Part 4

Perhaps our greatest friend was one Luis, a slave, born in Angola, brought over quite “Bozal” (or muzzled, as the Brazilians say of negroes who can speak no Portuguese), then by degrees became “ladino,” was baptized, bought by our host Xavier, and had remained with him all the remainder of his life. Black, and not comely in the least, bowlegged from constant riding, nose flat, and ears like flappers, a row of teeth almost as strong as a young shark’s, flat feet, and crisp Angola wool which grew so thickly on his head that had you thrown a pin on it, it could not have reached the skin, he yet was honest and faithful to the verge of folly; but then, if heaven there be, it can be but inhabited by fools, for wise men, prudent folk, and those who thrive, have their reward like singers, quickly, and can look for nothing more. He spoke about himself half-pityingly under the style of “Luis o Captivo,” was pious, fervent in sacred song, instant in prayer (especially if work was to be done), not idle either, superstitious and affectionate with all the virtues of the most excellent Saint Bernard or Newfoundland dog, and with but little of the imperfections of a man except the power of speech. Often he had been with his master into Uruguay to purchase cattle, or to buy mules for the Brazilian market, and when I asked him if he did not know that he was free the instant that he stepped in Uruguay, said: “Yes, but here I was brought up when I first came from Africa; they have been kind to me, it is to me as the querencia {46} is to a horse, and were it not for that, small fear I should return, to remain here ‘feito captivo’; but then I love the place, and, as you know, ‘the mangy calf lived all the winter, and then died in the spring.’” He held the Christian faith in its entirety, doubting no dogma, being pleased with every saint, but yet still hankered after fetish, which he remembered as a child, and seemed to think not incompatible with Christianity, as rendering it more animistic and familiar, smoothing away its angularities, blotting whatever share of reason it may have away, and, above all, giving more scope, if possible, to faith, and thereby opening a larger field of possibilities to the believer’s mind.

So Luis with others of his kind, as Jango, Jico, and Manduco, became our friends, looking upon us with that respect mixed with contempt which is the attitude of those who see that you possess the mysterious arts of reading and of writing, but cannot see a horse’s footprint on hard ground; or if you lose yourself, have to avail yourself of what Luis referred to as “the one-handed watch the sailors use, which points the way to go.”

Much did Xavier talk of the Indians of the woods, the “Bugres,” as the Brazilians call them; about the “Botocudos,” who wear a plug stuck in their lower lip, and shape their ears with heavy weights in youth, so that they hang upon their shoulders; and much about those “Infidel” who through a blowpipe direct a little arrow at the travelling “Christians” in the woods, whose smallest touch is death. It then appeared his father (fica agora na gloria) was a patriot, that is, ’twas he who extirpated the last of all the “Infidel” from the forests where they lived. Most graphically did he tell how the last Indians were hunted down with dogs, and in a pantomime he showed how they jumped up and fell when they received the shot, and putting out his tongue and writhing hideously, he imitated how they wriggled on the ground, explaining that they were worse to kill than is a tapir, and put his father and the other patriots to much unnecessary pain. And as he talked, the woods, the fields, the river and the plain bathed in the sun, which unlike that of Africa does not seem weary of its task, but shines unwearied, looking as it does on a new world and life, shimmered and blazed, great lizards drank its rays flattening themselves upon the stones in ecstasy, humming-birds quivered at the heart of every flower; above the stream the dragon-flies hung poised; only some “Infidel” whom the patriots had destroyed seemed wanting, and the landscape looked incomplete without a knot of them in their high feather crowns stealthily stealing round a corner of the woods.

In the uncomprehended future, incomprehensible and strange, and harder far to guess at than the remotest semi-comprehended past, surely the Spanish travellers and their writings will have a value quite apart from that of any other books. For then the world will hold no “Bugres”; not a “Botocudo” will be left, and those few Indian and Negro tribes who yet persist will be but mere travesties of the whites: their customs lost, their lore, such as it was, despised; and we have proved ourselves wiser than the Creator, who wasted so much time creating beings whom we judged unfit to live, and then, in mercy to ourselves and Him, destroyed, so that no evidence of His miscalculated plan should last to shame Him when He thought of His mistake. So to this end (unknowingly) the missionary works, and all the Jesuits, those who from Paraguay through the Chiquitos, and across the Uruguay, in the dark Moxos, and in the forests of the Andes, gave their lives to bring as they thought life everlasting to the Indians—all were fools. Better by far instead of Bibles, lives of saints, water of baptism, crucifixes, and all the tackle of their trade, that they had brought swords, lances, and a good cross-bow each, and gone to work in the true scientific way, and recognized that the right way with savages is to preach heaven to them and then despatch them to it, for it is barbarous to keep them standing waiting as it were, just at the portals of eternal bliss.

