Among these strange people I commenced a school, and had the joy of teaching numbers of them to read the Spanish Bible. Boys and girls came long distances on horseback, and, although some of them had perhaps never seen a book before, I found them exceedingly quick to learn. In four or five months the older ones were able to read any ordinary chapter. In arithmetic they were inconceivably dull, and after three months' tuition some of them could not count ten.

I have said the saints are greatly honored among these people. My Christmas cards generally found their way to adorn their altars. Every house has its favorite, and some of these are regarded as especially clever in curing sickness. It being a very unhealthful, low-lying district where my school was, I contracted malarial fever, and went to bed very sick. Every day some of the children would come to enquire after me, but Celestino, one of the larger boys, came one morning with a very special message from his mother. This communication was to the effect that they did not wish the school- teacher to die, he being "rather a nice kind of a man and well liked." Because of this she would be pleased to let me have her favorite saint. This image I could stand at the head of my bed, and its very presence would cure me. When I refused this offer and smiled at its absurdity, the boy thought me very strange. To be so wise in some respects, and yet so ignorant as to refuse such a chance, was to him incomprehensible. The saints, I found, are there often lent out to friends that they may exercise their healing powers, or rented out to strangers at so much a day, When they are not thus on duty, but in a quiet corner of the hut, they get lonely. The woman will then go for a visit, taking her saint with her, either in her arms or tied to the saddle. This image she will place with the saint her host owns, and they will talk together and teach one another. A saint is supposed to know only its own particular work, although one named Santa Rita is said to be a worker of impossibilities. Some of them are only very rudely carved images, dressed in tawdry finery. I have sometimes thought that a Parisian doll of modern make, able to open and close its eyes, etc., would in their esteem be even competent to raise the dead! [Footnote: Writing of Spanish American Romanism, Everybody's Magazine says: "To the student of human nature, which means the study of evil as well as good, this religious body is of absorbing interest. One would look to find these enthusiasts righteous and virtuous in their daily life; but, apart from the annual week of penance, their religion influences them not at all, and on the whole the members of the Brotherhood constitute a desperate class, dangerous to society."]

In cases of sickness very simple remedies are used, and not a few utterly nonsensical. To cure pains in the stomach they tie around them the skin of the comadreka, a small, vile-smelling animal. This they told me was a sovereign remedy. If the sufferer be a babe, a cross made on its stomach is sufficient to perfectly cure it. I have seen seven pieces of the root of the white lily, which there grows wild, tied around the neck of an infant in order that its teeth might come with greater promptitude and less pain. A string of dog's teeth serves the same purpose. To cure a bad wound, the priest will be called in that he may write around the sore some Latin prayer backwards. Headache is easily cured by tying around the head the cast-off skin of a snake. Two puppies are killed and bound one on each side of a broken limb. If a charm is worn around the neck no poison can be harmful. For a sore throat it is sufficient to expectorate in the fire three times, making a cross. Lockjaw is effectually stopped by tying around the sufferer's jaws the strings from a virgin's skirt; and they say also that powdered excrement of a dog, taken in a glass of water, cures the smallpox patient,

As Mrs. Jesus sent her boy to my school, so Mrs. Flower sent her girl. The latter was perhaps the most deluded woman I have met. Her every act was bad in itself or characterized by superstitious devotion. She was one of the Church's favorite worshippers, and while I was in the neighborhood she sold her cows and horses and presented the priest at the nearest town with a large and expensive silver cross—the emblem of suffering purity. Near her lived a person for whom she had an especial aversion, but that enemy she got rid of in surely the strangest of ways, which she described to me. Catching a snake, and holding it so that its poison might not reach her, she passed a threaded needle through both its eyes. When this was done she let it go again, alive, and, carefully guarding the needle, approached the person from behind and made a cross with the thread. The undesired one disappeared, having probably heard of the enchantment, and being equally superstitious, or—the charm worked!

Mrs. Flower was a most repulsive-looking creature. Her skin was exactly the color of an old copper coin. She did not resemble any flower I have seen in either hemisphere. Far was she from being a rose, but she certainly possessed the thorn. Her love for the saints was most marked, and I have known her promise St. Roque that she would walk six miles carrying his image if he would only grant her a certain prayer. This petition he granted, and off she trudged with her divine (?) load. Those acquainted with dwellers on the prairie know that this was indeed a great task, horses being so cheap and riding so universal. Mrs. Flower was unaccustomed to walk even the shortest distance. I myself can bear witness to the fact that even strong men find it hard to walk a mile after spending years in equestrian travel. The native tells you that God formed your legs so that you might be able to sit on a horse rather than to walk with them. A favorite expression with them is, "I was born on horseback."

Stone not being found on the pampas, these people generally build their houses of square sods, with a roof of plaited grasses— sometimes I have observed these beautifully woven together. Two or more holes, according to the size of the house, are left to serve for door and window. Wood cannot be obtained, glass has not been introduced, so the holes are left as open spaces, across which, when the pampa wind blows, a hide is stretched. No hole is left in the roof for the smoke of the fire to escape, for this to the native is no inconvenience whatever. When I have been compelled to fly with racking cough and splitting head, he has calmly asked the reason. Never could I bear the blinding smoke that issues from his fire of sheep or cow dung burning on the earthen floor, though he heeds it not as, sitting on a bullock's skull, he ravenously eats his evening meal.

If entertaining a stranger, he will press uncut joint after joint of his asado upon him. This asado is meat roasted over the fire on a spit; if beef, with the skin and hair still attached. Meat cooked in this way is a real delicacy. A favorite dish with them (I held a different opinion) is a half-formed calf, taken before its proper time of birth. The meat is often dipped in the ashes in lieu of salt. I have said the Gaucho has no chair. I might add that neither has he a table, for with his fingers and knife he eats the meat off the fire. Forks he is without, and a horn or shell spoon conveys the soup to his mouth direct from the copper pan. So universal is the use of the shell for this service that the native does not speak of it as caracol, the real word for shell, but calls it cuchara del agua, or water spoon. Of knives he possesses more than enough, and heavy, long, sharp-pointed ones they are. When his hunger is appeased the knife goes, not to the kitchen, but to his belt, where, when not in his hand, you may always see it. With that weapon he kills a sheep, cuts off the head of a serpent—seemingly, however, not doing it much harm, for it still wriggles—sticks his horse when in anger, and, alas, as I have said, sometimes stabs his fellow-man. Being so far isolated from the coast, he is necessarily entirely uneducated. The forward march of the outer world concerns him not; indeed he imagines that his native prairie stretches away to the end of the world. He will gaze with wonder on your watch, for his only mode of ascertaining the time is by the shadow the sun casts. As that luminary rises and sets, so he sleeps and wakes. His only bed is the sheepskin, which when riding he fastens over his saddle, and the latter article forms his pillow. His coverlet is the firmament of heaven, the Southern Cross and other constellations, unseen by dwellers in the Northern Hemisphere, seeming to keep watch over him; or in the colder season his poncho, which I have already described. Around his couch flit the fireflies, resembling so many stars of earth with their strangely radiant lights. The brightness of one, when held near the face of my watch, made light enough to enable me to ascertain the hour, even on the darkest night.

The Gaucho with his horse is at home anywhere. When on a journey he will stop for the evening meal beside the dry bones of some dead animal. With these and grass he will make a fire and cook the meat he carries hanging behind him on the saddle. I have known an animal killed and the meat cooked with its own bones, but this is not usual. Dry bones burn better, and thistle-stalks better still. He will then lie down on mother earth with the horse-cloth under him and the saddle for a pillow. When travelling with these men I have known them, without any comment, stretch themselves on the ground, even though the rain was falling, and soon be in dreamland. After having passed a wretched night myself, I have asked them, "How did you sleep?" "Muy Bien, Senor" (Very good, sir), has been the invariable answer. They would often growl much, however, over the wet saddle- cloths, for these soon cause a horse's back to become sore.

Here and there, but sometimes at long distances apart, there is a pulperia on the road. This is always designated by having a white flag flying on the end of a long bamboo. At these places cheap spirits of wine and very bad rum can be bought, along with tobacco, hard ship-biscuits (very often full of maggots, as I know only too well), and a few other more necessary things. I have observed in some of these wayside inns counters made of turf, built in blocks as bricks would be. Here the natives stop to drink long and deep, and stew their meagre brains in bad spirits. These draughts result in quarrels and sometimes in murder.

