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23 chapters
FOREWORD
FOREWORD
Though it stands by itself as a single entity, the present volume is a continuation and the conclusion of a four-year journey through Latin-America, and a companion-piece to my “Vagabonding Down the Andes.” The entrance of the United States into the World War made it impossible until the present time to continue that narrative from the point where the story above mentioned left it; but though several years have elapsed since the journey herein chronicled was made, the conditions encountered are,
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CHAPTER I THE SOUTH AMERICAN METROPOLIS
CHAPTER I THE SOUTH AMERICAN METROPOLIS
In Buenos Aires I became what a local newspaper called “office boy” to the American consul general. The latter had turned out to be a vicarious friend of long standing; his overworked staff was sadly in need of an American assistant familiar with Spanish, the one sent down from Washington months before having been lost in transit. Moreover, being a discerning as well as a kind-hearted man, the consul knew that even a rolling stone requires an occasional handful of moss. The salary was sufficient
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CHAPTER II ON THE STREETS OF BUENOS AIRES
CHAPTER II ON THE STREETS OF BUENOS AIRES
In my daily rounds as “errand boy” I soon discovered that the Porteño is not a particularly pleasant man with whom to do business. To begin with, he is overwhelmed with a sense of his own importance, of that of his city as the greatest, or at least soon to be greatest, city on the footstool, and seems constantly burdened with the dread of not succeeding in impressing those importances upon all visitors. There is as great an air of concentrated self-sufficiency in Buenos Aires as in New York, a s
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CHAPTER III FAR AND WIDE ON THE ARGENTINE PAMPAS
CHAPTER III FAR AND WIDE ON THE ARGENTINE PAMPAS
The traveler who visits only Buenos Aires will almost certainly carry away a mistaken notion of the Argentine. There is perhaps no national capital in the world so far in advance of, so out of proportion to its nation as is the great city on what the English called the “Plate.” We of the northern hemisphere are not accustomed to cities which are their countries to the extent that Buenos Aires is the Argentine. American editors and publicists expressed astonishment, and in some cases misgiving, w
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CHAPTER IV OVER THE ANDES TO CHILE
CHAPTER IV OVER THE ANDES TO CHILE
It was with keen regret that I cut myself off from Uncle Sam’s modest bounty when the time came to set out on a journey that was to carry me outside the Argentine and beyond the jurisdiction of our overworked consulate. But with a handful of gold sovereigns to show for my exertions in running errands and eluding Porteño prices, the day seemed at hand for continuing my intensive tour of South America. The “International,” of the “Buenos Aires al Pacífico” leaves the capital three times a week on
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CHAPTER V CHILEAN LANDSCAPES
CHAPTER V CHILEAN LANDSCAPES
Santiago rises late. I had wandered a long hour before I found a café open, and when I dropped in for coffee the man who spent half an hour preparing it grumbled, “Eight-thirty is very early in Santiago.” My second discovery was that the Chilean capital was squalid. Landing at the most northern of her three railroad stations—which turned out to be no worse than the other two—had been like dropping into Whitechapel; and the electric sign toward which I headed had brought me to the lowest type of
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CHAPTER VI HEALTHY LITTLE URUGUAY
CHAPTER VI HEALTHY LITTLE URUGUAY
One cold June evening, with more than a hundred days and eight hundred miles of travel in Chile and the Argentine behind me, I took final leave of Buenos Aires—not without regret, for all its ostentatious artificialities. Or it may be that my sorrow was at parting from the good friends with whom I had been wont to gather toward sunset in the café across from the consulate for a “cocktail San Martin,” one of whom now volunteered to see me as far as Montevideo just across the river—a hundred and t
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CHAPTER VII BUMPING UP TO RIO
CHAPTER VII BUMPING UP TO RIO
Upon the thirty-first parallel of south latitude, three hundred and sixty miles north of Montevideo, there is a town of divided allegiance, situated in both the smallest and the largest countries of South America. When the traveler descends from the “Uruguay Central” he finds it is named for Colonel Rivera, the Custer of Uruguay, who made the last stand against the Charrúa Indians and was killed by them in 1832. But as he goes strolling along the main street, gazing idly into the shop windows, h
