest, with the desert sunsets we had seen in Arizona and So- nora, and along the Guaso Nyiro north and west of Mount Kenia, when the barren mountains were changed into flaming “ramparts of slaughter and peril” standing above “the wine-dark flats below.” It rained during most of the day after our arrival at Utiarity. Whenever there was any let-up the men promptly came forth from their houses and played headball with the utmost vigor; and we would listen to their shrill un- dulating cries of applause and triumph until we also grew interested and strolled over to look on. They are more infatuated with the game than an American boy is with baseball or football. It is an extraordinary thing that this strange and exciting game should be played by, and only by, one. little tribe of Indians in what is almost the very centre of South America. If any traveller or ethnologist knows of a tribe elsewhere that plays a similar game, I wish he would let me know. To play it demands great activity, vigor, skill, and endurance. Looking at the strong, supple bodies of the players, and at the number of children roundabout, it seemed as if the tribe must be in vigorous health; yet the Parecis have decreased in num- bers, for measles and smallpox have been fatal to them. By the evening the rain was coming down more heav- ily than ever. It was not possible to keep the moisture out of our belongings; everything became mouldy except A lonely grave by the wayside At more than one halting-place we had come across the forlorn grave of some soldier or laborer of the commission Irom a photograph by Cherrte The Parecis dance Most of them wore on one leg anklets which rattled From a photograph by Miller THE HIGHLAND WILDERNESS 199 what became rusty. It rained all that night; and day- light saw the downpour continuing with no prospect of cessation. The pack-mules could not have gone on with the march; they were already rather done up by their previous ten days’ labor through rain and mud, and it seemed advisable to wait until the weather became better before attempting to go forward. Moreover, there had been no chance to take the desired astronomical observa- tions. There was very little grass for the mules; but there was abundance of a small-leaved plant eight or ten inches high—unfortunately, not very nourishing—on which they fed greedily. In such weather and over such muddy trails oxen travel better than mules. In spite of the weather Cherrie and Miller, whom, to- gether with Father Zahm and Sigg, we had found await- ing us, made good collections of birds and mammals. Among the latter were opossums and mice that were new to them. The birds included various forms so unlike our home birds that the enumeration of their names would mean nothing. One of the most interesting was a large black-and-white woodpecker, the white predominating in the plumage. Several of these woodpeckers were usually found together. They were showy, noisy, and restless, and perched on twigs, in ordinary bird fashion, at least as often as they clung to the trunks in orthodox wood- pecker style. The prettiest bird was a tiny manakin, coal- black, with a red-and-orange head. On February 2 the rain let up, although the sky re- mained overcast and there were occasional showers. I walked off with my rifle for a couple of leagues; at that distance, from a slight hillock, the mist columns of the falls 200 THROUGH THE BRAZILIAN WILDERNESS were conspicuous in the landscape. The only mammal I saw on the walk was a rather hairy armadillo, with a flex- ible tail, which I picked up and brought back to Miller— it showed none of the speed of the nine-banded armadillos we met on our jaguar-hunt. Judging by its actions, as it trotted about before it saw me, it must be diurnal in habits. It was new to the collection. I spent much of the afternoon by the waterfall. Under the overcast sky the great cataract lost the deep green and fleecy-white of the sunlit falling waters. Instead it showed opaline hues and tints of topaz and amethyst. At all times, and under all lights, it was majestic and beautiful. Colonel Rondon had given the Indians various presents, those for the women including calico prints, and, what they especially prized,.bottles of scented oil, from Paris, for their hair. The men held a dance in the late afternoon. For this occasion most, but not all, of them cast aside their civilized clothing, and appeared as doubtless they would all have appeared had none but themselves been present. They were absolutely naked except for a beaded string round the waist. Most of them were spotted and dashed with red paint, and on one leg wore anklets which rattled. A number carried pipes through which they blew a kind of deep stifled whistle in time to the dancing. One- of them had his pipe leading into a huge gourd, which gave out a hollow, moaning boom. Many wore two red or green or yellow macaw feathers in their hair, and one had a macaw feather stuck transversely through the sep- tum of his nose. They circled slowly round and round, chanting and stamping their feet, while the anklet rattles » the dancing in time t From a phot THE HIGHLAND WILDERNESS 201 clattered and the pipes droned. They advanced to the wall of one of the houses, again and again chanting and bowing before it; I was told this was a demand for drink. They entered one house and danced in a ring around the cooking-fire in the middle of the earth floor; I was told that they were then reciting the deeds of mighty hunters and describing how they brought in the game. They drank freely from gourds and pannikins of a fermented drink made from mandioc which were brought out to them. During the first part of the dance the women re- mained in the houses, and all the doors and windows were shut and blankets hung to prevent the possibility of seeing out. But during the second part all the women and girls came out and looked on. They were themselves to have danced when the men had finished, but were overcome with shyness at the thought of dancing with so many strangers looking on. The children played about with un- concern throughout the ceremony, one of them throwing high in the air, and again catching in his hands, a loaded feather, a kind of shuttlecock. In the evening the growing moon shone through the cloud-rack. Anything approaching fair weather always put our men in good spirits; and the muleteers squatted in a circle, by a fire near a pile of packs, and listened to a long monotonously and rather mournfully chanted song about a dance and a love-affair. We ourselves worked busily with our photographs and our writing. There was so much humidity in the air that everything grew damp and stayed damp, and mould gathered quickly. At this season it is a country in which writing, taking photographs, and preparing specimens are all works of difficulty, at least 202 THROUGH THE BRAZILIAN WILDERNESS so far as concerns preserving and sending home the results of the labor; and a man’s clothing is never really dry. From here Father Zahm returned to Tapirapoan, ac- companied by Sigg. CHAPTER VII WITH A MULE-TRAIN ACROSS NHAMBIQUARA LAND From this point we were to enter a still wilder region, the land of the naked Nhambiquaras. On February 3 the weather cleared and we started with the mule-train and two ox-carts. Fiala and Lieutenant Lauriado stayed at Utiarity to take canoes and go down the Papagaio, which had not been descended by any scientific party, and per- haps by no one. They were then to descend the Juruena and Tapajos, thereby performing a necessary part of the work of the expedition. Our remaining party consisted of Colonel Rondon, Lieutenant Lyra, the doctor, Oliveira, Cherrie, Miller, Kermit, and myself. On the Juruena we expected to meet the pack ox-train with Captain Amilcar and Lieutenant Mello; the other Brazilian members of the party had returned. We had now begun the difficult part of the expedition. The pium flies were becoming a pest. There was much fever and beriberi in the country we were entering. The feed for the animals was poor; the rains had made the trails slippery and difficult; and many, both of the mules and the oxen, were already weak, and some had to be abandoned. We left the canoe, the motor, and the gasolene; we had hoped to try them on the Amazonian rivers, but we were obliged to cut down everything that was not absolutely indispensable. Before leaving we prepared for shipment back to the 203 204. THROUGH THE BRAZILIAN WILDERNESS museum some of the bigger skins, and also some of the weapons and utensils of the Indians, which Kermit had collected. These included woven fillets, and fillets made of macaw feathers, for use in the dances; woven belts; a gourd in which the sacred drink is offered to the god Enoerey; wickerwork baskets; flutes or pipes; anklet rat- tles; hammocks; a belt of the kind used by the women in carrying the babies, with the weaving-frame. All these were Parecis articles. He also secured from the Nham- biquaras wickerwork baskets of a different type and bows and arrows. The bows were seven feet long and the ar- rows five feet. There were blunt-headed arrows for birds, arrows with long, sharp wooden blades for tapir, deer, and other