The Gaucho, like the Indian, cannot drink liquor without becoming maddened by it. He will then do things which in his sober moments he would not dream of. I was acquainted with a man who owned a horse of which he was very fond This animal bore him one evening to a pulperia some miles distant, and was left tied outside while he imbibed his fill inside. Coming out at length beastly intoxicated, he mounted his horse and proceeded homeward. Arriving at a fork in the path, the faithful horse took the one leading home, but the rider, thinking in his stupor that the other way was the right one, turned the horse's head. As the poor creature wanted to get home and have the saddle taken off, it turned again. This affront was too much for the Gaucho, who is a man of volcanic passions, so drawing his knife, he stabbed it in the neck, and they dropped to the ground together. When he realized that he had killed his favorite horse he cried like a child. I passed this dead animal several times afterwards and saw the vultures clean its bones. It served me as a witness to the results of ungoverned passion.

The Gaucho does not, and would not under any consideration, ride a mare; consequently, for work she is practically valueless. Strain, who rode across the pampas, says: "In a single year ten million hides were exported." For one or two dollars each the buyer may purchase any number; indeed, of such little worth are the mares that they are very often killed for their hide, or to serve as food for swine. At one estancia I visited I was informed that one was killed each day for pig feed. The mare can be driven long distances, even a hundred miles a day, for several successive days, The Argentine army must surely be the most mobile of any in the world, for its soldiers, when on the march, get nothing but mare's flesh and the custom gives them great facility of movement. The horse has, more or less, its standard value, and costs four or five times the price of the mare.



Sometimes it happens that the native finds a colt which is positively untamable. On the cheek of such an animal the Gaucho will burn a cross and then allow it to go free, like the scape-goat mentioned in the book of Leviticus.

The native horse is rather small, but very wiry and wild. I was once compelled, through sickness, to make a journey of ninety-seven miles, being in the saddle for seventeen consecutive hours, and yet my poor horse was unable to get one mouthful of food on the journey, and the saddle was not taken off his back for a moment. He was very wild, yet one evening between five and eight o'clock, he bore me safely a distance of thirty-six miles, and returned the same distance with me on the following morning. He had not eaten or drunk anything during the night, for the locusts had devoured all pasturage and no rain had fallen for a space of five months.

The horse is not indigenous to America, although Darwin tells us that South America had a native horse, which lived and disappeared ages ago. Spanish history informs us that they were first landed in Buenos Ayres in 1537. We are further told that the Indians flew away in terror at the sight of a man on horseback, which they took to be one animal of a strange, two-headed shape. When the colony was for a time deserted these horses were suffered to run wild. Those animals so multiplied and spread over such a vast area that they were found, forty-three years later, even down to the Straits of Magellan, a distance of eleven hundred miles. With good pasture and a limitless expanse to roam over, they soon turned from the dozens to thousands, and may now be counted by millions. The Patagonian "foot" Indians quickly turned into "horse" Indians, for on those wide prairie lands a man without a horse is almost comparable to a man without legs. In former years, thousands of wild horses roamed over these extensive plains, but the struggle of mankind in the battle of life turned men's attention to them, and they were captured and branded by whomsoever had the power and cared to take the trouble. In the more isolated districts, there may still be found numbers which are born and die without ever feeling the touch of saddle or bridle. Far away from the crowded busses and perpetually moving hansoms of the city, they feel not the driver's whip nor the strain of the wagon, as, with tail trailing on the ground and head erect, they gallop in freedom of life. Happy they!

In all directions on the prairie ostriches are found. The natives catch them with boliadoras, an old Indian weapon, which is simply three round stones, incased in bags of hide, tied together by twisted ropes, also of hide. When the hunters have, by galloping from different directions, baffled the bird in his flight, they thunder down upon him, and, throwing the boliadoras round his legs, where they entangle, effectually stop his flight. I have seen this weapon thrown a distance of about eighty yards.

The ostrich is a bird with wonderful digestive powers, which I often have envied him; he eats grass or pebbles, insects or bones, as suits his varying fancy. If you drop your knife or any other article, he will stop to examine it, being most inquisitive, and, if possible, he will swallow it. The flesh of the ostrich is dry and tough, and its feathers are not to be compared in beauty with those of the African specimen. Generally a very harmless bird, he is truly formidable during breeding time. If one of the eggs is so much as touched he will break the whole number to shivers. Woe to the man whom he savagely attacks at such times; one kick of his great foot, with its sharp claws, is sufficient to open the body of man or horse. The Gaucho uses the skin from the neck of this bird as a tobacco pouch, and the eggs are considered a great delicacy. One is equal to about sixteen hen's eggs.

As all creation has its enemy, the ostrich finds his in the iguana, or lizard—an unsightly, scaly, long-tailed species of land crocodile. This animal, when full-grown, attains the length of five feet, and is of a dark green color. He, when he can procure them, feeds on the ostrich eggs, which I believe must be a very strengthening diet. The lizard, after fattening himself upon them during the six hotter months of the year, is enabled to retire to the recesses of his cave, where he tranquilly sleeps through the remaining six. The shell of the ostrich's egg is about the thickness of an antique china cup, but the iguana finds no difficulty in breaking it open with a slash of his tail This wily animal is more astute than the bird, which lays its eggs in the open spaces, for the lizard, with her claws, digs a hole in the ground, in which hers are dropped to the number of dozens. The lizard does not provide shells for her eggs, but only covers them with a thick, soft skin, and they, buried in the soil, eventually hatch themselves.

When the Gaucho cannot obtain a better meal, the tail of the lizard is not considered such a despicable dish by him, for he is no epicure. When he has nothing he is also contented. His philosophy is: "Nunca tenga hambre cuando no hay que comer" (Never be hungry when no food is to be had).

The estancia, or catile ranch, is a feature of the Argentine prairie. Some of these establishments are very large, even up to one hundred square miles in extent. On them hundreds of thousands of cattle, sheep and horses are herded. "It is not improbable that there are more cattle in the pampas and llanos of South America than in all the rest of the world." [Footnote: Dr. Hartwig in "Argentina," 1910] An estancia is almost invariably called by the name of some saint, as are the different fields belonging to it. "Holy Mary field" and "Saint Joseph field" are common names. Notwithstanding the fact that there may be thousands of cows on a ranch, the visitor may be unable to get a drop of milk to drink. "Cows are not made to milk, but to eat," they say. Life on these establishments is rough and the fare generally very coarse. Even among the wealthy people I have visited you may sit down to dinner with nothing but meat put before you, without a bite of bread or any vegetables. All drink water out of an earthenware pitcher of peculiar shape, which is the centrepiece of the table.

Around the ranches of the people are many mice, which must be of a ferocious nature, for if one is caught in a trap it will be found next morning half, if not almost wholly, eaten by its own comrades. Well is it called "the cannibal mouse."

In times of drought the heat of the sun dries up all vegetation. The least spark of fire then suffices to create a mighty blaze, especially if accompanied by the pampero wind, which blows with irresistible force in its sweep over hundreds of miles of level ground. The fire, gathering strength as it goes, drives all before it, or wraps everything in its devouring flames. Casting a lurid light in the heavens, towards which rise volumes of smoke, it attracts the attention of the native, who lifts his starting eyes towards heaven in a speechless prayer to the Holy Virgin. Madly leaping on his fleetest horse, without saddle, and often without bridle, he wildly gallops down the wind, as the roaring, crackling fire gains upon him. In this mad race for life, men, horses, ostriches, deer, bullocks, etc., join, striving to excel each other in speed. Strange to say, the horse the native rides, cheered on by the touch of his master, is often the first to gain the lake or river, where, beneath its waters at least, refuge may be found. In their wild stampede, vast herds of cattle trample and fall on one another and are drowned. A more complete destruction could not overtake the unfortunate traveller than to be caught by this remorseless foe, for not even his ashes could be found by mourning friends. The ground thus burnt retains its heat for days. I have had occasion to cross blackened wastes a week after this most destructive force in nature had done its work, and my horse has frequently reared in the air at the touch of the hot soil on his hoofs.

The Gaucho has a strange method of fighting these fires. Several mares are killed and opened, and they, by means of lassos, are dragged over the burning grass.

The immensity of the pampas is so great that one may travel many miles without sighting a single tree or human habitation. The weary traveller finds his only shade from the sun's pitiless rays under the broad brim of his sombrero. At times, with ears forward and extended nostrils, the horse gazes intently at the rippling blue waters of the mirage, that most tantalizingly deceptive phenomenon of nature. May it never be the lot of my reader to be misled by the illusive mirage as I have been. How could I mistake vapor for clear, gurgling water? Yet, how many times was I here deceived! Visions of great lakes and broad rivers rose up before me, lapping emerald green shores, where I could cool my parched tongue and lave in their crystal depths; yet to-day those waters are as far off as ever, and exist only in my hopes of Paradise. Not until I stand by the "River of Life" shall I behold the reality.