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CHAPTER VIII AT LARGE IN RIO DE JANEIRO
CHAPTER VIII AT LARGE IN RIO DE JANEIRO
I awoke at dawn just as we were entering the harbor of Rio de Janeiro. On the extreme points of land on either side crouched two old-fashioned fortresses; back of one of them, scarcely a stone’s throw away, rose the sheer rock of the “Sugar Loaf,” like a gigantic upright thumb, and a moment later I saw the sun rise red over a great tumble of peaks along the shore, among which I recognized the “Hunchback” stooping broodingly over the almost invisible city. A haze hid all of this, except for a lon
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CHAPTER IX BRAZIL, PAST AND PRESENT
CHAPTER IX BRAZIL, PAST AND PRESENT
The Spaniard Pinzón had already sighted what is to-day Brazil when, in 1500, Pedro Alves Cabral, whom Portugal had sent out to get her share of this new world, accidentally discovered land at some point on the present Brazilian coast. He named it “Vera Cruz,” which not long afterward was changed to “Santa Cruz.” But neither name endured, for the only importance of the country during the first century and more after its discovery was its exportation of the fire-colored wood of a bright red tree w
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CHAPTER X MANNERS AND CUSTOMS OF THE CARIOCAS
CHAPTER X MANNERS AND CUSTOMS OF THE CARIOCAS
The mixture of races gives Rio a society very different from that of Buenos Aires; its elements are more distinct, more complex, more primitive, much less European. Probably it is the African blood in his veins even more than his Latin ancestry which gives the Carioca the emotionalism and the unexpected violences that often carry the individual or the population to excesses. The Brazilian character may be said to consist of Latin sensibility tinged with the African traits of superstition, fatali
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CHAPTER XI STRANDED IN RIO
CHAPTER XI STRANDED IN RIO
I had long expected far-famed Rio to be the climax and end of my South American wanderings. Portuguese civilization had never aroused any great interest within me; a glimpse of Brazil, with possibly a glance at Venezuela on my way home, to complete my acquaintance with the former Spanish colonies, seemed a fitting conclusion of a journey that had already stretched out into almost three years. When I had “fiscalized” the “Botanical Garden” street-car line for nearly a fortnight, therefore, and se
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CHAPTER XII A SHOWMAN IN BRAZIL
CHAPTER XII A SHOWMAN IN BRAZIL
Summer was beginning to seethe in earnest when, early on the first morning of October, I sped from the Praia do Flamengo to the miserable old station of the Central Railway of Brazil. Having a suitcase now and lacking time to wait for the second-class trailer in which persons so plebeian as to carry baggage may ride, the trip by taxi cost me—I mean Linton—9$600 instead of 400 reis! Nor was that the only shock I got at the station. On my journey northward from Uruguay, with my worldly possessions
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CHAPTER XIII ADVENTURES OF AN ADVANCE AGENT
CHAPTER XIII ADVENTURES OF AN ADVANCE AGENT
We steamed for hours out of the vast coffee-lined basin of Riberão Preto on the train which left at dawn and took all day to get to the next town of any size. Coffee-fields at length gave way to brush-covered campo and grazing cattle, the train winding in great curves around slight hills, like water seeking an outlet or a lost person wholly undecided which way to go. Early in the afternoon we crossed the Rio Grande into the State of Minas Geraes, which at once showed itself less developed, more
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CHAPTER XIV WANDERING IN MINAS GERAES
CHAPTER XIV WANDERING IN MINAS GERAES
On December 13th our alarm-clock having gone astray and being evidently unreplaceable in Brazil, where time means so little, I sat up all night in order to rout “Tut” out at four and send him off to the station, following him next day up on the cool and comfortable plateau to the second town of Minas Geraes. Juiz de Fora lies in a deep lap of wooded hills, with a conspicuous monument and statue of “Christo Redemptor” on a little parked hilltop high above yet close to the city, and revealing its
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CHAPTER XV NORTHWARD TO BAHIA
CHAPTER XV NORTHWARD TO BAHIA