mammals; and the poisoned war-arrows, with sharp barbs, poison-coated and bound on by fine thongs, and with a long, hollow wooden guard to slip over the entire point and protect it until the time came to use it. When people talk glibly of “idle” savages they ignore the im- mense labor entailed by many of their industries, and the really extraordinary amount of work they accomplish by the skilful use of their primitive and ineffective tools. It was not until early in the afternoon that we started into the “‘sertao,”’ * as Brazilians call the wilderness. We drove with us a herd of oxen for food. After going about fifteen miles we camped beside the swampy headwaters of a little brook. It was at the spot where nearly seven years previously Rondon and Lyra had camped on the trip when they discovered Utiarity Falls and penetrated to the Juruena. When they reached this place they had * Pronounced “sairtown,” as nearly as, with our preposterous methods of spelling and pronunciation, I can render it. ACROSS NHAMBIQUARA LAND 205 been thirty-six hours without food. They killed a bush deer—a small deer—and ate literally every particle. The dogs devoured the entire skin. For much of the time on this trip they lived on wild fruit, and the two dogs that remained alive would wait eagerly under the trees and eat the fruit that was shaken down. In the late afternoon the piums were rather bad at this camp, but we had gloves and head-nets, and were not bothered; and although there were some mosquitoes we slept well under our mosquito-nets. The frogs in the swamp uttered a peculiar, loud shout. Miller told of a little tree-frog in Colombia which swelled itself out with air until it looked like the frog in Hsop’s fables, and then brayed like a mule; and Cherrie told of a huge frog in Guiana that uttered a short, loud roar. Next day the weather was still fair. Our march lay through country like that which we had been traversing for ten days. Skeletons of mules and oxen were more frequent; and once or twice by the wayside we passed the graves of officers or men who had died on the road. Barbed wire encircled the desolate little mounds. We camped on the west bank of the Burity River. Here there is a balsa, or ferry, run by two Parecis Indians, as employees of the Telegraphic Commission, under the colonel. Each had a thatched house, and each had two wives—all these Indi- ans are pagans. All were dressed much like the poorer peasants of the Brazilian back country, and all were pleas- ant and well-behaved. The women ran the ferry about as well as the men. They had no cultivated fields, and for weeks they had been living only on game and honey; and they hailed with joy our advent and the quantities 206 THROUGH THE BRAZILIAN WILDERNESS of beans and rice which, together with some beef, the colonel left with them. They feasted most of the night. Their houses contained their hammocks, baskets, and other belongings, and they owned some poultry. In one house was a tiny parakeet, very much at home, and fa- miliar, but by no means friendly, with strangers. There are wild Nhambiquaras in the neighborhood, and recently several of these had menaced the two ferrymen with an attack, even shooting arrows at them. The ferrymen had driven them off by firing their rifles in the air; and they expected and received the colonel’s praise for their self- restraint; for the colonel is doing all he can to persuade the Indians to stop their blood feuds. The rifles were short and light Winchester carbines, of the kind so uni- versally used by the rubber-gatherers and other adventur- ous wanderers in the forest wilderness of Brazil. There were a number of rubber-trees in the neighborhood, by the way. We enjoyed a good bath in the Burity, although it was impossible to make headway by swimming against the rac- ing current. There were few mosquitoes. On the other hand, various kinds of piums were a little too abundant; they vary from things like small gnats to things like black flies. The small stingless bees have no fear and can hardly be frightened away when they light on the hands or face; but they never bite, and merely cause a slight tickling as they crawl over the skin. There were some big bees, however, which, although they crawled about harmlessly after lighting if they were undisturbed, yet stung fiercely if they were molested. The insects were not ordinarily a serious bother, but there were occasional hours when they ACROSS NHAMBIQUARA LAND 207 were too numerous for comfort, and now and then I had to do my writing in a head-net and gauntlets. The night we reached the Burity it rained heavily, and next day the rain continued. In the morning the mules were ferried over, while the oxen were swum across. Half a dozen of our men—whites, Indians, and negroes, all stark naked and uttering wild cries—drove the oxen into the river and then, with powerful overhand strokes, swam behind and alongside them as they crossed, half-breasting the swift current. It was a fine sight to see the big, long- horned, staring beasts swimming strongly, while the sin- ewy naked men urged them forward, utterly at ease in the rushing water. We made only a short day’s journey, for, owing to the lack of grass, the mules had to be driven off nearly three miles from our line of march, in order to get them feed. We camped at the headwaters of a little brook called Huatsui, which is Parecis for “monkey.” Accompanying us on this march was a soldier bound for one of the remoter posts. With him trudged his wife. They made the whole journey on foot. There were two children. One was so young that it had to be carried al- ternately by the father and mother. The other, a small boy of eight, and much the best of the party, was already a competent wilderness worker. He bore his share of the belongings on the march, and when camp was reached sometimes himself put up the family shelter. They were mainly of negro blood. Struck by the woman’s uncom- plaining endurance of fatigue, we offered to take her and the baby in the automobile, while it accompanied us. But, alas! this proved to be one of those melancholy cases where the effort to relieve hardship well endured results only in 208 THROUGH THE BRAZILIAN WILDERNESS showing that those who endure the adversity cannot stand even a slight prosperity. The woman proved a querulous traveller in the auto, complaining that she was not made as comfortable as, apparently, she had expected; and after one day the husband declared he was not willing to have her go unless he went too; and the family resumed their walk. In this neighborhood there were multitudes of the big, gregarious, crepuscular or nocturnal spiders which I have before mentioned. On arriving in camp, at about four in the afternoon, I ran into a number of remains of their webs, and saw a very few of the spiders themselves sitting in the webs midway between trees. I then strolled a couple of miles up the road ahead of us under the line of tele- graph-poles. It was still bright sunlight and no spiders were out; in fact, I did not suspect their presence along the line of telegraph-poles, although I ought to have done so, for I continually ran into long strings of tough, fine web, which got across my face or hands or rifle barrel. I returned just at sunset and the spiders were out in force. I saw dozens of colonies, each of scores or hundreds of in- dividuals. Many were among the small trees alongside the broad, cleared trail. But most were dependent from the wire itself. Their webs had all been made or repaired since I had passed. Each was sitting in the middle of his own wheel, and all the wheels were joined to one another; and the whole pendent fabric hung by fine ropes from the wire above, and was in some cases steadied by guy-ropes, thrown thirty feet off to little trees alongside. JI watched them until nightfall, and evidently, to them, after their day’s rest, their day’s work had just begun. Next morn- Tres Burity Troma photograph by Kermat Roosevelt The kitchen under the ox-hide at Campos Novos From a photograph by Theodore Roosevelt ACROSS NHAMBIQUARA LAND 209 ing—owing to a desire to find out what the facts were as regards the ox-carts, which were in difficulties—Cherrie, Miller, Kermit, and I walked back to the Burity River, where Colonel Rondon had spent the night. It was a misty, Overcast morning, and the spiders in the webs that hung from the telegraph-wire were just going to their day homes. These were in and under the big white china insulators on the telegraph-poles. Hundreds of spiders were already climbing up into these. When, two or three hours later, we returned, the sun was out, and not a spider was to be seen. Here we had to cut down our baggage and rearrange the loads for the mule-train. Cherrie and Miller had a most workmanlike equipment, including a very light tent and two light flies. One fly they gave for the kitchen use, one fly was allotted to Kermit and me, and they kept only the tent for themselves. Colonel Rondon and Lyra went in one tent, the doctor and Oliveira in another. Each of us got rid of everything above the sheer necessities. This was necessary because of the condition of the baggage- animals. The oxen