The inhabitant of these treeless, trackless solitudes, which, with their waving grass, remind one of the bosom of the ocean, develops a keen sight Where the stranger, after intently gazing, descries nothing, he will not only inform him that animals are in sight, but will, moreover, tell him what they are. I am blest with a very clear vision, but even when, after standing on my horse's back, I have made out nothing, the Gaucho could tell me that over there was a drove of cattle, a herd of deer, a troop of horses, or a house.

It is estimated that there are two hundred and forty millions of acres of wheat land in the Argentine, and of late years the prairie has developed into one of the largest wheat-producing countries in the world, and yet only one per cent, of its cultivable area is so far occupied.

The Gaucho is no farmer, and all his land is given up to cattle grazing, so chacras are worked generally by foreign settlers. The province of Entre Rios has been settled largely by Swiss and Italian farmers from the Piedmont Hills. Baron Hirsch has also planted a colony of Russian Jews there, and provided them with farm implements. Wheat, corn, and linseed are the principal crops, but sweet potatoes, tobacco, and fruit trees do well in this virgin ground, fertilized by the dead animals of centuries. The soil is rich, and two or three crops can often be harvested in a year.

No other part of the world has in recent years suffered from such a plague of locusts as the agricultural districts of Argentina. They come from the north in clouds that sometimes darken the sun. Some of the swarms have been estimated to be sixty miles long and from twelve to fifteen miles wide. Fields which in the morning stand high with waving corn, are by evening only comparable to ploughed or burnt lands. Even the roots are eaten up.

In 1907 the Argentine Government organized a bureau for the destruction of locusts, and in 1908 $4,500,000 was placed by Congress at the disposal of this commission. An organized service, embracing thousands of men, is in readiness at any moment to send a force to any place where danger is reported. Railway trains have been repeatedly stopped, and literally many tons of them have had to be taken off the track. A fine of $100 is imposed upon any settler failing to report the presence of locust swarms or hopper eggs on his land. Various means are adopted by the land-owner to save what he can from the voracious insects. Men, women and children mount their horses and drive flocks of sheep to and fro over the ground to kill them. A squatter with whom I stayed got his laborers to gallop a troop of mares furiously around his garden to keep them from settling there. All, however, seemed useless. About midsummer the locust lays its eggs under an inch or two of soil. Each female will drop from thirty to fifty eggs, all at the same time, in a mass resembling a head of wheat. As many as 50,000 eggs have been counted in a space less than three and a half feet square.

During my sojourn in Entre Rios, the province where this insect seems to come in greatest numbers, a law was passed that every man over the age of fourteen years, whether native or foreigner, rich or poor, was compelled to dig out and carry to Government depots, four pounds weight of locusts' eggs. It was supposed that this energetic measure would lessen their numbers. Many tons were collected and burnt, but, I assure the reader, no appreciable difference whatever was made in their legions. The young jumpers came, eating all before them, and their numbers seemed infinite. Men dug trenches, kindled fires, and burned millions of them. Ditches two yards wide and deep and two hundred feet long were completely filled up by these living waves. But all efforts were unavailing—the earth remained covered. A Waldensian acquaintance suffered for several years from this fearful plague. Some seasons he was not even able to get back so much as the seed he planted. If the locusts passed him, it so happened that the pampero wind blew with such terrific force that we have looked in vain even for the straw. The latter was actually torn up by the roots and whirled away, none knew whither. At other times large hailstones, for which the country is noted, have destroyed everything, or tens of thousands of green paroquets have done their destructive work. When a five-months' drought was parching everything, I have heard him reverently pray that God would spare him wheat sufficient to feed his family. This food God gave him, and he thankfully invited me to share it. I rejoice in being able to say that he afterwards became rich, and had his favorite saying, "Dios no me olvida" (God will not forget me), abundantly verified.

Notwithstanding natural drawbacks, which every country has, Argentina can claim to have gone forward as no other country has during the last ten years. There are many estates worth more than a million dollars. Dr. W. A. Hirot, in "Argentina," says: "Argentina has more live stock than any other country of the world. Ten million hides have been exported in one year, and it is not improbable that there are more cattle in South America than there are in all the rest of the world combined." Belgium has 220 people occupying the space one person has in Argentina, so who can prophesy as to its future?



PART II.

BOLIVIA



Have you gazed on naked grandeur where there's nothing else to gaze on, Set pieces and drop curtain scenes galore, Big mountains heaved to heaven, which the blinding sunsets blazon, Black canyons where the rapids rip and roar?

—Robert W. Service.



BOLIVIA

Bolivia, having no sea-coast, has been termed the Hermit Republic of South America. Its territory is over 600,000 square miles in extent, and within its bounds Nature displays almost every possible panorama, and all climates. There are burning plains, the home of the emu, armadillos, and ants; sandy deserts, where the wind drifts the sand like snow, piling it up in ever-shifting hills about thirty feet in height. Bolivia, shut in geographically and politically, is a world in itself—a world of variety, in scenery, climate, products and people. Its capital city, La Paz, has a population of 70,000, but the vast interior is almost uninhabited. In the number of inhabitants to the square mile, Bolivia ranks the lowest of all the nations of the earth.

Perhaps no country of the world has been, and is, so rich in precious metals as Bolivia. "The mines of Potosi alone have furnished the world over $1,500,000,000 worth of silver since the Spaniards first took possession of them." [Footnote: "Protestant Missions in South America."]

Bolivia can lay claim to the most wonderful body of water in the world—Lake Titicaca. This lake, nearly two and a half miles high in the air, is literally in the clouds. "Its lonely waters have no outlet to the sea, but are guarded on their southern shores by gigantic ruins of a prehistoric empire—palaces, temples, and fortresses—silent, mysterious monuments of a long-lost golden age." Some of the largest and most remarkable ruins of the world are found on the shores of Lake Titicaca, and as this was the centre of the great Incan Dynasty, that remarkable people have also left wonderful remains, to build which stones thirty-eight feet long, eighteen feet wide, and six feet thick, were quarried, carried and elevated. The Temple of the Sun. the most sacred edifice of the Incas, was one of the richest buildings the sun has ever shone upon, and it was itself a mine of wealth. From this one temple, Pizarro, the Spanish conqueror, took 24,000 pounds of gold and 82,000 pounds of silver. "Ninety million dollars' worth of precious metals was torn from Inca temples alone." The old monarch of the country, Atahuallpa, gave Pizarro twenty-two million dollars in gold to buy back his country and his liberty from the Spaniards, but their first act on receiving the vast ransom was to march him after a crucifix at the head of a procession, and, because he refused to become a Roman Catholic, put him to death. Perhaps never in the world's history was there a baser act of perfidy, but this was urged by the soldier-priest of the conquerors, Father Valverde, who himself signed the King's death- warrant. This priest was afterwards made Bishop of Atahuallpa's capital.

Surely no country of the world has had a darker or a sadder history than this land of the Incas. The Spaniards arrived when the "Children of the Sun" were at the height of their prosperity. "The affair of reducing the country was committed to the hands of irresponsible individuals, soldiers of fortune, desperate adventurers who entered on conquest as a game which they had to play in the most unscrupulous manner, with little care but to win it. The lands, and the persons as well, of the conquered races were parcelled out and appropriated by the victors as the legitimate spoils of victory. Every day outrages were perpetrated, at the contemplation of which humanity shudders. They suffered the provident arrangements of the Incas to fall into decay. The poor Indian, without food, now wandered half-starved and naked over the plateau. Even those who aided the Spaniards fared no better, and many an Inca noble roamed a mendicant over the fields where he once held rule; and if driven, perchance, by his necessities to purloin something from the superfluity of his conquerors, he expiated it by a miserable death." [Footnote: Prescott's "Conquest of Peru."]

Charles Kingsley says there were "cruelties and miseries unexampled in the history of Christendom, or perhaps on earth, save in the conquests of Sennacherib and Zinghis-Khan." Millions perished at the forced labor of the mines, The Incan Empire had, it is calculated, a population of twenty millions at the arrival of the Spaniards, In two centuries the population fell to four millions.

When the groans of these beasts of burden reached the ears of the good (?) Queen Isabel of Spain, she enacted a law that throughout her new dominions no Indian, man or woman, should be compelled to carry more than three hundred pounds' weight at one load! Is it cause for wonder that the poor, down-trodden natives, seeing the flaunting flag of Spain, with its stripe of yellow between stripes of red, should regard it as representing a river of gold between two rivers of blood?

"Not infrequently," said a reliable witness, "I have seen the Spaniards, long after the Conquest, amuse themselves by hunting down the natives with blood hounds, for mere sport, or in order to train their dogs to the game. The most unbounded scope was given to licentiousness. The young maiden was torn remorselessly from the arms of her family to gratify the passion of her brutal conqueror. The sacred houses of the Virgins of the Sun were broken open and violated, and the cavalier swelled his harem with a troop of Indian girls, making it seem that the crescent would have been a more fitting emblem for his banner than the immaculate cross."