And as we lingered at Cruz Alta, Christmas drew near, and all the people began to make “pesebres,” with ox and ass, the three wise men, the star of Bethlehem, the Redeemer (not of the Botocudos and the Bugres) swaddled and laid in straw. Herdsmen and negroes dismounted at the door, fastened their half-wild mules or horses carefully to posts, removed their hats, drawing them down over their faces furtively, and then walked in on tiptoe, their heavy iron spurs clanking upon the ground, to see the Wondrous Child. They lounged about the room, speaking in whispers as he might awake, and then departed silently, murmuring that it was “fermosisimo,” and getting on their horses noiselessly were gone, and in a minute disappeared upon the plain. Then came the Novena with prayer and carols, the prayers read by Xavier himself out of a tattered book, all the assembled family joining with unction in the responses, and beating on their breasts. Luis and all the slaves joined in the carols lustily, especially in one sung in a minor key long-drawn-out as a sailor’s shanty, or a forebitter sung in a calm whilst waiting for a breeze. After each verse there was a kind of chorus calling upon the sinner to repent, bidding him have no fear but still hold on, and thus exhorting him—

“Chegai, Chegai, pecador, áo pe da cruz Fica nosso Senhor.”

Christmas Day found us all at mass in the little church, horses and mules being tied outside the door to the trees in the plaza, and some left hobbled, and all waiting as if St. Hubert was about to issue forth and bless them.

Painfully and long, the preacher dwelt upon the glorious day, the country people listening as it were new to them, and as if all the events had happened on the plain hard by. In the evening rockets announced the joyful news, and the stars shone out over the woods and plains as on the evening when the bright particular star guided the three sheikhs to some such place as was the rancho of our host.

Christmas rejoicings over, a month sped past and found us still, so to speak, wind-bound in the little town. No one would buy our horses, some of which died bitten by snakes. It was impossible to think of going on, and to return equally difficult, so that there seemed a probability of being obliged to pass a lifetime in the place. People began to look at us half in a kindly, half contemptuous way, as people look in general upon those who fail, especially when they themselves have never tried to do anything at all but live, and having done it with considerable success look upon failure as a sort of minor crime, to be atoned for by humility, and to be reprobated after the fashion of adultery, with a half-deprecating laugh. Sometimes we borrowed ancient flint-lock guns and lay in wait for tapirs, but never saw them, as in the thick woods they move as silently as moles in sand, and leave as little trace. Luis told of how, mounted on a half-wild horse, he had long ago lassoed a tapir, and found himself and horse dragged slowly and invincibly towards a stream, the horse resisting terrified, the “gran besta” {51} apparently quite cool, so that at last he had to cut his lasso and escape from what he called the greatest peril of his life; he thought he was preserved partly by the interposition of the saints and partly by a “fetiço” which, in defiance of religion, he luckily had hanging round his neck.

Just when all hope was gone, and we thought seriously of leaving the horses to their fate, and pushing on with some of the best of them towards Rio, a man appeared upon the scene, and offered to buy them, half for money and half “a troco,” that is barter, for it appeared he was a pawnbroker and had a house full of silver horse-gear, which had never been redeemed. After much bargaining we closed for three hundred dollars and a lot of silver bridles, spurs, whips, and other stuff, after reserving four of the best horses for ourselves to make our journey back. At the head of so much capital our spirits rose, and we determined to push on to Paraguay, crossing the Uruguay and Parana, ride through the Misiones, and at Asuncion, where I had friends, take ship; _aguas abajo_, for the River Plate. We paid our debts and bid good-bye to Xavier, his wife and sallow daughters, and to all the slaves; gave Luis a silver-mounted whip, bought some provisions, put on our silver spurs, bridles, and as much as possible of the silver gear we had become possessed of, and at daybreak, mounted upon a cream-and-white piebald, the “Bayo Overo,” and a red bay known as the “Pateador,” leading a horse apiece, we passed out of Xavier’s “potrero,” {52} and started on the road.

During the last few days at Xavier’s we had taught the horses we intended to take to Paraguay to eat Indian corn, fastening them up without any other food all day, and putting salt into their mouths. The art once learnt, we had to stand beside them whilst they ate, to keep off chickens and pigs who drove them from their food, the horses being too stupid to help themselves. If I remember rightly, their ration was eight cobs, which we husked for them in our hands, blistering our fingers in the process as they had been burned. But now the trouble of the process was repaid, the horses going strongly all day long. We passed out of the little plain, skirted a pine-wood, rode up a little hill, and saw the country stretching towards the Uruguay, a park-like prairie interspersed with trees. Cruz Alta, a white patch shining against the green-grey plain encircled with its woods, was just in sight, the church-tower standing like a needle in the clear air against the sky. Half a league more and it dropped out of view, closing the door upon a sort of half Bœotian Arcady, but remaining still a memory after twenty years, with all the little incidents of the three months’ sojourn in the place fresh, and yet seeming as they had happened not to myself, but to a person I had met, and who had told the tale.