were so weak that the effort to bring on the carts had to be abandoned. Nine of the pack- mules had already been left on the road during the three days’ march from Utiarity. In the first expeditions into this country all the baggage-animals had died; and even in our case the loss was becoming very heavy. This state of affairs is due to the scarcity of forage and the type of country. Good grass is scanty, and the endless leagues of sparse, scrubby forest render it exceedingly difficult to find the animals when they wander. They must be turned absolutely loose to roam about and pick up their scanty 210 THROUGH THE BRAZILIAN WILDERNESS subsistence, and must be given as long a time as possible to feed and rest; even under these conditions most of them grow weak when, as in our case, it is impossible to carry corm. They cannot be found again until after daylight, and then hours must be spent in gathering them; and this means that the march must be made chiefly during the heat of the day, the most trying time. Often some of the ani- mals would not be brought in until so late that it was well on in the forenoon, perhaps midday, before the bulk of the pack-train started; and they reached the camping- place as often after nightfall as before it. Under such conditions many of the mules and oxen grew constantly weaker, and ultimately gave out; and it was imperative to load them as lightly as possible, and discard all luxuries, especially heavy or bulky luxuries. Travelling through a wild country where there is little food for man or beast is beset with difficulties almost inconceivable to the man who does not himself know this kind of wilderness, and especially to the man who only knows the ease of civiliza- tion. A scientific party of some size, with the equipment necessary in order to do scientific work, can only go at all if the men who actually handle the problems of food and transportation do their work thoroughly. Our march continued through the same type of high, nearly level upland, covered with scanty, scrubby forest. It is the kind of country known to the Brazilians as cha- padao—pronounced almost as if it were a French word and spelled shapadén. Our camp on the fourth night was in a beautiful spot, an open grassy space, beside a clear, cool, rushing little river. We ourselves reached this, and waded our beasts across the deep, narrow stream, in the ACROSS NHAMBIQUARA LAND 211 late afternoon; and we then enjoyed a bath and swim. The loose bullocks arrived at sunset, and with shrill cries the mounted herdsmen urged them into and across the swift water. The mule-train arrived long after nightfall, and it was not deemed wise to try to cross the laden an- imals. Accordingly the loads were taken off and brought over on the heads of the men; it was fine to see the sin- ewy, naked figures bearing their burdens through the broken moonlit water to the hither bank. The night was cool and pleasant. We kindled a fire and sat beside the blaze. Then, healthily hungry, we gathered around the ox-hides to a delicious dinner of soup, beef, beans, rice, and coffee. Next day we made a short march, crossed a brook, and camped by another clear, deep, rapid little river, swollen by the rains. All these rivers that we were crossing run actually into the Juruena, and therefore form part of the headwaters of the Tapajos; for the Tapajos is a mighty river, and the basin which holds its headwaters covers an immense extent of country. This country and the adja- cent regions, forming the high interior of western Brazil, will surely some day support a large industrial popula- tion; of which the advent would be hastened, although not necessarily in permanently better fashion, if Colonel Rondon’s anticipations about the development of mining, especially gold-mining, are realized. In any event the re- gion will be a healthy home for a considerable agricul- tural and pastoral population. Above all, the many swift streams, with their numerous waterfalls, some of great height and volume, offer the chance for the upgrowth of a number of big manufacturing communities, knit by rail- 212 THROUGH THE BRAZILIAN WILDERNESS roads to one another and to the Atlantic coast and the valleys of the Paraguay, Madeira, and Amazon, and feed- ing and being fed by the dwellers in the rich, hot, alluvial lowlands that surround this elevated territory. The work of Colonel Rondon and his associates of the Telegraphic Commission has been to open this great and virgin land to the knowledge of the world and to the service of their nation. In doing so they have incidentally founded the Brazilian school of exploration. Before their day almost all the scientific and regular exploration of Brazil was done by foreigners. But, of course, there was much ex- ploration and settlement by nameless Brazilians, who were merely endeavoring to make new homes or advance their private fortunes: in recent years by rubber-gatherers, for instance, and a century ago by those bold and restless ad- venturers, partly of Portuguese and partly of Indian blood, the Paolistas, from one of whom Colonel Rondon is him- self descended on his father’s side. The camp by this river was in some old and grown-up fields, once the seat of a rather extensive maize and man- dioc cultivation by the Nhambiquaras. On this day Cherrie got a number of birds new to the collection, and two or three of them probably new to science. We had found the birds for the most part in worn plumage, for the breeding season, the southern spring and northern fall, was over. But some birds were still breeding. In the tropics the breeding season is more irregular than in the north. Some birds breed at very different times from that chosen by the majority of their fellows; some can hardly be said to have any regular season; Cherrie had found one species of honey-creeper breeding in every month of the ACROSS NHAMBIQUARA LAND 213 year. Just before sunset and just after sunrise big, noisy, blue-and-yellow macaws flew over this camp. They were plentiful enough to form a loose flock, but each pair kept to. itself, the two individuals always close together and always separated from the rest. Although not an abun- dant, it was an interesting, fauna which the two naturalists found in this upland country, where hitherto no collections of birds and mammals had been made. Miller trapped several species of opossums, mice, and rats which were new to him. Cherrie got many birds which he did not recog- nize. At this camp, among totally strange forms, he found an old and familiar acquaintance. Before breakfast he brought in several birds: a dark-colored flycatcher, with white forehead and rump and two very long tail-feathers; a black and slate-blue tanager; a black ant-thrush with a concealed white spot on its back, at the base of the neck, and its dull-colored mate; and other birds which he be- lieved to be new to science, but whose relationships with any of our birds are so remote that it is hard to describe them save in technical language. Finally, among these unfamiliar forms was a veery, and the sight of the rufous- olive back and faintly spotted throat of this singer of our northern Junes made us almost homesick. Next day was brilliantly clear. The mules could not be brought in until quite late in the morning, and we had to march twenty miles under the burning tropical sun, right in the hottest part of the day. From a rise of ground we looked back over the vast, sunlit landscape, the endless rolling stretches of low forest. Midway on our journey we crossed a brook. The dogs minded the heat much. They continually ran off to one side, lay down in a shady 214 THROUGH THE BRAZILIAN WILDERNESS place, waited until we were several hundred yards ahead, and then raced .after us, overtook us, and repeated the performance. The pack-train came in about sunset; but we ourselves reached the Juruena in the middle of the afternoon. The Juruena is the name by which the Tapajos goes along its upper course. Where we crossed, it was a deep, rapid stream, flowing in a heavily wooded valley with rather steep sides. We were ferried across on the usual balsa, a platform on three dugouts, running by the force of the current on a wire trolley. There was a clearing on each side, with a few palms, and on the farther bank were the buildings of the telegraph station. This is a wild country, and the station was guarded by a few soldiers under the command of Lieutenant Marino, a native of Rio Grande do Sul, a blond man who looked like an English- man—an agreeable companion, and a good and resolute officer, as all must be who do their work in this wilder- ness. The Juruena was first followed at the end of the eighteenth century by the Portuguese explorer Franco, and not again until over a hundred years had elapsed, when the Telegraphic Commission not only descended, but for the first time accurately placed and mapped its course. There were several houses on the rise of the farther bank, all with thatched roofs, some of them with walls of upright tree-trunks, some of them daub and wattle. Into one of the latter, with two rooms, we took our belongings. The sand-flies were bothersome at night, coming through the interstices