With the inexorable conqueror came the more inexorable priest. "Attendance at Roman Catholic worship was made compulsory. Men and women with small children were compelled to journey as much as thirty-six miles to attend mass. Absentees were punished, therefore the Indian feared to disobey." [Footnote: Neely, "Spanish America."]

As is well known, the ancient inhabitants worshipped the sun and the moon. The Spanish priest, in order to gain proselytes with greater facility, did not forbid this worship, but placed the crucifix between the two. Where the Inca suns and moons were of solid gold and silver, they were soon replaced by painted wooden ones. The crucifix, with sun and moon images on each side, is common all over Bolivia to-day.

Now, four hundred years later, see the Indian under priestly rule. The following is taken from an official report of the Governor of Chimborazo: "The religious festivals that the Indians celebrate—not of their own will, but by the inexorable will of the priest—are, through the manner in which they are kept, worse than those described to us of the times of Paganism, and of monstrous consequences to morality and the national welfare ... they may be reckoned as a barbarous mixture of idolatry and superstition, sustained by infamous avarice. The Indian who is chosen to make a feast either has to use up in it his little savings, leaving his family submerged in misery, or he has to rob in order to invest the products of his crime in paying the fees to the priest and for church ceremonies. These are simply brutal orgies that last many days, with a numerous attendance, and in which all manner of crimes and vices have free license."

"For the idols of the aborigines were substituted the images of the Virgin Mary and the Roman saints. The Indians gave up their old idols, but they went on with their image-worship. Image-worship is idolatry, whether in India, Africa, or anywhere else, and the worship of Roman images is essentially idolatry as much as the worship of any other kind of images. Romanism substituted for one set of idols another set. So the Indians who were idolaters continued to be idolaters, only the new idols had other names and, possibly, were a little better-looking." [Footnote: Neely, "South America."]

What has Romanism done for the Indians of Bolivia in its four hundred years of rule? Compare the people of that peaceful, law-keeping dynasty which the Spaniards found with the Bolivian Indian of to-day! Now the traveller can report: "The Indians are killing the whites wherever they find them, and practising great cruelties, having bored holes in the heads of their victims and sucked the brains out while they were yet alive. Sixteen whites are said to have been killed in this way! These same Indians are those who have been Christianized by the Roman priests for the past three centuries, but such cruelties as they have been practising show that as yet not a ray of Christ's love has entered their darkened minds." How can the priest teach what he is himself ignorant of?

Where the Indian has been civilized, as well as Romanized, Mr. Milne, of the American Bible Society, could write:

"Since the Spanish conquest the progress of the Indians has been in the line of deterioration and moral degradation. They are oppressed by the Romish clergy, who can never drain contributions enough out of them, and who make the children render service to pay for masses for deceased parents and relatives. Tears came to our eyes as Mr. Penzotti and I watched them practising their heathen rites in the streets of La Paz, the chief city of Bolivia. They differ from the other Indians in that they are domesticated, but they know no more of the Gospel than they did under the rule of the Incas."

What is to be the future of these natives? Shall they disappear from the stage of the world's history like so many other aborigines, victims of civilization, or will a hand yet be stretched out to help them? Civilization, after all, is not entirely made up of greed and lust, but in it there is righteousness and truth. May the day soon dawn when some of the latter may be extended to them ere they take the long, dark trail after their fathers, and have hurled the last malediction at their cursed white oppressors!

"We suffer yet a little space Until we pass away, The relics of an ancient race That ne'er has had its day."

For four hundred years Bolivia has thus been held in chains by Romish priestcraft. Since its Incan rulers were massacred, its civilization has been of the lowest. Buildings, irrigation dams, etc., were suffered to fall into disrepair, and the country went back to pre-Incan days.

The first Christian missionaries to enter the country were imprisoned and murdered. Now "the morning light is breaking." A law has been passed granting liberty of worship.

Bolivia, with its vast natural riches, must come to the forefront, and already strides are being taken forward. She can export over five million dollars' worth of rubber in one year, and is now spending more than fifty million dollars on railways. So Bolivia is a country of the past and the future.



CHAPTER V.

JOURNEY TO "THE UNEXPLORED LAKE."

Since the days when Pizarro's adventurers discovered the hitherto undreamed-of splendor of the Inca Dynasty, Bolivia has been a land of surprises and romantic discovery. Strange to say, even yet much of the eastern portion of this great republic remains practically unexplored. The following account of exploration in those regions, left for men of the twentieth century, may not, I am persuaded, be without interest to the general reader. Bolivia has for many years been seriously handicapped through having no adequate water outlet to the sea, and the immense resources of wealth she undoubtedly possesses have, for this reason, been suffered to go, in a measure, unworked. Now, however, in the onward progress of nations, Bolivia has stepped forward. In the year 1900, the Government of that country despatched an expedition to locate and explore Lake Gaiba, a large sheet of water said to exist in the far interior of Bolivia and Brazil, on the line dividing the two republics. The expedition staff consisted of Captain Bolland, an Englishman; M. Barbiere, a Frenchman; Dr. Perez, Bolivian; M. Gerard D'Avezsac, French artist and hunter, and the writer of these pages. The crew of ten men was made up of Paraguayans and Argentines, white men and colored, one Bolivian, one Italian, and one Brazilian. Strange to relate, there was no Scotchman, even the ship's engineer being French. Perhaps the missing Scotch engineer was on his way to the Pole, in order to be found sitting there on its discovery by——(?)

The object of this costly journey was to ascend the rivers La Plata, Paraguay and Alto Paraguay, and see if it were possible to establish a port and town in Bolivian territory on the shores of the lake. After some months of untiring energy and perseverance, there was discovered for Bolivia a fine port, with depth of water for any ordinary river steamer, which will now be known to the world as Puerto Quijarro. A direct fluvial route, therefore, exists between the Atlantic and this far inland point.

The expedition left Buenos Ayres, the capital of the Argentine Republic. Sailing up the western bank of the River of Silver, we entered the Parana River, and after an uneventful voyage of six days, passed the mouth of the River of Gold, and turned into the Paraguay.

Three hundred miles up the Higher Parana, a mighty stream flowing from the northeast, which we here left to our right, are the Falls of Yguas. These falls have been seen by few white men. The land on each side of the river is infested by the Bugres Indians, a tribe of cannibals, of excessively ferocious nature. The Falls of Big Water must be the largest in the world—and the writer is well acquainted with Niagara.

The river, over two and a half miles wide, containing almost as much water as all the rivers of Europe together, rushes between perpendicular cliffs. With a current of forty miles an hour, and a volume of water that cannot be less than a million tons a minute, the mighty torrent rushes with indescribable fury against a rocky island, which separates it into two branches, so that the total width is about two miles and a half. The Brazilian arm of the river forms a tremendous horseshoe here, and plunges with a deafening roar into the abyss two hundred and thirteen feet below. The Argentine branch spreads out in a sort of amphitheatre form, and finishes with one grand leap into the jagged rocks, more than two hundred and twenty- nine feet below, making the very earth vibrate, while spray, rising in columns, is visible several miles distant.

"Below the island the two arms unite and flow on into the Parana River. From the Brazilian bank the spectator, at a height of two hundred and eighty feet, gazes out over two and a half miles of some of the wildest and most fantastic water scenery he can ever hope to see. Waters stream, seethe, leap, bound, froth and foam, 'throwing the sweat of their agony high in the air, and, writhing, twisting, screaming and moaning, bear off to the Parana.' Under the blue vault of the sky, this sea of foam, of pearls, of iridescent dust, bathes the great background in a shower of beauty that all the more adds to the riot of tropical hues already there. When a high wind is blowing, the roar of the cataract can be heard nearly twenty miles away. A rough estimate of the horse-power represented by the falls is fourteen million."

Proceeding up the Paraguay River, we arrived at Asuncion, the capital of Paraguay, and anchored in a beautiful bay of the river, opposite the city. As many necessary preparations had still to be made, the expedition was detained in Asuncion for fifteen days, after which we boarded the S.S. Leda, for the second stage of our journey.

Steaming up the Alto Paraguay, we passed the orange groves of that sunny land on the right bank of the river, and on the left saw the encampments of the Tobas Indians, The dwellings of these people are only a few branches of trees stuck in the ground. Further on, we saw the Chamococos Indians, a fine muscular race of men and women, who cover their bronze-colored bodies with the oil of the alligator, and think a covering half the size of a pocket-handkerchief quite sufficient to hide their nakedness. As we stayed to take in wood, I tried to photograph some of these, our brothers and sisters, but the camera was nothing but an object of dread to them. One old woman, with her long, black, oily hair streaming in the breeze, almost withered me with her flashing eyes and barbarous language, until I blushed as does a schoolboy when caught in the act of stealing apples. Nevertheless, I got her photo.