By easy stages we journeyed on, descending gradually towards the Uruguay, passing through country almost unpopulated, so large were the “fazendas,” and so little stocked. In the last century the Jesuits had here collected many tribes of Indians, and their history, is it not told in the pages of Montoya Lozano, Padre Guevara, and the other chroniclers of the doings of the “Company,” and to be read in the Archivo de Simancas, in that of Seville, and the uncatalogued “legajos” of the national library at Madrid? Throughout the country that we passed through, the fierce Paulistas had raided in times gone by, carrying off the Christian Indians to be slaves. The Portuguese and Spaniards had often fought—witness the names “O matto {54a} Portogues, O matto Castelhano,” and the like, showing where armies had manoeuvred, whilst the poor Indians waited like sheep, rejoicing when the butchers turned the knife at one another’s throats. To-day all trace of Jesuits and Missions have long disappeared, save for a ruined church or two, and here and there a grassy mound called in the language of the country a “tapera,” {54b} showing where a settlement had stood.

We camped at lonely ranchos inhabited, in general, by free negroes, or by the side of woods, choosing, if possible, some little cove in the wood, in which we tied the horses, building a fire in the mouth, laid down and slept, after concocting a vile beverage bought in Cruz Alta under the name of tea, but made I think of birch-leaves, and moistening pieces of the hard jerked beef in orange-juice to make it palatable.

So after five or six days of steady travelling, meeting, if I remember rightly, not a living soul upon the way, except a Gaucho from the Banda Oriental, who one night came to our fire, and seeing the horrible brew of tea in a tin-pot asked for a little of the “black water,” not knowing what it was, we reached the Uruguay. The river, nearly half-a-mile in breadth, flowed sluggishly between primeval woods, great alligators basked with their backs awash, flamingoes fished among the shallow pools, herons and cranes sat on dead stumps, vultures innumerable perched on trees, and in the purple bunches of the “seibos” humming-birds seemed to nestle, so rapid was their flight, and over all a darkish vapour hung, blending the trees and water into one, and making the “balsa,” as it laboured over after repeated calls, look like the barque of Styx. Upon the other side lay Corrientes, once a vast mission territory, but to-day, in the narrow upper portion that we traversed, almost a desert, that is a desert of tall grass with islands of timber dotted here and there, and an occasional band of ostriches scudding across the plain.

Camped by a wood about a quarter of a league from a lonely rancho, we were astonished, just at even-fall, by the arrival of the owner of the house mounted upon a half-wild horse, a spear in his hand, escorted by his two ragged sons mounted on half-wild ponies, and holding in their hands long canes to which a broken sheep-shear had been fixed. The object of his visit, as he said, was to inquire if we had seen a tiger which had killed some sheep, but his suspicious glance made me think he thought we had designs upon his cattle, and he had come to reconnoitre us; but our offer of some of the Cruz Alta tea soon made us friends, and after drinking almost a quart of it, he said “Muy rico,” and rode back to his house.

The third day’s riding brought us to the little town of Candelaria, built on a high bank over the Parana. Founded on Candlemas Day in 1665, it was the chief town of the Jesuit missions. Here, usually, the “Provincial” {56a} resided, and here the political business of their enormous territory was done. Stretching almost from Cruz Alta to within fifty leagues of Asuncion del Paraguay, and from Yapeyú upon the Uruguay almost to the “Salto de Guayra” upon the Parana, the territory embraced an area larger than many a kingdom, and was administered without an army, solely by about two hundred priests. The best proof of the success of their administration is that in these days the Indians, now to be numbered by a few thousand, were estimated at about two hundred thousand, and peopled all the country now left desolate, or which at least was desolate at the time of which I write. Even Azara, {56b} a bitter opponent of their system, writes of the Jesuit rule—“Although the Fathers had supreme command, they used their power with a gentleness and moderation which one cannot but admire.” {56c}

I leave to the economists, with all the reverend rabble rout of politicians, statistic-mongers and philanthropists, whether or not two hundred thousand living Indians were an asset in the world’s property; and to the pious I put this question, If, as I suppose, these men had souls just as immortal as our own, might it not have been better to preserve their bodies, those earthly envelopes without which no soul can live, rather than by exposing them to all those influences which the Jesuits dreaded, to kill them off, and leave their country without population for a hundred years?

But at the time of which I write neither my partner nor I cared much for speculations of that kind, but were more occupied with the condition of our horses, for, by that time, the “Bayo Overo” and the “Pateador” were become part and parcel of ourselves, and we thought more about their welfare than that of all the Indians upon earth.