in the ordinary mosquito-nets. The first night they did this I got no sleep until morning, when it was cool enough for me to roll myself in my blanket and ACROSS NHAMBIQUARA LAND 215 put on a head-net. Afterward we used fine nets of a kind of cheese-cloth. They were hot, but they kept out all, or almost all, of the sand-flies and other small tormentors. Here we overtook the rearmost division of Captain Amilcar’s bullock-train. Our own route had diverged, in order to pass the great falls. Captain Amilcar had come direct, overtaking the pack-oxen, which had left Tapirapoan before we did, laden with material for the Davida trip. He had brought the oxen through in fine shape, losing only three beasts with their loads, and had himself left the Juruena the morning of the day we reached there. His weakest animals left that evening, to make the march by moonlight; and as it was desirable to give them thirty- six hours’ start, we halted for a day on the banks of the river. It was not a wasted day. In addition to bathing and washing our clothes, the naturalists made some valua- ble additions to the collection—including a boldly marked black, blue, and white jay—and our photographs were de- veloped and our writing brought abreast of the date. Travelling through a tropical wilderness in the rainy sea- son, when the amount of baggage that can be taken is strictly limited, entails not only a good deal of work, but also the exercise of considerable ingenuity if the writing and photographing, and especially the preservation, of the specimens are to be done in satisfactory shape. At the telegraph office we received news that the voy- age of Lauriado and Fiala down the Papagaio had opened with a misadventure. In some bad rapids, not many miles below the falls, two of the canoes had been upset, half of their provisions and all of Fiala’s baggage lost, and Fiala himself nearly drowned. The Papagaio is known both at 216 THROUGH THE BRAZILIAN WILDERNESS the source and the mouth; to descend it did not repre- sent a plunge into the unknown, as in the case of the Da- vida or the Anands; but the actual water work, over the part that was unexplored, offered the same possibilities of mischance and disaster. It is a hazardous thing to descend a swift, unknown river rushing through an uninhabited wilderness. To descend or ascend the ordinary great high- way rivers of South America, such as the Amazon, Paraguay, Tapajos, and, in its lower course, the Orinoco, is now so safe and easy, whether by steamboat or big, native cargo-boat, that people are apt to forget the very serious difficulties offered by the streams, often themselves great rivers, which run into or form the upper courses of these same water highways. Few things are easier than the former feat, and few more difficult than the latter; and experience in ordinary travelling on the lower courses of the rivers is of no benefit whatever in enabling a man to form a judgment as to what can be done, and how to do it, on the upper courses. Failure to remember this fact is one of the ob- stacles in the way of securing a proper appreciation of the needs, and the results, of South American exploration. At the Juruena we met a party of Nhambiquaras, very friendly and sociable, and very glad to see Colonel Rondon. They were originally exceedingly hostile and suspicious, but the colonel’s unwearied thoughtfulness and good tem- per, joined with his indomitable resolution, enabled him to avoid war and to secure their friendship and even their aid. He never killed one. Many of them are known to him personally. He is on remarkably good terms with them, and they are very fond of him—although this does not prevent them from now and then yielding to tempta- ACROSS NHAMBIQUARA LAND 217 tion, even at his expense, and stealing a dog or.something else which strikes them as offering an irresistible attraction. They cannot be employed at steady work; but they do Occasional odd jobs, and are excellent at hunting up strayed mules or oxen; and a few of the men have begun to wear clothes, purely for ornament. Their confidence and bold friendliness showed how well they had been treated. Prob- ably half of our visitors were men; several were small boys; one was a woman with a baby; the others were young married women and girls. Nowhere in Africa did we come across wilder or more absolutely primitive savages, although these Indians were pleasanter and better-featured than any of the African tribes at the same stage of culture. Both sexes were well- made and rather good-looking, with fairly good teeth, al- though some of them seemed to have skin diseases. They were a laughing, easy-tempered crew, and the women were as well-fed as the men, and were obviously well-treated, from the savage standpoint; there was no male brutality like that which forms such a revolting feature in the life of the Australian black fellows and, although to a some- what less degree, in the life of so many negro and Indian tribes. They were practically absolutely naked. In many savage tribes the men go absolutely naked, but the women wear a breech-clout or loin-cloth. In certain tribes we saw near Lake Victoria Nyanza, and on the upper White Nile, both men and women were practically naked. Among these Nhambiquaras the women were more completely naked than the men, although the difference was not es- sential. The men wore a string around the waist. Most of them wore nothing else, but a few had loosely hanging 218 THROUGH THE BRAZILIAN WILDERNESS from this string in front a scanty tuft of dried grass, or a small piece of cloth, which, however, was of purely sym- bolic use so far as either protection or modesty was con- cerned. The women did not wear a stitch of any kind anywhere on their bodies. They did not have on so much as a string, or a bead, or even an ornament in their hair. They were all, men and women, boys and well-grown young girls, as entirely at ease and unconscious as so many friendly animals. All of them—men, women, and chil- dren, laughing and talking—crowded around us, whether we were on horseback or on foot. They flocked into the house, and when I sat down to write surrounded me so closely that I had to push them gently away. The women and girls often stood holding one another’s hands, or with their arms over one another’s shoulders or around one another’s waists, offering an attractive picture. The men had holes pierced through the septum of the nose and through the upper lip, and wore a straw through each hole. The women were not marked or mutilated. It seems like a contradiction in terms, but it is nevertheless a fact that the behavior of these completely naked women and men was entirely modest. There was never an in- decent look or a consciously indecent gesture. They had no blankets or hammocks, and when night came simply lay down in the sand. Colonel Rondon stated that they never wore a covering by night or by day, and if it was cool slept one on each side of a small fire. Their huts were merely slight shelters against the rain. The moon was nearly full, and after nightfall a few of the Indians suddenly held an improvised dance for us in front of our house. There were four men, a small boy, lds: 24D pure Lane «q sydva: ool yora ysnoiyy ALBIS: 8 DTOM puv ‘dy aoddn ayi ysnoryi pur ssou ayy jo winjdos oy YySno1yy podsoid sajoy pry uourt oy f, Aoyquour qod » YAW pyrys vaenbiquiryN ACROSS NHAMBIQUARA LAND 219 and two young women or grown girls. Two of the men had been doing some work for the commission, and were dressed, one completely and one partially, in ordinary clothes. Two of the men and the boy were practically naked, and the two young women were absolutely so. All of them danced in a circle, without a touch of embarrass- ment or impropriety. The two girls kept hold of each other’s hands throughout, dancing among the men as mod- estly as possible, and with the occasional interchange of a laugh or jest, in as good taste and temper as in any dance in civilization. The dance consisted in slowly going round in a circle, first one way then the other, rhythmi- cally beating time with the feet to the music of the song they were chanting. The chants—there were three of them, all told—were measured and rather slowly uttered melodies, varied with an occasional half-subdued shrill cry. The women continually uttered a kind of long-drawn wail- ing or droning; I am not enough of a musician to say whether it was an overtone or the sustaining of the burden of the ballad. The young boy sang better than any of the others. It was a strange and interesting sight to see these utterly wild, friendly savages, circling in their slow dance, and chanting their immemorial melodies, in the brilliant tropical moonlight, with the river rushing by in the background, through the lonely heart of the wilder- ness. The Indians stayed with us, feasting, dancing, and singing, until the early hours of the morning. They then suddenly and silently disappeared in the darkness, and did not return. In the morning we discovered that they had gone off with one of Colonel Rondon’s dogs. Probably 220 THROUGH THE BRAZILIAN WILDERNESS the temptation had proved irresistible to one of their num- ber, and the