The Pilcomayo, which empties its waters into the Paraguay, is one of the most mysterious of rivers. Rising in Bolivia, its course can be traced down for some considerable distance, when it loses itself in the arid wastes, or, as some maintain, flows underground. Its source and mouth are known, but for many miles of its passage it is invisible. Numerous attempts to solve its secrets have been made. They have almost invariably ended disastrously. The Spanish traveller, Ibarete, set out with high hopes to travel along its banks, but he and seventeen men perished in the attempt. Two half- famished, prematurely-old, broken men were all that returned from the unknown wilds. The Pilcomayo, which has proved itself the river of death to so many brave men, remains to this day unexplored. The Indians inhabiting these regions are savage in the extreme, and the French explorer, Creveaux, found them inhuman enough to leave him and most of his party to die of hunger. The Tobas and the Angaitaes tribes are personally known to me, and I speak from experience when I say that more cruel men I have never met. The Argentine Government, after twenty years of warfare with them, was compelled, in 1900, to withdraw the troops from their outposts and leave the savages in undisputed possession. If the following was the type of civilization offered them, then they are better left to themselves: "Two hundred Indians who have been made prisoners are compelled to be baptized. The ceremony takes place in the presence of the Governor and officials of the district, and a great crowd of spectators. The Indians kneel between two rows of soldiers, an officer with drawn sword compels each in turn to open his mouth, into which a second officer throws a handful of salt, amid general laughter at the wry faces of the Indians. Then a Franciscan padre comes with a pail of water and besprinkles the prisoners. They are then commanded to rise, and each receives a piece of paper inscribed with his new name, a scapulary, and—a glass of rum" [Footnote: Report of British and Foreign Bible Society, 1900.] What countries these for missionary enterprise!

After sailing for eighteen days up the river, we transhipped into a smaller steamer going to Bolivia. Sailing up the bay, you pass, on the south shore, a small Brazilian customs house, which consists of a square roof of zinc, without walls, supported on four posts, standing about two meters from the ground. A Brazilian, clothed only in his black skin, came down the house ladder and stared at us as we passed. The compliment was returned, although we had become somewhat accustomed to that style of dress—or undress. A little farther up the bay, a white stone shone out in the sunlight, marking the Bolivian boundary, and giving the name of Piedra Blanca to the village. This landmark is shaded by a giant tamarind tree, and numerous barrel trees, or palo boracho, grow in the vicinity. In my many wanderings in tropical America, I have seen numerous strange trees, but these are extraordinarily so. The trunk comes out of the ground with a small circumference, then gradually widens out to the proportions of an enormous barrel, and at the top closes up to the two-foot circumference again. Two branches, like giant arms spread themselves out in a most weird-looking manner on the top of all. About five leaves grow on each bough, and, instinctively, you consider them the fingers of the arms.

It was only three leagues to the Bolivian town of Piedra Blanca, but the "Bahia do Marengo" took three hours to steam the short distance, for five times we had to stop on the way, owing to the bearings becoming heated. These the Brazilian engineer cooled with pails of water.

In the beautiful Bay of Caceres, much of which was grown over with lotus and Victoria Regia, we finally anchored. This Bolivian village is about eighteen days' sail up the river from Montevideo on the seacoast.

Chartering the "General Pando," a steamer of 25 h.p. and 70 ft. long, we there completed our preparations, and finally steamed away up the Alto Paraguay, proudly flying the Bolivian flag of red, yellow, and green. As a correct plan of the river had to be drawn, the steamer only travelled by day, when we were able to admire the grandeur of the scenery, which daily grew wilder as the mountains vied with each other in lifting their rugged peaks toward heaven. From time to time we passed one of the numerous islands the Paraguay is noted for. These are clothed with such luxuriant vegetation that nothing less than an army of men with axes could penetrate them. The land is one great, wild, untidy, luxuriant hot-house, "built by nature for herself." The puma, jaguar and wildcat are here at home, besides the anaconda and boa constrictor, which grow to enormous lengths. The Yaci Ret, or Island of the Moon, is the ideal haunt of the jaguar, and as we passed it a pair of those royal beasts were playing on the shore like two enormous cats. As they caught sight of us, one leapt into the mangrove swamp, out of sight, and the other took a plunge into the river, only to rise a few yards distant and receive an explosive bullet in his head. The mangrove tree, with its twisting limbs and bright green foliage, grows in the warm water and ftid mud of tropical countries. It is a type of death, for pestilence hangs round it like a cloud. At early morning this cloud is a very visible one. The peculiarity of the tree is that its hanging branches themselves take root, and, nourished by such putrid exhalations, it quickly spreads.

There were also many floating islands of fantastic shape, on which birds rested in graceful pose. We saw the garza blanca, the aigrets of which are esteemed by royalty and commoner alike, along with other birds new and strange. To several on board who had looked for years on nothing but the flat Argentine pampas, this change of scenery was most exhilarating, and when one morning the sun rose behind the "Golden Mountains," and illuminated peak after peak, the effect was glorious. So startlingly grand were some of the colors that our artist more than once said he dare not paint them, as the world would think that his coloring was not true to nature.

Many were the strange sights we saw on the shore. Once we were amused at the ludicrous spectacle of a large bird of the stork family, which had built its nest in a tree almost overhanging the river. The nest was a collection of reeds and feathers, having two holes in the bottom, through which the legs of the bird were hanging. The feet, suspended quite a yard below the nest, made one wonder how the bird could rise from its sitting position.

Every sight the traveller sees, however, is not so amusing. As darkness creeps over earth and sky, and the pale moonbeams shed a fitful light, it is most pathetic to see on the shore the dead trunk and limbs of a tree, in the branches of which has been constructed a rude platform, on which some dark-minded Indian has reverently lifted the dead body of his comrade. The night wind, stirring the dry bones and whistling through the empty skull, makes weird music!

The banks of the stream had gradually come nearer and nearer to us, and the great river, stretching one hundred and fifty miles in width where it pours its volume of millions of tons of water into the sea at Montevideo, was here a silver ribbon, not half a mile across.

Far be it from me to convey the idea that life in those latitudes is Eden. The mosquitos and other insects almost drive one mad. The country may truly be called a naturalists' paradise, for butterflies, beetles, and creeping things are multitudinous, but the climate, with its damp, sickly heat, is wholly unsuited to the Anglo-Saxon. Day after day the sun in all his remorseless strength blazes upon the earth, is if desirous of setting the whole world on fire. The thermometer in the shade registered 110, 112 and 114 degrees Fahrenheit, and on one or two memorable days 118 degrees. The heat in our little saloon at times rose as high as 130 degrees, and the perspiration poured down in streams on our almost naked bodies. We seemed to be running right into the brazen sun itself.

One morning the man on the look-out descried deer on the starboard bow, and arms were quickly brought out, ready for use. Our French hunter was just taking aim when it struck me that the deer moved in a strange way. I immediately asked him to desist. Those dark forms in the long grass seemed, to my somewhat trained eyes, naked Indians, and as we drew nearer to them so it proved, and the man was thankful he had withheld his fire.

After steaming for some distance up the river several dug-outs, filled with Guatos Indians, paddled alongside us. An early traveller in those head-waters wrotes of these: "Some of the smaller tribes were but a little removed from the wild brutes of their own jungles. The lowest in the scale, perhaps, were the Guatos, who dwell to the north of the Rio Apa. This tribe consisted of less than one hundred persons, and they were as unapproachable as wild beasts. No other person, Indian or foreigner, could ever come near but they would fly and hide in impenetrable jungles. They had no written language of their own, and lived like unreasoning animals, without laws or religion."

The Guato Indian seems now to be a tame and inoffensive creature, but well able to strike a bargain in the sale of his dug-out canoes, home-made guitars and other curios. In the wrobbling canoe they are very dexterous, as also in the use of their long bows and arrows; the latter have points of sharpened bone. When hungry, they hunt or fish. When thirsty, they drink from the river; and if they wish clothing, wild cotton grows in abundance.

These Indians, living, as they do, along the banks of the river and streams, have recently been frequently visited by the white man on his passage along those natural highways. It is, therefore superfluous for me to add that they are now correspondingly demoralized. It is a most humiliating fact that just in proportion as the paleface advances into lands hitherto given up to the Indian so those races sink. This degeneration showed itself strikingly among the Guatos in their inordinate desire for cachaca, or "firewater." Although extremely cautious and wary in their exchanges to us, refusing to barter a bow and arrows for a shirt, yet, for a bottle of cachaca, they would gladly have given even one of their canoes. These ketchiveyos, twenty or twenty-five feet long by about twenty inches wide, they hollow from the trunk of the cedar, or lapacho tree. This is done with great labor and skill; yet, as I have said, they were boisterously eager to exchange this week's work for that which they knew would lead them to fight and kill one another.