La Candelaria, at the time when we passed through, was fallen from its proud estate, and had become a little Gaucho country town with sandy streets and horses tied at every door—a barren sun-burnt plaza, with a few Japanese ash-trees and Paraisos; the “Commandancia” with the Argentine blue-and-white barred flag, and trade-mark rising sun, hanging down listlessly against the post, and for all remnants of the Jesuit sway, the college turned into a town-hall, and the fine church, which seemed to mourn over the godless, careless, semi-Gaucho population in the streets. Here we disposed of our spare horses, bidding them good-bye, as they had been old friends, and got the “Bayo Overo” and the “Pateador” shod for the first time in their lives, an operation which took the united strength of half-a-dozen men to achieve, but was imperative, as their feet, accustomed to the stone-less plains of Paraguay, had suffered greatly in the mountain paths. In Candelaria, for the first time for many months, we sat down to a regular meal, in a building called “El Hotel Internacional”; drank wine of a suspicious kind, and seemed to have arrived in Paris, so great the change to the wild camps beside the forests, or the nights passed in the lone ranchos of the hilly district of Brazil.

A balsa drawn by a tug-boat took us across the Parana, here more than a mile broad, to Ytapua, and upon landing we found ourselves in quite another world. The little Paraguayan town of Ytapua, called by the Jesuits Encarnacion, lay, with its little port below it (where my friend Enrico Clerici had his store), upon a plateau hanging above the stream. The houses, built of canes and thatched with straw, differed extremely from the white “azotea” houses of the Candelaria on the other side. The people, dress, the vegetation, and the mode of life, differed still more in every aspect. The Paraguayan, with his shirt hanging outside his white duck trousers, bare feet, and cloak made of red cloth or baize, his broad straw hat and quiet manner, was the complete antithesis of the high-booted, loose-trousered, poncho-wearing Correntino, with his long knife and swaggering Gaucho air. The one a horseman of the plains, the other a footman of the forests; the Correntino brave even to rashness when taken man for man, but so incapable of discipline as to be practically useless as a soldier. The other as quiet as a sheep, and individually patient even to suffering blows, but once gathered together and instructed in the use of arms, as good a soldier, when well led, as it is possible to find; active and temperate, brave, and, if rather unintelligent, eager to risk his life at any time at the command of any of his chiefs. Such was the material from which Lopez, coward and grossly incompetent as he was, formed the battalions which for four years kept both Buenos Ayres and Brazil at bay, and only yielded when he himself was killed, mounted, as tradition has it, on the last horse of native breed left in the land.

But if the people and their dwellings were dissimilar, the countries in themselves were to the full at least as different. All through the upper part of Corrientes the soil is black, and the country open, park-like prairie dotted with trees; in Ytapua and the surrounding district, the earth bright red, and the primeval forest stretches close to the water’s edge. In Corrientes still the trees of the Pampas are occasionally seen, Talas and ñandubay with Coronillo and Lapacho; whereas in Paraguay, as by a bound, you pass to Curupay, {60a} Tatané, {60b} the Tarumá, {60c} the Ñandipá, {60d} the Jacaranda, and the Paratodo with its bright yellow flowers; whilst upon every tree lianas cling with orchidaceæ, known to the natives as “flowers of the air,” and through them all flit great butterflies, humming-birds dart, and underneath the damp vegetation of the sub-tropics, emphorbiaceæ, solanaceæ, myrtaceæ, and flowers and plants to drive a thousand botanists to madness, blossom and die unnamed. Here, too, the language changed, and Guarani became the dominant tongue, which, though spoken in Corrientes, is there used but occasionally, but among Paraguayans is their native speech, only the Alcaldes, officers, and upper classes as a general rule (at that time) speaking Spanish, and even then with a strange accent and much mixed with Guarani.

Two days we passed in Ytapua resting our horses, and I renewed my friendship with Enrico Clerici, an Italian, who had served with Garibaldi, and who, three years ago, I had met in the same place and given him a silver ring which he reported galvanized, and was accustomed to lend as a great favour for a specific against rheumatism. He kept a pulperia, and being a born fighter, his delight was, when a row occurred (which he styled “una barulla de Jesu Cristo”), to clear the place by flinging empty bottles from the bar. A handsome, gentlemanlike man, and terrible with a bottle in his hand, whether as weapon of offence or for the purposes of drink; withal well educated, and no doubt by this time long dead, slain by his favourite weapon, and his place filled by some fat, double-entry Basque or grasping Catalan, or by some portly emigrant from Germany.

Not wishing to be confined within a house, a prey to the mosquitoes, we camped in the chief square, and strolling round about the town, I came on an old friend.