others had been afraid to interfere, and also afraid to stay in or return to our neighborhood. We had not time to go after them; but Rondon remarked that as soon as he again came to the neighborhood he would take some soldiers, hunt up the Indians, and reclaim the dog. It has been his mixture of firmness, good nature, and good judgment that has enabled him to control these bold, warlike savages, and even to reduce the warfare between them and the Parecis. In spite of their good nature and laughter, their fearlessness and familiarity showed how necessary it was not to let them get the upper hand. They are always required to leave all their arms a mile or two away before they come into the encampment. They are much wilder and more savage, and at a much lower cul- tural level, than the Parecis. In the afternoon of the day following our arrival there was a heavy rain-storm which drove into the unglazed windows, and here and there came through the roof and walls of our daub-and-wattle house. The heat was intense and there was much moisture in this valley. During the downpour I looked out at the dreary little houses, showing through the driving rain, while the sheets of muddy water slid past their door-sills; and I felt a sincere respect for the lieutenant and his soldiers who were holding this deso- late outpost of civilization. It is an unhealthy spot; there has been much malarial fever and beriberi—an obscure and deadly disease. Next morning we resumed our march. It soon began to rain and we were drenched when, some fifteen miles on, we reached the river where we were to camp. After the Maloca or beehive hut of the Nhambiquaras From a photograph by Kermit Roosevit A Nhambiquara shelter hut and utensils Their huts were merely slight shelters against the rain From a photograph by Kermit Roosevelt ACROSS NHAMBIQUARA LAND 221 great heat we felt quite cold in our wet clothes, and gladly crowded round a fire which was kindled under a thatched shed, beside the cabin of the ferrymen. This ferry-boat was so small that it could only take one mule, or at most two, at a time. The mules and a span of six oxen drag- ging an ox-cart, which we had overtaken, were ferried slowly to the farther side that afternoon, as there was no feed on the hither bank, where we ourselves camped. The ferryman was a soldier in the employ of the Telegraphic Commission. His good-looking, pleasant-mannered wife, evidently of both Indian and negro blood, was with him, and was doing all she could do as a housekeeper, in the comfortless little cabin, with its primitive bareness of fur- niture and fittings. Here we saw Captain Amilcar, who had come back to hurry up his rear-guard. We stood ankle-deep in mud and water, by the swollen river, while the rain beat on us, and enjoyed a few minutes’ talk with the cool, competent of- ficer who was doing a difficult job with such workmanlike efficiency. He had no poncho, and was wet through, but was much too busy in getting his laden oxen forward to think of personal discomfort. He had had a good deal of trouble with his mules, but his oxen were still in fair shape. After leaving the Juruena the ground became some- what more hilly, and the scrubby forest was less open, but otherwise there was no change in the monotonous, and yet to me rather attractive, landscape. The ant-hills, and the ant-houses in the trees—arboreal ant-hills, so to speak —were as conspicuous as ever. The architects of some were red ants, of others black ants; and others, which were on the whole the largest, had been built by the white ants, % 222 THROUGH THE BRAZILIAN WILDERNESS the termites. The latter were not infrequently taller than a horseman’s head. That evening round the camp-fire Colonel Rondon hap- pened to mention how the brother of one of the soldiers with us—a Parecis Indian—had been killed by a jararaca snake. Cherrie told of a narrow escape he had from one while collecting in Guiana. At night he used to set traps in camp for small mammals. One night he heard one of these traps go off under his hammock. He reached down. for it, and as he fumbled for the chain he felt a snake strike at him, just missing him in the darkness, but actu- ally brushing his hand. He lit a light and saw that a big jararaca had been caught in the trap; and he preserved it as a specimen. Snakes frequently came into his camp after nightfall. He killed one rattlesnake which had swal- lowed the skinned bodies of four mice he had prepared as specimens; which shows that rattlesnakes do not al- ways feed only on living prey. Another rattlesnake which he killed in Central America had just swallowed: an opos- sum which proved to be of a species new to science. Miller told how once on the Orinoco he saw on the bank a small anaconda, some ten feet long, killing one of the iguanas, big, active, truculent, carnivorous lizards, equally at home on the land and in the water. Evidently the iguanas were digging out holes in the bank in which to lay their eggs; for there were several such holes, and iguanas working at them. The snake had crushed its prey to a pulp; and, not more than a couple of feet away another iguana was still busily, and with entire unconcern, engaged in mak- ing its burrow. At Miller’s approach the anaconda left the dead iguana and rushed into the water, and the live The ant-hills were not infrequently taller than a horseman’s head From a photograph by Miller ACROSS NHAMBIQUARA LAND 223 iguana promptly followed it. Miller also told of the stone gods and altars and temples he had seen in the great Co- lombian forests, monuments of strange civilizations which flourished and died out ages ago, and of which all mem- ory has vanished. He and Cherrie told of giant rivers and waterfalls, and of forests never penetrated, and moun- tains never ascended by civilized man; and of bloody rev- olutions that devastated the settled regions. Listening to them I felt that they could write “Tales of Two Natu- ralists” that would be worth reading. They were short of literature, by the way—a party such as ours always needs books—and as Kermit’s read- ing-matter consisted chiefly of Camoens and other Portu- guese, or else Brazilian, writers, I strove to supply the deficiency with spare volumes of Gibbon. At the end of our march we were usually far ahead of the mule-train, and the rain was also usually falling. Accordingly we would sit about under trees, or under a shed or lean-to, if there was one, each solemnly reading a volume of Gibbon —and no better reading can be found. In my own case, as I had been having rather a steady course of Gibbon, I varied him now and then with a volume of Arséne Lupin lent me by Kermit. There were many swollen rivers to cross at this point of our journey. Some we waded at fords. Some we crossed by rude bridges. The larger ones, such as the Juina, we crossed by ferry, and when the approaches were swampy, and the river broad and swift, many hours might be consumed in getting the mule-train, the loose bullocks, and the ox-cart over. We had few accidents, although we once lost a ferry-load of provisions, which was quite a 224 THROUGH THE BRAZILIAN WILDERNESS misfortune in a country where they could not be replaced. The pasturage was poor, and it was impossible to make long marches with our weakened animals. At one camp three Nhambiquaras paid us a visit at breakfast-time. They left their weapons behind them be- fore they appeared, and shouted loudly while they were still hid by the forest, and it was only after repeated an- swering calls of welcome that they approached. Always in the wilderness friends proclaim their presence; a silent advance marks a foe. Our visitors were men, and stark naked, as usual. One seemed sick; he was thin, and his back was scarred with marks of the grub of the loathsome berni fly. Indeed, all of them showed scars, chiefly from insect wounds. But the other two were in good condition, and, although they ate greedily of the food offered them, they had with them a big mandioc cake, some honey, and a little fish. One of them wore a high helmet of puma-skin, with the tail hanging down his back—hand- some head-gear, which he gladly bartered for several strings of bright coral-red beads. Around the upper arms of two of them were bands bound so tightly as to cut into and deform the muscles—a singular custom, seemingly not only purposeless but mischievous, which is common among this tribe and many others. The Nhambiquaras are a numerous tribe, covering a large region. But they have no general organization. Each group of families acts for itself. Half a dozen years pre- viously they had been very hostile, and Colonel Rondon had to guard his camp and exercise every precaution to guarantee his safety, while at the same time successfully endeavoring to avoid the necessity of himself shedding ACROSS NHAMBIQUARA LAND 225 blood. Now they are, for the most part, friendly. But there are groups or individuals that are not. Several sol- diers have been killed at these little lonely stations; and while in some cases the attack may have been due to the soldiers’ having meddled with Nhambiquara women, in other cases the killing was entirely wanton and unpro- voked. Sooner or later these criminals or outlaws will have to be brought to justice; it will not do to let their crimes go unpunished. Twice soldiers have deserted and fled to the Nhambiquaras. The runaways were well re- ceived, were given wives, and adopted into the tribe. The country when opened will be a healthy abode for white settlers. But pioneering in the wilderness is grim work for both man and beast. Continually, as we jour- neyed onward, under the pitiless glare of the sun or through blinding torrents of rain, we passed desolate little graves by the roadside. They marked the last resting-places of men who had died by fever, or dysentery, or Nhambi- quara arrows. We raised our hats as our mules plodded slowly by through the sand. On each grave was a frail wooden cross, and this and the paling round about were already stained by the weather as gray as the tree-trunks of the stunted forest that stretched endlessly on every side. The skeletons of mules and oxen were frequent along the road. Now and then we came across a mule or ox which had been abandoned by Captain Amilcar’s party, ahead of us. The animal had been left with the hope that when night came it would follow along the trail to water. Sometimes it did so. Sometimes we found it dead, or standing motionless waiting for death. From time to time we had to leave behind one of our own mules. 