Читать книгу White Waters and Black - Gordon MacCreagh - Страница 4

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In La Paz I am in the throes of organizing a mule-train for the long trek over the mountains into the unknown beyonds. The director of the expedition writes me from New York that four tons of baggage are coming with him and the rest of the scientificos. I brought two tons of miscellaneous gear, myself; and I stand aghast at the contemplation of this mess of impedimenta. Hannibal crossed the Alps with less. I'm wondering what they're going to do with it all. I know, of course, that this expedition has been blurbed in the press as "The most perfectly equipped that has ever started to explore South America." But six tons of gear for eight men! One thousand, five hundred pounds apiece! I have traveled over half of Asia with less than a hundred.

However, far be it from me to carp. It has always been my ambition to connect with one of these luxurious expeditions that one reads of. There will be tents, large and roomy, and cots to sleep upon, and fireless cookers and canned delicacies and a physician and a case of all the medicaments and most of the instruments known to science.

All these wonders were rumored in New York before I came away to collect mules; and all are so pleasingly different. I have traveled hitherto with a blanket roll and a frying-pan and a medical case consisting of a bottle of quinine and a Lauder-Brunton snake-bite outfit.

A train of eighty pack-mules I am collecting, calculating a hundred and fifty pounds per mule; and ten more mules to carry the irreducible minimum of fodder for the eighty, for we shall be crawling over mean, bleak Andean passes for eight days or so before we begin to reach the lower levels where things grow that mules may eat; and nine more mules to carry as many arrieros, who are the men who must drive the eighty and ten; and eight more saddle-mules to carry eight intrepid explorers who are about to risk their lives in the wilds of the uncharted Amazon jungles for the sake of science. I quote the last without shame. It is from a New York newspaper.

Mules, mules, mules! There aren't that many mules in all La Paz, for the quite staggering reason that there isn't anything for them to eat except the green oat and barley stalks that the Indians grow for fodder. Which makes idle mules expensive. From the north and from the south and from the east and from the west I gather mules. I contract for them to be delivered upon a certain day. Not before, lest they eat up all the green barley stalks in the Altiplano; and not after, lest those that come on time run up demurrage bills. I am steeped in mulish calculations.

Alas for me that I am unable to do sums!—that figures give me an immediate brain panic accompanied by paralysis! And alas again that my good assistant has caused a frightful confusion by forgetting nearly all the instructions that I gave him; and by forgetting, over and above that, just what he has done; and by forgetting, yet miraculously further, where he has mislaid his notebook of expenditures!

I try to disperse some of the gloom attendant upon one hundred and seventeen mules and nine mule-drivers and one personal assistant by unpacking the weapons for the expedition and cleaning out the grease and testing them; and I am inspired, for I had the selecting of them. A beautiful and comforting collection.

The City of the Peace of Our Lady of Ayacucho. La Paz, Under the Shadow of its Tutelary Deity, The Snow Peak of Ilimane.

The La Paz River Hand-laundry, where Clothes are Washed with Icy Water and Elbow Grease.

Where the Gringos Live in La Paz, The Street of the Twenty-first of October

Rifles: four, one to each two men. Savage 25-3000—pretty, pretty guns! Balanced so that one can shoot with one hand, which I maintain is the first requirement for unknown country where sudden things may happen when one is carrying in the other hand scientific equipment which can't be put down in a hurry. Trajectory, owing to the phenomenal velocity, is point-blank up to three hundred yards, which makes snap-shooting a snap. Weight, five and three quarter pounds, for which those scientific gentlemen will bless me during each long jungle hike. Yet muzzle-impact, owing to that same velocity, in spite of the light-caliber bullet, is nearly a ton. Sufficient to knock endways anything in all the Americas, no matter where one hits it. Two thousand rounds for the same.

Shot-guns: four, one to each two men, to interchange with the rifles. Stevens, sixteen-gage. Hammerless, of course; for hammers in the jungles gather twenty pounds of trailing vines per minute. A good serviceable gun without any frills to it. I should have preferred twelve-gage; for sixteen is feeble on water-fowl and has poor range. But sixteen seems to be the standard size in South America; and I hope to be able to replenish ammunition at Manáos. I'm thinking of the weight; and shot-guns will be used more than rifles; three or four times as much, at least.

