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ACROSS THE ANDES
ACROSS THE ANDES
BY CHARLES JOHNSON POST A Tale of Wandering Days Among the Mountains of Bolivia and the Jungles of the Upper Amazon Illustrated by the Author NEW YORK OUTING PUBLISHING COMPANY MCMXII Copyright, 1912, by OUTING PUBLISHING COMPANY All rights reserved Thanks are due to Harper and Brothers and to the Century Company for permission to incorporate as chapters in this volume, articles appearing in Harper’s Magazine and The Century, and to the latter for the drawings and paintings accompanying such art
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THE TROPICS
THE TROPICS
“The legion that never was listed,” The soft-lilting rhythm and song, The starlight, and shadowy tropics, The palms—and all that belong; The unknown that ever persisted In dreams that were epics of bliss, Of glory and gain without effort— And the visions have faded, like this. From dusk to dawn, when the heat is gone, The home thoughts nestle and throb, And the drifting breeze through the dim, gray trees Stirs up the fancies wan Of the old, cool life and a white man’s wife With a white man’s bab
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CHAPTER I OLD PANAMA, AGAMEMNON, AND THE GENIAL PICAROON
CHAPTER I OLD PANAMA, AGAMEMNON, AND THE GENIAL PICAROON
ANNOUNCED THAT A PERSON, A SOMEBODY, WAS AWAITING ME BELOW. It was in Panama—the old Panama—and in front of the faded and blistered hotel that I met him again. A bare-footed, soft-voiced mozo had announced that a person, a somebody, was awaiting me below. Down in the broken-tiled lobby a soured, saffron clerk pointed scornfully to the outside. Silhouetted against the hot shimmer that boiled up from the street was a jaunty figure in a native, flapping muslin jacket, native rope-soled shoes, and d
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CHAPTER II THE FIGHTING WHALE AND CHINAMEN IN THE CHICKEN COOP
CHAPTER II THE FIGHTING WHALE AND CHINAMEN IN THE CHICKEN COOP
The hot days drifted by in easy sociability, dividing themselves into a pliant routine. The morning was devoted to golf on the canvas covered deck over a nine-hole course chalked around ventilators, chicken-coops and deck-houses. Crook-handled canes furnished the clubs and three sets of checkers were lost overboard before we reached the Guayas River, the little round men skidding flatly over the deck with a pleasing accuracy only at the end to rise up maliciously on one ear and roll, plop, into
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CHAPTER III THROUGH A TROPICAL QUARANTINE
CHAPTER III THROUGH A TROPICAL QUARANTINE
One morning when the official sanitary junta—the port doctor, the town druggist, and three shopkeepers, all of whom except the first, were contentedly selling us supplies—were making their inspection within easy hailing distance the returning Peruvian diplomat dealt himself a hand in the game. In a few pointed remarks he demanded that they send a doctor on board to make an examination. The port captain returned an indignant oration in which, after paying tribute to the ancestral deeds of the dip
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CHAPTER IV A FORCED MARCH ACROSS THE DESERT OF ATACAMA
CHAPTER IV A FORCED MARCH ACROSS THE DESERT OF ATACAMA
The stand-by bell of the Limari tinkled from her engine-room, our baggage and freight were safely stowed in the wallowing Peruvian lanchas alongside, and the Bolivian mail followed. The Captain of the Port and the Inspector of Customs balanced down the swaying gangway and dropped into the gig alongside. We followed. Before us stretched the long, barren line of rocky coast, fading away in the soft mist of a Peruvian winter. For it is winter here, damp and chill, in September. Directly ahead is a
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CHAPTER V AREQUIPA THE CITY OF CHURCHES
CHAPTER V AREQUIPA THE CITY OF CHURCHES
The baking heat of the desert boiled in through the open doors of the freight car, the blazing sun beat down upon the roof, and, inside, a thousand essences from its variegated life simmered and blended. Together with some half dozen of assorted native passengers we had jammed ourselves in among a jumble of food-stuffs and mining hardware in transit. The box car banged and groaned and occasionally halted on the desert at the hail of some wayfarer whom we helped cordially up and stirred into the