As a mark of special favor, the chief invited me to their little village, a few miles distant. Stepping into one of their canoes—a large, very narrow boat, made of one tree-trunk hollowed out by fire— I was quickly paddled by three naked Indians up a narrow creek, which was almost covered with lotus. The savages, standing in the canoe, worked the paddles with a grace and elegance which the civilized man would fail to acquire, and the narrow craft shot through the water at great speed. The chief sat in silence at the stern. I occupied a palm-fibre mat spread for me amidships. The very few words of Portuguese my companions spoke or understood rendered conversation difficult, so the stillness was broken only by the gentle splash of the paddles. On each side the dense forest seemed absolutely impenetrable, but we at last arrived at an opening. As we drew ashore I noticed that an Indian path led directly inland.

Leaving our dug-out moored with a fibre rope to a large mangrove tree, we started to thread our way through the forest, and finally reached a clearing. Here we came upon a crowd of almost naked and extremely dejected-looking women. Many of these, catching sight of me, sped into the jungle like frightened deer. The chief's wife, however, at a word from him, received me kindly, and after accepting a brass necklace with evident pleasure, showed herself very affable. Poor lost Guatos! Their dejected countenances, miserable grass huts, alive with vermin, and their extreme poverty, were most touching. Inhabiting, as they do, one of the hottest and dampest places on the earth's surface, where mosquitos are numberless, the wonder is that they exist at all. Truly, man is a strange being, who can adapt himself to equatorial heat or polar frigidity. The Guatos' chief business in life seemed to consist in sitting on fibre mats spread on the ground, and driving away the bloodthirsty mosquitos from their bare backs. For this they use a fan of their own manufacture, made from wild cotton, which there seems to abound. Writing of mosquitos, let me say these Indian specimens were a terror to us all. What numbers we killed! I could write this account in their blood. It was my blood, though—before they got it! Men who hunt the tiger in cool bravery boiled with indignation before these awful pests, which stabbed and stung with marvellous persistency, and disturbed the solitude of nature with their incessant humming. I write the word incessant advisedly, for I learned that there are several kinds of mosquitos. Some work by day and others by night. Naturalists tell us that only the female mosquito bites. Did they take a particular liking to us because we were all males?

Some of the Indians paint their naked bodies in squares, generally with red and black pigment. Their huts were in some cases large, but very poorly constructed. When any members of the tribe are taken sick they are supposed to be "possessed" by a stronger evil power, and the sickness is "starved out." When the malady flies away the life generally accompanies it. The dead are buried under the earth inside the huts, and in some of the dwellings graves are quite numerous. This custom of interior burial has probably been adopted because the wild animals of the forest would otherwise eat the corpse. Horrible to relate, their own half-wild dogs sometimes devour the dead, though an older member of the tribe is generally left home to mount guard.

Seeing by the numerous gourds scattered around that they were drinking chicha, I solicited some, being anxious to taste the beverage which had been used so many centuries before by the old Incas. The wife of the chief immediately tore off a branch of the feather palm growing beside her, and, certainly within a minute, made a basket, into which she placed a small gourd. Going to the other side of the clearing, she commenced, with the agility of a monkey, to ascend a long sapling which had been laid in a slanting position against a tall palm tree. The long, graceful leaves of this cabbage palm had been torn open, and the heart thus left to ferment. From the hollow cabbage the woman filled the gourd, and lowered it to me by a fibre rope. The liquid I found to be thick and milky, and the taste not unlike cider.

Prescott tells us that Atahuallpa, the Peruvian monarch, came to see the conqueror, Pizarro, "quaffing chicha from golden goblets borne by his attendants." [Footnote: Este Embajador traia servicio de Senor, i cinco o seis Vasos de Oro fino, con que bebia, i con ellos daba a beber a los Espanoles de la chicha que traia."—Xerez.] Golden goblets did not mean much to King Atahuallpa, however, for his palace of five hundred different apartments is said to have been tiled with beaten gold.

In these Guato Indians I observed a marked difference to any others I had visited, in that they permitted the hair to grow on their faces. The chief was of quite patriarchal aspect, with full beard and mild, intelligent-looking eyes. The savages inhabiting the Chaco consider this custom extremely "dirty."

Before leaving these people I procured some of their bows and arrows, and also several cleverly woven palm mats and cotton fans.

Some liquor our cook gave away had been taken out by the braves to their women in another encampment. These spirits had so inflamed the otherwise retiring, modest females that they, with the men, returned to the steamer, clamoring for more. All the stores, along with some liquors we carried, were under my care, and I kept them securely locked up, but in my absence at the Indian camp the store-room had been broken open, and our men and the Indians—men and women—had drunk long and deep. A scene like Bedlam, or Dante's "Inferno," was taking place when I returned. Willing as they were to listen to my counsel and admit that I was certainly a great white teacher, with superior wisdom, on this love for liquor and its debasing consequences they would hear no words. The women and girls, like the men, would clamor for the raw alcohol, and gulp it down in long draughts. When ardent spirits are more sought after by women and girls than are beads and looking-glasses it surely shows a terribly depraved taste. Even the chattering monkeys in the trees overhead would spurn the poison and eagerly clutch the bright trinket. Perhaps the looking-glasses I gave the poor females would, after the orgies were over, serve to show them that their beauty was not increased by this beastly carousal, and thus be a means of blessing. It may be asked, Can the savage be possessed of pride and of self-esteem? I unhesitatingly answer yes, as I have had abundant opportunity of seeing. They will strut with peacock pride when wearing a specially gaudy-colored headdress, although that may be their only article of attire.

Having on board far more salt than we ourselves needed, I was enabled to generously distribute much of that invaluable commodity among them. That also, working in a different way, might be a means of restoring them to a normal soundness of mind after we left.

Poor lost creatures! For this draught of the white man's poison, far more terrible to them than the deadly nightshade of their forests, more dangerous than the venom of the loathsome serpent gliding across their path, they are willing to sell body or soul. Soul, did I say? They have never heard of that. To them, so far as I could ascertain, a future life is unknown. The explorer has penetrated some little way into their dark forests in search of rubber, or anything else which it would pay to exploit, but the missionary of the Cross has never sought to illumine their darker minds. They live their little day and go out into the unknown unconscious of the fact that One called Jesus, who was the Incarnate God, died to redeem them. As a traveller, I have often wondered why men should be willing to pay me hundreds of dollars to explore those regions for ultimate worldly gain, and none should ever offer to employ me in proclaiming the greatest wonder of all the ages—the story of Calvary—for eternal gain. After all, are the Indians more blind to the future than we are? Yet, strange to say, we profess to believe in the teachings of that One who inculcated the practice of laying up treasure in heaven, while they have not even heard His name. For love of gain men have been willing to accompany me through the most deadly fever-breeding morass, or to brave the poisoned arrows of the lynx-eyed Indian, but few have ever offered to go and tell of Him whom they profess to serve.

The suffocating atmosphere quite precluded the idea of writing, for a pen, dipped in ink, would dry before reaching the paper, and the latter be saturated with perspiration in a few seconds; so these observations were penned later. So far as I could ascertain, the Romish Church has never touched the Guatos, and, notwithstanding all I have said about them, I unhesitatingly affirm that it is better so. Geo. R. Witte, missionary to Brazil, says: "With one exception, all the priests with whom I came in contact (when on a journey through Northern Brazil) were immoral, drunken, and ignorant. The tribes who have come under priestly care are decidedly inferior in morals, industry, and order to the tribes who refuse to have anything to do with the whites. The Charentes and Apinages have been, for years, under the care of Catholic friars—this is the way I found them: both men and women walk about naked."

"We heard not one contradiction of the general testimony that the people who were not under the influence of the Roman Catholic Church as it is in S. America were better morally than those who were." [Footnote: Robert E. Speer, "Missions in South America."]

In Christendom organs peal out the anthems of Divine love, and well- dressed worshippers chant in harmonious unison, "Lord, incline our hearts to keep Thy law." That law says: "Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself." To the question: "Who is my neighbor?" the Divine voice answers: "A certain man." May he not be one of these neglected Indians?



CHAPTER VI.

ARRIVAL AT THE LAKE.

"It sleeps among a hundred hills Where no man ever trod, And only Nature's music fills The silences of God."