Revolvers: Colt's army .38. Thirty of them. These at the instance of the director of the expedition, who plans to arm every mule-driver and camp-follower against the marauding bandits who he insists infest the Andean passes. Though for my own choice I carry a luger automatic pistol. It is good enough for snap-shots on deer and brush turkeys, and frequently obviates the necessity of carrying a rifle.

A noble and an inspiring battery, of which I am proud. Yet I know that those scientific gentlemen who will shortly arrive will, each and severally, fight with me about my selection; for every man is a crank about the gun he prefers to trust his life to; and scientists are cranks anyway. But it was necessary to have standardization, on account of the ammunition question.

The Bolivian Minister of War looked at my arsenal askance and asked whether we were planning a revolution somewhere down in the Yungas country. But despite the nervous revolutionary conditions existing here, he passed my stuff through with the charming courtesy that I have met in all Bolivian gentlemen.

Wherein I take issue with certain well-known travelers who write disparagingly of South Americans in general. I haven't met all of them yet, it's true. But I rise here to say that I, a stranger rushing about and asking a host of troublesome questions, have met more sheer courtesy and desire to help, here in La Paz, than I have found in any other part of the world—and I have done much profitless journeying to and fro.

I have been planning routes—reason for a good deal of my troublesome questioning. It is baffling to find that nobody knows what happens over beyond the mountaintops. People have been there, plenty of them, but few have ever come back. No, not cannibals and sudden death and heroic adventure. It means simply that when one has once traveled down those transandine rivers, which are the only highways to the lower tropical plains, the return is so frightfully difficult.

Vergil wrote something—didn't he?—about its being a considerable manoeuver to get out of hell? "...Sed revocare gradus, superasque revolvere ad astres, hic labor hic opus est." And from what they tell me, the lower jungles are very much like hell.

There is one recognized route away to the north, and another away to the south. I haven't been able to meet anybody in all La Paz who has personally traveled either, all the way. But even if I had, it wouldn't help me very much, since the main object of the expedition is to discover and map an unknown route. How is one to gather information about an unknown route?

The Minister of the Interior lays before me all his maps—wonderful charts showing a Yungas dotted with prosperous little towns. The Department of the Yungas, by the way, is the transandine sub-tropical and tropical jungle which, with the Department of the Beni, stretches away off to the far borders of Brazil.

"Who lives in these towns?" I ask the minister.

He is delightfully naïve about his ignorance. "Quien sabe? Perhaps Indians, perhaps fugitives from justice. At all events, they are people who pay no taxes."

How, then, does he know that the towns are there?

He doesn't. He shrugs with comical disgust and laughs.

"But, my good friend, I am not a maker of maps!"

I ask him about a mysterious lake that we are to locate and explore. There it is on the map, as solid and as definite as La Paz itself. The minister obliterates it with a pencil. "Inexplorada!" He scratches out a section of some two hundred thousand square miles. "About this lake, I know, señor. Nobody has seen it. We have rumors that it exists and that mysterious beasts live in its depths, but no more than stories brought in by hunters of feathers. But ah, señor! now—" his face lights up with enthusiasm—"now, thanks to your so glorious and intrepid expedition, now we shall know where to place this lake on our future maps!"

One gathers that the Minister of the Interior isn't awfully excited about that tropical region back of the mountains. But one piece of information seems to take definite shape out of all this questioning.

Espía, the head-waters of navigation on the Bopi River. If we can once contrive to reach the town of Espía, all our troubles will be at an end; for there we can make arrangements for boats and guides and all that we need; and there is a mission or some such thing, too, which will be helpful. The minister will see that I get a letter to the head of the mission, who will immediately place himself at the service of the expedition.