226 THROUGH THE BRAZILIAN WILDERNESS It was not always easy to recognize what pasturage the mules would accept as good. One afternoon we pitched camp by a tiny rivulet, in the midst of the scrubby upland forest; a camp, by the way, where the piums, the small, biting flies, were a torment during the hours of daylight, while after dark their places were more than taken by the diminutive gnats which the Brazilians expressively term “polvora,” or powder, and which get through the smallest meshes of a mosquito-net. The feed was so scanty, and the cover so dense, at this spot that I thought we would have great difficulty in gathering the mules next morning. But we did not. A few hours later, in the afternoon, we camped by a beautiful open meadow; on one side ran a rapid brook, with a waterfall eight feet high, under which we bathed and swam. Here the feed looked so good that we all expressed pleasure. But the mules did not like it, and after nightfall they hiked back on the trail, and it was a long and arduous work to gather them next morning. I have touched above on the insect pests. Men un- used to the South American wilderness speak with awe of the danger therein from jaguars, crocodiles, and poison- ous snakes. In reality, the danger from these sources is trivial, much less than the danger of being run down by an automobile at home. But at times the torment of in- sect plagues can hardly be exaggerated. There are many different species of mosquitoes, some of them bearers of disease. There are many different kinds of small, biting flies and gnats, loosely grouped together under various titles. The ones more especially called piums by my com- panions were somewhat like our northern black flies. They ACROSS NHAMBIQUARA LAND 227 gorged themselves with blood. At the moment their bites did not hurt, but they left an itching scar. Head-nets and gloves are a protection, but are not very comfortable in stifling hot weather. It is impossible to sleep without mosquito-biers. When settlers of the right type come into a new land they speedily learn to take the measures neces- sary to minimize the annoyance caused by all these pests. Those that are winged have plenty of kinsfolk in so much of the northern continent as has not yet been subdued by man. But the most noxious of the South American ants have, thank Heaven, no representatives in North America. At the camp of the piums a column of the car- nivorous foraging ants made its appearance before night- fall, and for a time we feared it might put us out of our tents, for it went straight through camp, between the kitchen-tent and our own sleeping-tents. However, the column turned neither to the right nor the left, streaming uninterruptedly past for several hours, and doing no dam- age except to the legs of any incautious man who walked near it. On the afternoon of February 15 we reached Campos Novos. This place was utterly unlike the country we had been traversing. It was a large basin, several miles across, traversed by several brooks. The brooks ran in deep, swampy valleys, occupied by a matted growth of tall trop- ical forest. Between them the ground rose in bold hills, bare of forest and covered with grass, on which our jaded animals fed eagerly. On one of these rounded hills a num- ber of buildings were ranged in a quadrangle, for the pas- turage at this spot is so good that it is permanently occu- pied. There were milch cows, and we got delicious fresh 228 THROUGH THE BRAZILIAN WILDERNESS milk; and there were goats, pigs, turkeys, and chickens. Most of the buildings were made of upright poles, with _ roofs of palm thatch. One or two were of native brick, plastered with mud, and before these there was an enclo- sure with a few ragged palms, and some pineapple plants. Here we halted. Our attendants made two kitchens: one was out in the open air, one was under a shelter of ox-hide. The view over the surrounding grassy hills, riven by deep wooded valleys, was lovely. The air was cool and fresh. We were not bothered by insects, although mosquitoes swarmed in every belt of timber. Yet there has been much fever at this beautiful and seemingly healthy place. Doubtless when settlement is sufficiently advanced a rem- edy will be developed. The geology of this neighborhood was interesting—Oliveira found fossil tree-trunks which he believed to be of cretaceous age. Here we found Amilcar and Mello, who had waited for us with the rear-guard of their pack-train, and we enjoyed our meeting with the two fine fellows, than whom no military service of any nation could produce more efficient men for this kind of difficult and responsible work. Next morn- ing they mustered their soldiers, muleteers, and pack-ox men, and marched off. Reinisch the taxidermist was with them. We followed in the late afternoon, camping after a few miles. We left the ox-cart at Campos Novos; from thence on the trail was only for pack-animals. In this neighborhood the two naturalists found many birds which we had not hitherto met. The most conspic- uous was a huge oriole, the size of a small crow, with a naked face, a black-and-red bill, and gaudily variegated plumage of green, yellow, and chestnut. Very interesting ACROSS NHAMBIQUARA LAND 229 was the false bell-bird, a gray bird with loud, metallic notes. There was also a tiny soft-tailed woodpecker, no larger than a kinglet; a queer humming-bird with a slightly flexible bill; and many species of ant-thrush, tanager, man- akin, and tody. Among these unfamiliar forms was a vireo looking much like our solitary vireo. At one camp Cherrie collected a dozen perching birds; Miller a beauti- ful little rail; and Kermit, with the small Liiger belt-rifle, a handsome curassow, nearly as big as a turkey—out of which, after it had been skinned, the cook made a deli- cious canja, the thick Brazilian soup of fowl and rice than which there is nothing better of its kind. All these birds were new to the collection—no naturalists had previously worked this region—so that the afternoon’s work repre- sented nine species new to the collection, six new genera, and a most excellent soup. Two days after leaving Campos Novos we reached Vi- Ihena, where there is a telegraph station. We camped once at a small river named by Colonel Rondon the “Twelfth of October,’ because he reached it on the day Columbus discovered America—I had never before known what day it was !—and once at the foot of a hill which he had named after Lyra, his companion in the exploration. The two days’ march—really one full day and part of two others —was through beautiful country, and we enjoyed it thor- oughly, although there were occasional driving rain-storms, when the rain came in almost level sheets and drenched every one and everything. The country was like that around Campos Novos, and offered a striking contrast to the level, barren, sandy wastes of the chapadao, which is a healthy region, where great industrial centres can arise, 230 THROUGH THE BRAZILIAN WILDERNESS but not suited for extensive agriculture as are the lowland flats. For these forty-eight hours the trail climbed into and out of steep valleys and broad basins and up and down hills. In the deep valleys were magnificent woods, in which giant rubber-trees towered, while the huge leaves of the low-growing pacova, or wild banana, were conspic- uous in the undergrowth. Great azure butterflies flitted through the open, sunny glades, and the bell-birds, sitting motionless, uttered their ringing calls from the dark still- ness of the columned groves. The hillsides were grassy pastures or else covered with low, open forest. A huge frog, brown above, with a light streak down each side, was found hiding under some sticks in a damp place in one of the improvised kitchens; and another frog, with disks on his toes, was caught on one of the tents. A coral-snake puzzled