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CHAPTER VI THROUGH THE INCA COUNTRY
CHAPTER VI THROUGH THE INCA COUNTRY
Slowly at first we rose, skirting the great foothills or gently ascending valleys and always crossing some dismantled relic of the dead Inca empire. Then we plunged boldly into the mountain chain teetering over spidery bridges across gorges whose bottom was a ribbon of foam or where the rails followed a winding shelf cut in the face of the mountain, where an empty beer bottle flung from the car window broke on the tracks below over which the train had been crawling a quarter of an hour before. W
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CHAPTER VII OUT OF LA PAZ BY PACK TRAIN
CHAPTER VII OUT OF LA PAZ BY PACK TRAIN
Here in La Paz were completed the final arrangements for reaching the interior; this was the last of the easy traveling, from now on it would be by pack train and saddle, raft and canoe, and to gather them we advanced from one interior town to another as best we might. It was the third and last of the Andean series that was to be crossed, and it was also the highest and hardest. Daily we haggled with arrieros over pack mules or rode to their corrals in the precipitous suburbs of the city and bet
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CHAPTER VIII THE BACK TRAIL AMONG THE AYMARAS
CHAPTER VIII THE BACK TRAIL AMONG THE AYMARAS
At first the plateau was dotted with the lines of converging burro- and llama-trains, but, as the morning passed, there was nothing but the lonely distance of the plateau, with here and there a tiny speck of a solitary pack-train. The air had warmed rapidly under the sun; the light breeze had the touch of a northern spring, and I yielded to the seductive suggestion and strapped my heavy woolen coat to the saddle. Five minutes later I halted and gladly put it on once more, for the thin air was tr
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CHAPTER IX OVER THE FIRST GREAT PASS
CHAPTER IX OVER THE FIRST GREAT PASS
The intermittent fog and mist turned to a cold rain that drove in stinging gusts square in our faces. Slowly we climbed, and went a few miles beyond the divide. A huge pile of loose stones marked the spot, a tribute to the particular god of this high place that had slowly accumulated with the offerings of Aymarás that had passed the spot. The pile was larger than an Aymará hut, and on the summit was a little cross of twigs from which a few strips of calico fluttered in the gale. At the base were
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CHAPTER X THE TOLL GATE AND MAPIRI
CHAPTER X THE TOLL GATE AND MAPIRI
Packing the mules in the bitter winter dawn was slow work. The rawhide lashings were frozen stiff; our saddles were covered with sleet, before we could mount and swing into them; two arrieros were drunk together with Agamemnon, but the latter alone was helpless and useless after the tender care he had bestowed on a secreted bottle of alcohol. His usual chocolate grin was lost in the agonies of “de mis’ry in de haid, sar,” and, utterly dejected, he rode along with his wooly skull naked to the sle
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CHAPTER XI WAITING FOR THE LECCOS
CHAPTER XI WAITING FOR THE LECCOS
FOR a month we waited in this tiny straggling rectangle of thatched huts before the balsas or callapos could get up to us to move our outfit down the river. Somewhere below us on the turbulent river Lecco crews were toiling up against the current, dragging and clawing their way through narrow cañons, hanging fast in places to the bare rock, and again helped by the long, tropical vines that drooped to the swift water. Twice they had been beaten back by sudden rises in the river; the third time th
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CHAPTER XII OFF ON THE LONG DRIFT
CHAPTER XII OFF ON THE LONG DRIFT
SLOWLY THE RAFTS SANK UNDER THE WEIGHT. A long line of half-naked Leccos trotted across the grass-covered bluff and disappeared over the edge and down the steep path to the river, where our clumsy rafts swung and eddied in the boiling current. They grunted and sweated and laughed as they threw the heavy packages of our outfit on their shoulders, for they could swing a hundred and fifty or two hundred pounds as carelessly as you could handle a valise. Steadily the raised platforms on the rafts pi