But it becomes impressed upon me that I must myself draw a map, so that one may follow us intrepid expedicionistas upon our so glorious journey for the advancement of science and the development of that beautiful Bolivia—to say nothing of lesser countries like Brazil. Let me outline the projected jaunt which is to occupy perhaps two years of the time of eight white Americans.

It has been determined that shall we find this Bopi River, follow it, we hope, to the Beni River, mapping and collecting everything collectible as we go, and proceed on down to the Madeira River, where we come into known country. Since we are actuated by a fierce zeal for exploration, we scorn this splendid tributary of the Amazon from the south and shoot on down to Manáos by river steamer.

This is to be the first leg of the expedition. At Manáos, having traveled half-way across the continent, we rest up and replenish our gear; four more tons of stuff are to meet us at Manáos, of which twenty pounds will be quinine. Then we shall work our way up one of the northern tributaries of the Amazon, probably the Rio Negro or the Rio Waupés, and try to find another "unknown route" over the mountains to Bogotá in Colombia. Thence home.

This uncomfortable passion for unknown routes is explained by the simple axiom that where nobody has been before, somebody may find something that nobody else has; and by the corollary that scientists risk their lives and ruin their health for the sole purpose of discovering a "new species."

A little joy has come into my life. I have found a giant financier, a contractor for pack-mules, who wants to make a deal for all the mules I need, and who thinks he knows the way to this Espía place. He has never been there himself, but he has been part of the way, and the rest of the trail has been described to him by a man whose name he has forgotten.

This is the most comfortingly tangible piece of information I have yet been able to unearth. Espía exists, and a man who thinks he can find it is available. My troubles are already over. I think I shall close with this jewel of a contractor.

Much excitement is afoot in the city. The newspaper has printed a long imaginative article about the expedition. The rest of the hardy scientific adventurers will arrive shortly, bringing with them the million dollars which is expected of every American expedition. Our exploration of the unknown back country will be of inestimable value to Bolivia. We are outfitted with the most modern equipment for the discovery of oil as well as of mines of precious stones, which, as everybody knows, exist in vast quantities, waiting only for men brave enough to go and discover them. We expect to find, in the dim jungle fastnesses hitherto untrod by man, queer beasts and fishes; dinosaurs, in fact. There is an inspired picture of a man on horseback being pursued by a rapacious ostrich with a beak like a snapping-turtle's.

I, who have been going about my business with decent reserve, find myself the center of an unpleasant notoriety, and am besieged by applicants for jobs—from dark-eyed, vampish stenographers to Chinese cooks. The Bolivian Government opens tentative negotiations for the attachment to the expedition of two young officers of the army, doubtless for the purpose of keeping an eye on the oil and mines of precious stones.

Feeling myself in a manner responsible for the fair name of our expedition, I go to the editor and demand of him by what process he has evolved this stirring dream of adventure. He points to a New York newspaper: "Interview with the Director of the Expedition." Strange! That doesn't sound like the accurate ambitions of science. New York newspapers do get hold of queer tales for their Sunday supplements.

The delights of organization become more varied every day.

My assistant has fled! Folded his tent like that elusive Arab and as silently stolen away.

I went on a trip into the mountains to look over a possible pass, and, since his constitution couldn't stand the altitudes, I left him behind. It appears that as he brooded alone upon the approaching horrors of the trail and of the jungle and of wild Indians, he was seized with an infection of the attitude of the good townspeople, who look upon such an exploration as sheer heroic madness; and he packed up in a panic and fled. I learn from the American consul who made out his passport that he was headed for the Arica coast and a steamboat and that he seemed to be verging upon nervous breakdown.

Upon the whole I am relieved, for the man was not physically robust enough to embark upon such a trip. Also, his flight is not without recompense. There is always a certain satisfaction to one's personal vanity in being able to play the deus ex machina. I shall be able to satisfy the adventurous yearnings of one of the clamorous applicants for a job.

I write my ex-assistant off as Number One, the first to leave the expedition. A few days remain to me for selecting a substitute, who must be built of sterner stuff. And then the city will be honored by the arrival of six eminent men of wisdom, en masse. The municipality is going to have a band for them.