us. Some coral-snakes are harmless; others are poisonous, although not aggressive. The best authorities give an infallible recipe for distinguishing them by the pattern of the colors, but this particular specimen, although it corresponded exactly in color pattern with the description of the poisonous snakes, nevertheless had no poison-fangs that even after the most minute examination we could discover. Miller and one of the dogs caught a sariema, a big, long-legged, bustard-like bird, in rather a curious way. We were on the march, plodding along through as heavy a tropic downpour as it was our ill for- tune to encounter. The sariema, evidently as drenched and uncomfortable as we were, was hiding under a bush to avoid the pelting rain. The dog discovered it, and after the bird valiantly repelled him, Miller was able to seize it. Its stomach contained about half a pint of grass- ACROSS NHAMBIQUARA LAND 231 hoppers and beetles and young leaves. At Vilhena there was a tame sariema, much more familiar and at home than any of the poultry. It was without the least fear of man or dog. The sariema (like the screamer and the curassow) ought to be introduced into our barnyards and on our lawns, at any rate in the Southern States; it is a good- looking, friendly, and attractive bird. Another bird we met is in some places far more intimate, and domesticates itself. This is the pretty little honey-creeper. In Colombia Miller found the honey-creepers habitually coming inside the houses and hotels at meal-times, hopping about the table, and climbing into the sugar-bowl. Along this part of our march there was much of what at a hasty glance seemed to be volcanic rock; but Oliveira showed me that it was a kind of conglomerate, with bub- bles or hollows in it, made of sand and iron-bearing earth. He said it was a superficial quaternary deposit, formed by erosion from the cretaceous rocks, and that there were here no tertiary deposits. He described the geological structure of the lands through which we had passed as follows: The pantanals were of pleistocene age. Along the upper Sepotuba, in the region of the rapids, there were sandstones, shales, and clays of permian age. The rolling country east of this contained eruptive rocks—a porphy- ritic diabase, with zeolite, quartz, and agate of triassic age. With the chapaddo of the Parecis plateau we came to a land of sand and clay, dotted with lumps of sand- stone and pieces of petrified wood; this, according to Oli- veira, is of mesozoic age, possibly cretaceous and similar to the South African formation. There are geologists who consider it as of permian age. 232 THROUGH THE BRAZILIAN WILDERNESS At Vilhena we were on a watershed which drained into the Gy-Parana, which itself runs into the Madeira nearly midway between its sources and its mouth. A little far- ther along and northward we again came to streams run- ning ultimately into the Tapajos; and between them, and close to them, were streamlets which drained into the Davida and Ananas, whose courses and outlets were un- known. This point is part of the divide between the basins of the Madeira and Tapajos. A singular topographical feature of the Plan Alto, the great interior sandy plateau of Brazil, is that at its westernmost end the southward- flowing streams, instead of running into the Paraguay as they do farther east, form the headwaters of the Guaporé, which may, perhaps, be called the upper main stream of the Madeira. These westernmost streams from the south- ern edge of the plateau, therefore, begin by flowing south; then for a long stretch they flow southwest; then north, and finally northeast into the Amazon. According to some exceptionally good geological observers, this is probably due to the fact that in a remote geologic past the ocean sent in an arm from the south, between the Plan Alto and what is now the Andean chain. These rivers then emp- tied into the Andean Sea. The gradual upheaval of the soil has resulted in substituting dry land for this arm of the ocean and in reversing the course of what is now the Madeira, just as, according to these geologists, in some- what familiar fashion the Amazon has been reversed, it having once been, at least for the upper two thirds of its course, an affluent of the Andean Sea. From Vilhena we travelled in a generally northward direction. For a few leagues we went across the chapadao, ACROSS NHAMBIQUARA LAND 233 the sands or clays of the nearly level upland plateau, grassy or covered with thin, stunted forest, the same type of country that had been predominant ever since we ascended the Parecis table-land on the morning of the third day after leaving the Sepotuba. Then, at about the point where the trail dipped into a basin containing the headsprings of the Ananas, we left this type of country and began to march through thick forest, not very high. There was little feed for the animals on the chapadao. There was less in the forest. Moreover, the continual heavy rains made the travelling difficult and laborious for them, and they weakened. However, a couple of marches before we reached Tres Burity, where there is a big ranch with hun- dreds of cattle, we were met by ten fresh pack-oxen, and our serious difficulties were over. There were piums in plenty by day, but neither mos- quitoes nor sand-flies by night; and for us the trip was very pleasant, save for moments of anxiety about the mules. The loose bullocks furnished us abundance of fresh beef, although, as was inevitable under the circumstances, of a decidedly tough quality. One of the biggest of the bul- locks was attacked one night by a vampire bat, and next morning his withers were literally bathed in blood. With the chapadao we said good-by to the curious, gregarious, and crepuscular or nocturnal spiders which we found so abundant along the line of the telegraph-wire. They have offered one of the small problems with which the Commission has had to deal. They are not common in the dry season. They swarm during the rains; and, when their tough webs are wet, those that lead from the wire to the ground sometimes effectually short-circuit the wire. 234 THROUGH THE BRAZILIAN WILDERNESS They have on various occasions caused a good deal of trouble in this manner. The third night out from Vilhena we emerged for a moment from the endless close-growing forest in which our poor animals got such scanty pickings, and came to a beau- tiful open country, where grassy slopes, dotted with occa- sional trees, came down on either side of a little brook which was one of the headwaters of the Davida. It was a pleasure to see the mules greedily bury their muzzles in the pasturage. Our tents were pitched in the open, near a shady tree, which sent out its low branches on every side. At this camp Cherrie shot a lark, very characteristic of the open upland country, and Miller found two bats in the rotten wood of a dead log. He heard them squeaking and dug them out; he could not tell by what method they had gotten in. Here Kermit, while a couple of miles from our tents, came across an encampment of Nhambiquaras. There were twenty or thirty of them—men, women, and a few children. Kermit, after the manner of honest folk in the wilderness, advanced ostentatiously in the open, calling out to give warning of his coming. Like surroundings may cause like manners. The early Saxons in England deemed it legal to kill any man who came through the woods with- out shouting or blowing a horn; and in Nhambiquara land at the present time it is against etiquette, and may be very unhealthy, to come through the woods toward stran- gers without loudly announcing one’s presence. The Nham- biquaras received Kermit with the utmost cordiality, and gave him pineapple-wine to drink. They were stark naked as usual; they had no hammocks or blankets, and their ACROSS NHAMBIQUARA LAND 235 huts were flimsy shelters of palm-branches. Yet they were in fine condition. Half a dozen of the men and a couple of boys accompanied Kermit back to our camp, paying no slightest heed to the rain which was falling. They were bold and friendly, good-natured—at least superficially— and very inquisitive. In feasting, the long reeds thrust through holes in their lips did not seem to bother them, and they laughed at the suggestion of removing them; evidently to have done so would have been rather bad manners—like using a knife as an aid in eating ice-cream. They held two or three dances, and we were again struck by the rhythm and weird, haunting melody of their chant- ing. After supper they danced beside the camp-fire; and finally, to their delight, most of the members of our own party, Americans and Brazilians, enthusiastically joined the dance, while the colonel and I furnished an apprecia- tive and applauding audience. Next morning, when we were awakened by the chattering and screaming of the numerous macaws, parrots, and parakeets, we found that nearly all the Indians, men and women, were gathered outside the tent. As far as clothing was concerned, they were in the condition of Adam and Eve before the fall. One of the women carried a little squirrel monkey. She put it up the big tree some distance from the tents; and when she called, it