After going about two thousand three hundred miles up this serpentine river, we discovered the entrance to the lake. Many had been the conjectures and counsels of would-be advisers when we started. Some said that there was no entrance to the lake from the river; others, that there was not sufficient depth of water for the steamer to pass through. On our port bow rose frowning rocks of forbidding aspect. Drawing nearer, we noticed, with mingled feelings of curiosity and wonder, that the face of these rocks was rudely carved by unmistakably Indian art. There were portrayed a rising sun, tigers' feet, birds' feet, etc. Why were they thus carved? Are those rocks the everlasting recorders of some old history—some deed of Indian daring in days of old? What these hieroglyphics signify we may never know; the workman is gone, and his stone hammer is buried with him. To twentieth century civilization his carving tells nothing. No Indians inhabit the shores of the lake now, perhaps because of this "writing on the wall."

With the leadsman in his place we slowly and cautiously entered the unexplored lake, and thus for the first time in the world's history its waters were ploughed by a steamer's keel.

Soon after our arrival the different guards were told off for the silent watches. Night shut in upon the lake, and all nature slept. The only lights on shore were those of the fire-flies as they danced through the myrtle boughs. The stars in the heavens twinkled above us. Now and again an alligator thrust his huge, ugly nose out of the water and yawned, thus disturbing for the moment its placid surface, which the pale moon illuminated with an ethereal light; otherwise stillness reigned, or, rather, a calm mysterious peace which was deep and profound. Somehow, the feeling crept upon us that we had become detached from the world, though yet we lived. Afterwards, when the tigers [Footnote: Jaguars are invariably called tigers in South America.] on shore had scented our presence, sleep was often broken by angry roars coming from the beach, near which we lay at anchor; but before dawn our noisy visitors always departed, leaving only their footprints. Early next morning, while the green moon was still shining (the color of this heavenly orb perplexed us, it was a pure bottle green), each one arose to his work. This was no pleasure excursion, and duties, many and arduous, lay before the explorers. The hunter sallied forth with his gun, and returned laden with pheasant and mountain hen, and over his shoulder a fine duck, which, unfortunately, however, had already begun to smell—the heat was so intense. In his wanderings he had come upon a huge tapir, half eaten by a tiger, and saw footprints of that lord of the forest in all directions.

Let me here say, that to our hunter we were indebted for many a good dish, and when not after game he lured from the depths of the lake many a fine perch or turbot. Fishing is an art in which I am not very skilled, but one evening I borrowed his line. After a few moments' waiting I had a "bite," and commenced to haul in my catch, which struggled, kicked, and pulled until I shouted for help. My fish was one of our Paraguayan sailors, who for sport had slipped down into the water on the other side of the steamer, and, diving to my cord, had grasped it with both hands. Not every fisher catches a man!

Lake Gaiba is a stretch of water ten miles long, with a narrow mouth opening into the River Paraguay. The lake is surrounded by mountains, clad in luxuriant verdure on the Bolivian side, and standing out in bare, rugged lines on the Brazilian side. The boundary of the two countries cuts the water into two unequal halves. The most prominent of the mountains are now marked upon the exhaustive chart drawn out. Their christening has been a tardy one, for who can tell what ages have passed since they first came into being? Looking at Mount Ray, the highest of these peaks, at sunset, the eye is startled by the strange hues and rich tints there reflected. Frequently we asked ourselves: "Is that the sun's radiance, or are those rocks the fabled 'Cliffs of Opal' men have searched for in vain?" We often sat in a wonder of delight gazing at the scene, until the sun sank out of sight, taking the "opal cliffs" with it, and leaving us only with the dream.

On the shores of the lake the beach is covered with golden sand and studded with innumerable little stones, clear as crystal, which scintillate with all the colors of the rainbow. Among these pebbles I found several arrowheads of jasper. In other parts the primeval forest creeps down to the very margin, and the tree-roots bathe in the warm waters. Looking across the quivering heat-haze, the eye rests upon palms of many varieties, and giant trees covered with orchids and parasites, the sight of which would completely intoxicate the horticulturist. Butterflies, gorgeous in all the colors of the rainbow, flit from flower to flower; and monkeys, with curiously human faces, stare at the stranger from the tree-tops. White cotton trees, tamarinds, and strangely shaped fruits grow everywhere, and round about all are entwined festoons of trailing creepers, or the loveliest of scarlet mistletoe, in which humming-birds build their nests. Blue macaws, parrots, and a thousand other birds fly to and fro, and the black fire-bird darts across the sky, making lightning with every flutter of his wings, which, underneath, are painted a bright, vivid red. Serpents of all colors and sizes creep silently in the undergrowth, or hang from the branches of the trees, their emerald eyes ever on the alert; and the broad-winged eagle soars above all, conscious of his majesty.

Here and there the coast is broken by silent streams flowing into the lake from the unexplored regions beyond. These riachos are covered with lotus leaves and flowers, and also the Victoria Regia in all its gorgeous beauty. Papyrusa, reeds and aquatic plants of all descriptions grow on the banks of the streams, making a home for the white stork or whiter garza. Looking into the clear warm waters you see little golden and red fishes, and on the bed of the stream shells of pearl.

On the south side of the Gaiba, at the foot of the mountains, the beach slopes gently down, and is covered with golden sand, in which crystals sparkle as though set in fine gold by some cunning workman. A Workman, yes—but not of earth, for nature is here untouched, unspoilt as yet by man, and the traveller can look right away from it to its Creator.

During our stay in these regions the courses of several of the larger streams were traced for some distance. On the Brazilian side there was a river up which we steamed. Not being acquainted with the channel, we had the misfortune to stick for two days on a tosca reef, which extended a distance of sixty-five feet. [Footnote: The finding of tosca at this point confirms the extent inland of the ancient Pampean sea.—Colonel Church, in "Proceedings of the Royal Geographical Society," January, 1902.] During this time, a curious phenomenon presented itself to our notice. In one day we clearly saw the river flow for six hours to the north-west, and for another six hours to the south-east. This, of course, proved to us that the river's course depends on the wind.

On the bank, right in front of where we lay, was a gnarled old tree, which seemed to be the home, or parliament house, of all the paroquets in the neighborhood. Scores of them kept up an incessant chatter the whole time. In the tree were two or three hanging nests, looking like large sacks suspended from the boughs. Ten or twenty birds lay in the same nest, and you might find in them, at the one time, eggs just laid, birds recently hatched, and others ready to fly. Sitting and rearing go on concurrently. I procured a tame pair of this lovely breed of paroquets from the Guatos. Their prevailing color was emerald green, while the wings and tail were made up of tints of orange, scarlet, and blue, and around the back of the bird was a golden sheen rarely found even in equatorial specimens. Whether the bird is known to ornithologists or not I cannot tell. One night our camp was pitched near an anthill, inhabited by innumerable millions of those insects. None of us slept well, for, although our hammocks were slung, as we thought, away from them, they troubled us much. What was my horror next morning when the sun, instead of lighting up the rainbow tints of my birds, showed only a black moving mass of ants! My parrots had literally been eaten alive by them!

But I am wandering on and the ship is still aground on the reef! After much hauling and pulling and breaking of cables, she at last was got off into deep water. We had not proceeded far, however, when another shock made the vessel quiver. Were we aground again? No, the steamer had simply pushed a lazy alligator out of its way, and he resented the insult by a diabolical scowl at us.

Continuing on our way, we entered another body of hitherto unexplored water, a fairy spot, covered with floating islands of lotus, anchored with aquatic cables and surrounded by palm groves. On the shallow, pebbly shore might be seen, here and there, scarlet flamingoes. These beautiful birds stood on one leg, knee deep, dreaming of their enchanted home. Truly it is a perfect paradise, but it is almost as inaccessible as the Paradise which we all seek. What long-lost civilizations have ruled these now deserted solitudes? Penetrate into the dark, dank forest, as I have done, and ask the question. The only answer is the howling of the monkeys and the screaming of the cockatoos. You may start when you distinctly hear a bell tolling, but it is no call to worship in some stately old Inca temple with its golden sun and silver moon as deities. It is the wonderful bell-bird, which can make itself heard three miles away, but it is found only where man is not. Ruins of the old Incan and older pre-Incan civilizations are come across, covered now with dense jungle, but their builders have disappeared. To have left behind them until this day ruins which rank with the pyramids for extent, and Karnak for grandeur, proves their intelligence.

The peculiar rasping noise you now hear in the undergrowth has nothing to do with busy civilization—'tis only the rattlesnake drawing his slimy length among the dead leaves or tangled reeds. No, all that is past, and this is an old new world indeed, and romance must not rob you of self possession, for the rattle means that in the encounter either he dies—or you.