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CHAPTER XIII THE LECCO TRIBE
CHAPTER XIII THE LECCO TRIBE
THESE LECCOS ARE AMONG THE FINEST INDIANS. These Leccos are among the finest Indians, or semi-civilized savages, I have met. They are sturdy and muscular, with a distinctly Malaysian suggestiveness, and very superior to any of the surrounding savage tribes of the interior. Yet they have neither religion nor superstition; they have no legend or tradition, and their only historical recollection is from the time when quinine bark was the main river commerce instead of rubber—the time of the “Great
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CHAPTER XIV DRIFTING DOWN THE RIO MAPIRI
CHAPTER XIV DRIFTING DOWN THE RIO MAPIRI
That night we made camp on a sand bar in one of the more open reaches of water and close to the river’s edge. With their short machetes the Leccos cut some canes, unlashed our tentage from the platforms, and rigged a rough shelter. In the balmy air of the sunset there was no indication that it was needed, but during this season a tropical rain comes up with the suddenness of a breeze, and pitching a tent in a driving downpour in the darkness of perdition is no light pleasure. For themselves, the
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CHAPTER XV SHOOTING THE RATAMA
CHAPTER XV SHOOTING THE RATAMA
At daybreak we left the Ysipuri barraca and emptying our rifles in salute to the Englishman’s Winchester, we started on for the next rapids, the greatest rapids on the river—the Ratama. Two miles above the Ratama the walls of the gorge began to close in steep cliffs. Here and there shrubs clung on little niches, while from the high edges long vines hung down and were whipped taut in the swift, glassy current below. The air began to cool in the deep shadows, and there was a damp chill in it like
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CHAPTER XVI OPENING UP THE JUNGLE
CHAPTER XVI OPENING UP THE JUNGLE
Among the Cholo workmen it developed that each preferred to cook for himself with his own little pot and over his own individual fire. It was too great a waste of time and energy to have eighteen men building eighteen fires three times a day in order to cook their fifty-four meals. So a compromise was effected. The original Cholo cook—who was good for nothing—kept up one long fire on which the row of pots simmered. After each meal enough would be issued to each pot owner for the next meal. In th
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CHAPTER XVII TWENTY-THREE DAYS AGAINST THE CURRENT
CHAPTER XVII TWENTY-THREE DAYS AGAINST THE CURRENT
The next day the river was harder and steeper and the banks offered more difficulties either for poling or dragging. From one side to the other we shifted, losing hundreds of yards in crossing as we swept down with the muddy current. And yet these crossings were never made until the last moment when the poles could find no bottom and the steep bank came down like a cliff into from fifteen to fifty feet of water. The little rapids that were nothing more than riffles coming down—that is, in compar
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CHAPTER XVIII BY PACK MULE THROUGH THE JUNGLE
CHAPTER XVIII BY PACK MULE THROUGH THE JUNGLE
It was useless to attempt to battle with the river further. Above, before Mapiri could be reached, were narrower cañons where there were only handholds and often not that, where the cañons were often nothing more than a polished flume of rock. It had taken the Leccos two failures and over a month of the most gruelling work when they finally reached us before in that village, and then they had been living on berries and roots and palm-nuts for the last two days. So we decided on the overland trai
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CHAPTER XIX THE INDIAN UPRISING
CHAPTER XIX THE INDIAN UPRISING
It was in the cold dusk of the high altitude and tingling with the chill winds that blew from Mount Sorata when we clattered through the streets of Achicachi. Little crystals of ice were already forming in the stagnant pools and little flurries of snow stung as it whistled through the dull streets of this ancient town. On the edge of Lake Titicaca, this ancient town of Achicachi is the home of petty smugglers who can run their contraband in the native straw boats across from the Peruvian shores.