More than five months had passed since my first arrival in Rio when, in the first days of the new year, I actually started on my homeward way again. The train from Nictheroy northward left at dawn, after the unfailing Brazilian habit, and I caught a last glimpse of sunrise over Rio and its bay before they passed finally from my sight. The mountains of the cool plateau lay blue-gray along the horizon all that day’s ride through the singing jungle. The flat littoral was considerably inhabited, but
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CHAPTER XVI EASTERNMOST AMERICA
CHAPTER XVI EASTERNMOST AMERICA
The new contract with “Colonel” Ruben permitted me to absent myself from the show and travel when and where I saw fit, he to pay my transportation only by the most direct routes between the towns in which the Kinetophone appeared. My faith in Ruben was always limited and my preference for land over sea travel notorious, hence I decided to strike off up-country a few days before the date set for us to sail for Maceió, not only to indulge my incurable wanderlust but to prepare for any sudden colla
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CHAPTER XVII THIRSTY NORTH BRAZIL
CHAPTER XVII THIRSTY NORTH BRAZIL
It was four in the afternoon when we sighted Parahyba, capital of the state of the same name, on its ridge beside a river of similar designation which we had been following for several hours. We were met by a considerable delegation, including the Danish manager of the “Cinema Rio Branco,” a young chap whom Vinhães had left behind to look after his interests, and the German owner of the “Pensão Allemã,” whom some unauthorized friend from Recife had told to prepare rooms for us. As the only other
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CHAPTER XVIII TAKING EDISON TO THE AMAZON
CHAPTER XVIII TAKING EDISON TO THE AMAZON
When he was quite a young man Edison failed to get to Brazil for the same reason that I had failed to get home from Rio—his ship did not sail. He had journeyed as far as New Orleans in quest of adventure, and before another chance came he met an old Spanish wanderer who advised him by all means to remain in the United States. It would probably be difficult to write on one page what humanity owes that unknown Spaniard. Later, when his inventions had begun to make him world famous, the former trai
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CHAPTER XIX UP THE AMAZON TO BRITISH GUIANA
CHAPTER XIX UP THE AMAZON TO BRITISH GUIANA
It would have been foolish to have sailed directly home from Pará, now that there remained only one unexplored corner of South America. Besides, it was fourteen months since I had done any real wandering, and to have returned at once to civilization from the easy experience of my Kinetophone days might have left me with as great a longing for the untrodden wilds and the open road as when I had set out three and a half years before. I am not merely one of those whose chief desire in life is to go
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CHAPTER XX STRUGGLING DOWN TO GEORGETOWN
CHAPTER XX STRUGGLING DOWN TO GEORGETOWN
Ben Hart lived about forty yards back in British Guiana. Having passed the frontier without sinking, we scrambled up the steep, sandy bank of a river that had changed its name from the Mahú to the Ireng while we were crossing it, strolled through a bit of bone-dry, bunch-grass prairie, and turned in at the first house. We could scarcely have missed it, for there was not another for many miles within the colony. Hart had built it himself, with the help of his “siwashes,” as he called the Indian b
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CHAPTER XXI ROAMING THE THREE GUIANAS
CHAPTER XXI ROAMING THE THREE GUIANAS
The white steamers of the “Compagnie Générale Transatlantique” take two leisurely days from Georgetown to Cayenne, which I spent in furbishing up my long unused French. I had not intended to leave British Guiana so soon, but it would still be there when I came back and transportation between the three European colonies of South America is not frequent enough to scorn any passing chance with impunity. Four typical Frenchmen of the tropics, in pointed beards not recently trimmed and the white toad
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CHAPTER XXII THE TRACKLESS LLANOS OF VENEZUELA
CHAPTER XXII THE TRACKLESS LLANOS OF VENEZUELA
Men have been known to make their way directly from British Guiana to Venezuela; but the effects of the World War were widespread and only by taking an ocean liner to Trinidad and transferring to an Orinoco river-steamer could I begin the next and last stage of my South American journey, a tramp across the Land of Bolívar—and Castro. By an extraordinary stroke of luck the Apure of the “Compañia Venezolana Costeira y Fluvial” was returning that very day, after a month of repairs in Port-of-Spain,
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