Meanwhile the work on shore progressed. Paths were cut in different directions and the wonders of nature laid bare. The ring of the axe and the sound of falling trees marked the commencement of civilization in those far-off regions. Ever and anon a loud report rang out from the woods, for it might almost be said that the men worked with the axe in one hand and a rifle in the other. Once they started a giant tapir taking his afternoon snooze. The beast lazily got up and made off, but not before he had turned his piercing eyes on the intruders, as though wondering what new animals they were. Surely this was his first sight of the "lords of creation," and probably his last, for a bullet quickly whizzed after him. Another day the men shot a puma searching for its prey, and numerous were the birds, beasts and reptiles that fell before our arms. The very venomous jaracuc, a snake eight to twelve feet long, having a double row of teeth in each jaw, is quite common here.

The forests are full of birds and beasts in infinite variety, as also of those creatures which seem neither bird nor beast. There are large black howling monkeys, and little black-faced ones with prehensile tails, by means of which they swing in mid-air or jump from tree to tree in sheer lightness of heart. There is also the sloth, which, as its name implies, is painfully deliberate in its motions. Were I a Scotchman I should say that "I dinna think that in a' nature there is a mair curiouser cratur." Sidney Smith's summary of this strange animal is that it moves suspended, rests suspended, sleeps suspended, and passes its whole life in suspense. This latter state may also aptly describe the condition of the traveller in those regions; for man, brave though he may be, does not relish a vis—vis with the enormous anaconda, also to be seen there at most inconvenient times. I was able to procure the skins of two of these giant serpents.

The leader of the "forest gang," a Paraguayan, wore round his neck a cotton scapular bought from the priest before he started on the expedition. This was supposed to save him from all dangers, seen and unseen. Poor man, he was a good Roman Catholic, and often counted his beads, but he was an inveterate liar and thief.

Taking into consideration the wild country, and the adventurous mission which had brought us together, our men were not at all a bad class. One of them, however, a black Brazilian, used to boast at times that he had killed his father while he slept. In the quiet of the evening hour he would relate the story with unnatural gusto.

We generally slept on the deck of the steamer, each under a thin netting, while the millions of mosquitos buzzed outside—and inside when they could steal a march. Mosquitos? Why "mosquitos la Paris" was one of the items on our menu one day. The course was not altogether an imaginary one either. Having the good fortune to possess candles, I used sometimes to read under my gauzy canopy. This would soon become so black with insects of all descriptions as to shut out from my sight the outside world.

After carefully surveying the Bolivian shore, we fixed upon a site for the future port and town. [Footnote: The latitude of Port Quijarro is 17 47' 35", and the longitude, west of Greenwich, 57 44' 38". Height above the sea, 558 feet.] Planting a hugh palm in the ground, with a long bamboo nailed to the crown, we then solemnly unfurled the Bolivian flag. This had been made expressly for the expedition by the hands of Seora Quijarro, wife of the Bolivian minister residing in Buenos Ayres. As the sun for the first time shone upon the brilliant colors of the flag, nature's stillness was broken by a good old English hurrah, while the hunter and several others discharged their arms in the air, until the parrots and monkeys in the neighborhood must have wondered (or is wondering only reserved for civilized man?) what new thing had come to pass. There we, a small company of men in nature's solitudes, each signed his name to the Act of Foundation of a town, which in all probability will mean a new era for Bolivia. We fully demonstrated the fact that Puerto Quijarro will be an ideal port, through which the whole commerce of south-eastern Bolivia can to advantage pass.

Next day the Secretary drew out four copies of this Act. One was for His Excellency General Pando, President of the Bolivian Republic; another for the Mayor of Holy Cross, the nearest Bolivian town, 350 miles distant; a third for Seor Quijarro; while the fourth was enclosed in a stone bottle and buried at the foot of the flagstaff, there to await the erection of the first building. Thus a commencement has been made; the lake and shores are now explored. The work has been thoroughly done, and the sweat of the brow was not stinted, for the birds of the air hovered around the theodolite, even on the top of the highest adjacent mountain. [Footnote: The opening of the country must, from its geographical situation, be productive of political consequences of the first magnitude to South America.— Report of the Royal Geographical Society, January, 1902.]

At last, this work over and an exhaustive chart of the lake drawn up, tools and tents collected, specimens of soil, stones, iron, etc., packed and labelled, we prepared for departure.

The weather had been exceptionally warm and we had all suffered much from the sun's vertical rays, but towards the end of our stay the heat was sweltering—killing! The sun was not confined to one spot in the heavens, as in more temperate climes; here he filled all the sky, and he scorched us pitilessly! Only at early morning, when the eastern sky blushed with warm gold and rose tints, or at even, when the great liquid ball of fire dropped behind the distant violet- colored hills, could you locate him. Does the Indian worship this awful majesty out of fear, as the Chinaman worships the devil?

Next morning dawned still and portentous. Not a zephyr breeze stirred the leaves of the trees. The sweltering heat turned to a suffocating one. As the morning dragged on we found it more and more difficult to breathe; there seemed to be nothing to inflate our lungs. By afternoon we stared helplessly at each other and gasped as we lay simmering on the deck. Were we to be asphyxiated there after all? I had known as many as two hundred a day to die in one South American city from this cause. Surely mortal men never went through such awful, airless heat as this and lived. We had been permitted to discover the lake, and if the world heard of our death, would that flippant remark be used again, as with previous explorers, "To make omelettes eggs must be broken"?

However, we were not to melt. Towards evening the barometer, which had been falling all day, went lower and lower. All creation was still. Not a sound broke the awful quiet; only in our ears there seemed to be an unnatural singing which was painful, and we closed our eyes in weariness, for the sun seemed to have blistered the very eyeballs. When we mustered up sufficient energy to turn our aching eyes to the heavens, we saw black storm-clouds piling themselves one above another, and hope, which "springs eternal in the human breast," saw in them our hope, our salvation.

The fall of the barometer, and the howling of the monkeys on shore also, warned us of the approaching tempest, so we prepared for emergencies by securing the vessel fore and aft under the lee of a rugged sierra before the storm broke—and break it did in all its might.

Suddenly the wind swept down upon us with irresistible fury, and we breathed—we lived again. So terrific was the sweep that giant trees, which had braved a century's storms, fell to the earth with a crash. The hurricane was truly fearful. Soon the waters of the lake were lashed into foam. Great drops of rain fell in blinding torrents, and every fresh roll of thunder seemed to make the mountains tremble, while the lightning cleft asunder giant trees at one mighty stroke.



In the old legends of the Inca, read on the "Quipus," we find that Pachacamac and Viracocha, the highest gods, placed in the heavens "Nusta," a royal princess, armed with a pitcher of water, which she was to pour over the earth whenever it was needed. When the rain was accompanied by thunder, lightning, and wind, the Indians believed that the maiden's royal brother was teasing her, and trying to wrest the pitcher from her hand. Nusta must indeed have been fearfully teased that night, for the lightning of her eyes shot athwart the heavens and the sky was rent in flame.

Often in those latitudes no rain falls for long months, but when once the clouds open the earth is deluged! Weeks pass, and the zephyr breezes scarcely move the leaves of the trees, but in those days of calm the wind stores up his forces for a mighty storm. On this dark, fearful night he blew his fiercest blasts. The wild beast was affrighted from his lair and rushed down with a moan, or the mountain eagle screamed out a wail, indistinctly heard through the moaning sounds. During the whole night, which was black as wickedness, the wind howled in mournful cadence, or went sobbing along the sand. As the hours wore on we seemed to hear, in every shriek of the blast, the strange tongue of some long-departed Indian brave, wailing for his happy hunting-grounds, now invaded by the paleface. Coats and rugs, that had not for many months been unpacked, were brought out, only in some cases to be blown from us, for the wind seemed to try his hardest to impede our departure. The rain soaked us through and through. Mists rose from the earth, and mists came down from above. Next morning the whole face of nature was changed.

After the violence of the tempest abated we cast off the ropes and turned the prow of our little vessel civilizationward. When we entered the lake the great golden sun gave us a warm welcome, now, at our farewell, he refused to shine. The rainy season had commenced, but, fortunately for us, after the work of exploration was done. This weather continued—day after day clouds and rain. Down the rugged, time-worn face of the mountains foaming streams rushed and poured, and this was our last view—a good-bye of copious tears! Thus we saw the lake in sunshine and storm, in light and darkness. It had been our aim and ambition to reach it, and we rejoiced in its discovery. Remembering that "we were the first who ever burst into that silent sea," we seemed to form part of it, and its varying moods only endeared it to us the more. In mining parlance, we had staked out our claims there, for—

"O'er no sweeter lake shall morning break, Or noon cloud sail; No fairer face than this shall take The sunset's golden veil."



CHAPTER VII.

PIEDRA BLANCA.

In due time we again reached Piedra Blanca, and, notwithstanding our ragged, thorn-torn garments, felt we were once more joined on to the world.