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CHAPTER XX AMBUSHED BY LADRONES
CHAPTER XX AMBUSHED BY LADRONES
Early in the morning I was off; some of the celebrants of the night before were strewn along the streets, still drunk, and among them the sociable hogs rooted or wandered. The horse I looked over anxiously, but he was sound as a dollar and even a little frisky in the keen air. Once in a while an Indian was to be seen plowing a tiny patch of the Andean plateau with a bull and a crooked tree trunk or here and there a single figure plodding the trail. In the afternoon I caught up with a Spaniard, t
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CHAPTER XXI THE MUSIC OF THE AYMARÁS
CHAPTER XXI THE MUSIC OF THE AYMARÁS
This Indian music is interesting and I was fortunate in being able to have some preserved in musical form for repetition. In the remains of the vast Indian nation shattered by Pizarro, the Empire of the Incas, every man and boy, almost from the age when he can walk, is an adept on their simple reed flutes and Pandean pipes; the drum he merely thumps. They are a musical race; there are songs and airs for each season, for the planting, for the harvest, for the valorous deeds of the vanished caciqu
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CHAPTER XXII BACK HOME
CHAPTER XXII BACK HOME
More difficulty developed when I, in an amiable frame of mind bought a chance in a watch from a Sorata man, for when a man moves from a village he raffles off all his household goods and his own and his wife’s jewelry. This raffle was made famous by the fact that I won something. I won the watch; and the next morning was arrested by the intendente on the complaint of a thrifty Soratañian that the whole machinery of the raffle had been undermined and debauched, and Bolivia dishonored in order tha
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CHAPTER XXIII OFF ACROSS THE CONTINENT IN A BATALON
CHAPTER XXIII OFF ACROSS THE CONTINENT IN A BATALON
A clumsy cart, with its two wheels cross-cut from a single mahogany log, and slowly dragged by a pair of mud covered oxen, crawled across the open space before the settlement that had been left, after the Spanish custom, in crude reminder of a plaza. Under the midday tropic sun the quivering heat-waves boiled up from the baking ground and through them the straggling line of high-peaked, palm-thatched, cane houses shimmered in the glare. Under the torrent of heat the jungle sounds were silenced,
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CHAPTER XXIV THROUGH THE RUBBER COUNTRY
CHAPTER XXIV THROUGH THE RUBBER COUNTRY
As we tied up, the next day, I saw the crew quietly sneaking their bows and arrows and feeble shot-guns out of the batalon. I stopped them, and, buckling on my cartridge-belt, prepared to go along. We all went, though it was a very hopeless party of Tacanas; but my luck had turned. Not a hundred yards from the bank we ran into a troop of six big, black spider-monkeys, and I got the entire troop; only one needed a second shot. It was pure luck, for shooting these monkeys is virtually wing-shootin
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CHAPTER XXV A NEW CREW AND ANOTHER BATALON
CHAPTER XXV A NEW CREW AND ANOTHER BATALON
One night we made no camp at sunset, but steadily paddled in the darkness; for the journey was nearly over for the Tacanas, and their paddles dipped in happy, eager rhythm. Then the canoe was beached under what, in the dim starlight, appeared to be a cliff; the crew carried the cargo up the high bank, and there, in scattered groups of twinkling lights, spread the settlement of Riba Alta. It is purely a trading-center where the big rubber houses have their headquarters in widely scattered, high-f
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CHAPTER XXVI THE FALLS OF THE MADEIRA AND HOME
CHAPTER XXVI THE FALLS OF THE MADEIRA AND HOME
Slowly cataract after cataract was passed Madeira, Misericordia, Riberon—with three long portages that consumed a day and a half—Araras, Tres Hermanos, Perdonera, Paredon, Calderon de Infierno (“Kettle of Hell”), which was a series of cool, shaded channels among a multitude of islands, and finally resulted in but a single portage around a tiny cascade, although in high water the Calderon de Infierno lived well up to its name; then came Geraos and Teotonio, two cataracts that challenged compariso
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