came scampering to her across the grass, ran up her, and clung to her neck. They would have liked to pilfer; but as they had no clothes it was difficult for them to conceal anything. One of the women was observed to take a fork; but as she did not possess a rag of clothing of any kind all she could do was to try to bury the fork in the sand and then sit on it; and it was 236 THROUGH THE BRAZILIAN WILDERNESS reclaimed without difficulty. One or two of the children wore necklaces and bracelets made of the polished wood of the tucum palm, and of the molars of small rodents. Next day’s march led us across a hilly country of good pastureland. The valleys were densely wooded, palms of several kinds being conspicuous among the other trees; and the brooks at the bottoms we crossed at fords or by the usual rude pole bridges. On the open pastures were occasional trees, usually slender bacaba palms, with heads which the winds had dishevelled until they looked like mops. It was evidently a fine natural cattle country, and we soon began to see scores, perhaps hundreds, of the cattle belonging to the government ranch at Tres Burity, which we reached in the early afternoon. It is beautifully situated: the view roundabout is lovely, and certainly the land will prove healthy when settlements have been defi- nitely established. Here we revelled in abundance of good fresh milk and eggs; and for dinner we had chicken canja and fat beef roasted on big wooden spits; and we even had watermelons. The latter were from seeds brought down by the American engineers who built the Madeira- Marmoré Railroad—a work which stands honorably dis- tinguished among the many great and useful works done in the development of the tropics of recent years. Amilcar’s pack-oxen, which were nearly worn out, had been left in these fertile pastures. Most of the fresh oxen which he took in their places were unbroken, and there was a perfect circus before they were packed and marched off; in every direction, said the gleeful narrators, there were bucking oxen and loads strewed on the ground. This cattle-ranch is managed by the colonel’s uncle, his mother’s -\ Nhambiquara family From a photograph by Kermit Rooseve!t Nhambiquara women and children “Adam and Eve” From photographs by Cherrie ACROSS NHAMBIQUARA LAND 237 brother, a hale old man of seventy, white-haired but as active and vigorous as ever; with a fine, kindly, intelligent face. His name is Miguel Evangalista. He is a native of Matto Grosso, of practically pure Indian blood, and was dressed in the ordinary costume of the caboclo—hat, shirt, trousers, and no shoes or stockings. Within the last year he had killed three jaguars, which had been living on the mules; as long as they could get mules they did not at this station molest the cattle. It was with this uncle’s father, Colonel Rondon’s own grandfather, that Colonel Rondon as an orphan spent the first seven years of his life. His father died before he was born, and his mother when he was only a year old. He lived on his grandfather’s cattle-ranch, some fifty miles from Cuyaba. Then he went to live in Cuyaba with a kinsman on his father’s side, from whom he took the name of Rondon; his own father’s name was Da Silva. He studied in the Cuyaba Government School, and at sixteen was inscribed as one of the instructors. Then he went to Rio, served for a year in the army as an enlisted man in the ranks, and succeeded finally in getting into the mili- tary school. After five years as pupil he served three years as professor of mathematics in this school; and then, as a lieutenant of engineers in the Brazilian army, he came back to his home in Matto Grosso and began his life-work of exploring the wilderness. Next day we journeyed to the telegraph station at Bonofacio, through alternate spells of glaring sunshine and heavy rain. On the way we stopped at an aldea—village —of Nhambiquaras. We first met a couple of men going to hunt, with bows and arrows longer than themselves. 238 THROUGH THE BRAZILIAN WILDERNESS A rather comely young woman, carrying on her back a wickerwork basket, or creel, supported by a forehead band, and accompanied by a small child, was with them. At the village there were a number of men, women, and chil- dren. Although as completely naked as the others we had met, the members of this band were more ornamented with beads, and wore earrings made from the inside of mussel-shells or very big snail-shells. They were more hairy than the ones we had so far met. The women, but not the men, completely remove the hair from their bodies —and look more, instead of less, indecent in consequence. The chief, whose body was painted red with the juice of a fruit, had what could fairly be styled a mustache and im- perial; and one old man looked somewhat like a hairy Ainu, or perhaps even more like an Australian black fel- low. My companion told me that this probably repre- sented an infusion of negro blood, and possibly of mulatto blood, from runaway slaves of the old days, when some of the Matto Grosso mines were worked by slave labor. They also thought it possible that this infiltration of Afri- can negroes might be responsible for the curious shape of the bigger huts, which were utterly unlike their flimsy, ordinary shelters, and bore no resemblance in shape to those of the other Indian tribes of this region; whereas they were not unlike the ordinary beehive huts of the agricultural African negroes. There were in this village several huts or shelters open at the sides, and two of the big huts. These were of closely woven thatch, circular in outline, with a rounded dome, and two doors a couple of feet high opposite each other, and no other opening. There were fifteen or twenty people to each hut. Inside were ACROSS NHAMBIQUARA LAND 239 their implements and utensils, such as wicker baskets (some of them filled with pineapples), gourds, fire-sticks, wooden knives, wooden mortars, and a board for grating mandioc, made of a thick slab of wood inset with sharp points of a harder wood. From the Brazilians one or two of them had obtained blankets, and one a hammock; and they had also obtained knives, which they sorely needed, for they are not even in the stone age. One woman shielded herself from the rain by holding a green palm-branch down her back. Another had on her head what we at first thought to be a monkey-skin head-dress. But it was a little, live, black monkey. It stayed habitually with its head above her forehead, and its arms and legs spread so that it lay moulded to the shape of her head; but both woman and monkey showed some reluctance about having their photo- graphs taken. Bonofacio consisted of several thatched one-room cabins, connected by a stockade which was extended to form an enclosure behind them. A number of tame parrots and parakeets, of several different species, scrambled over the roofs and entered the houses. In the open pastures near by were the curious, extensive burrows of a gopher rat, which ate the roots of grass, not emerging to eat the grass but pulling it into the burrows by the roots. These bur- rows bore a close likeness to those of our pocket gophers. Miller found the animals difficult to trap. Finally, by the aid of Colonel Rondon, several Indians, and two or three of our men, he dug one out. From the central shaft sev- eral surface galleries radiated, running for many rods about a foot below the surface, with, at intervals of half a dozen yards, mounds where the loose earth had been expelled. 240 THROUGH THE BRAZILIAN WILDERNESS The central shaft ran straight down for about eight feet, and then laterally for about fifteen feet, to a kind of cham- ber. The animal dug hard to escape, but when taken and put on the surface of the ground it moved slowly and awk- wardly. It showed vicious courage. In looks it closely resembled our pocket gophers, but it had no pockets. This was one of the most interesting small mammals that we secured. After breakfast at Bonafacio a number of Nhambiquaras —men, women, and children—strolled in. The men gave us an exhibition of not very good archery; when the bow was bent, it was at first held so that the arrow pointed straight upwards and was then lowered so that the arrow was aimed at the target. Several of the women had been taken from other tribes, after their husbands or fathers had been killed; for the Nhambiquaras are light-hearted robbers and murderers. Two or three miserable dogs ac- companied them, half-starved and mangy, but each deco- rated with a collar of beads. The headmen had three or four wives apiece, and the women were the burden-bearers, but apparently were not badly treated. Most of them were dirty, although well-fed looking, and their features were of a low type; but some, especially among the children, were quite attractive. . From Bonafacio we went about seven miles, across a rolling prairie dotted with trees and clumps of scrub. There, on February 24, we joined Amilcar, who was camped by a brook which flowed into the Davida. We were only some six miles from our place of embarkation on the Davida, and we divided our party and our belongings. Amilcar, Miller, Mello, and Oliveira were to march three qecesooy nusey