Читать книгу White Waters and Black - Gordon MacCreagh - Страница 5

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Están llegado. They have arrived. I am impressed.

The tumult and the shouting dies, The captains and the kings depart. Still stands thine ancient sacrifice— An humble and a contrite heart.

That represents me. I have duly rescued them from the adulation of the mob and have set them up on high seats amidst the piles of baggage in my house; and I stand now in all humility before so awe-inspiring an aggregation.

An Eminent M.D., Director of the Expedition. An Eminent Entomologist, assistant director. An Eminent Botanist. An Eminent Ichthyologist. An Eminent Statistician. And an Eminent Scribe, aged twenty-one, who knows more about everything than all the rest of them.

I gaze upon them and I wonder—as I have wondered before. They are men of wide diversity of interests and of opinions hard-set in the knowledge which they know is theirs. How shall we all bear with one another in the enforced close association of a long and arduous expedition? As we progress into the interior and as wearisome time progresses with us, and with time all the cumulations of difficult travel are rendered more difficult by the inevitable malaria? Very set indeed are two or three of them, as I judge them upon this short acquaintance. Difficult, therefore, to get on with when tempers are ruffled and nerves on edge.

Let me not convey the impression that I am disparaging. These are splendid men who devote their lives to arduous study and toilsome travel for salaries that immigrant mechanics would scorn. Yet for the very reason that they are so zealously ready to sacrifice themselves to the sacred cause of their particular branch of science, will they be impatient with all things that interfere with the strait and narrow furtherance of that cause.

Some of them have been professors. They have taught classes at college. Their opinions, therefore, are inclined to be pedagogically didactic. The Director is amusing in this respect. He is a good deal older than the others,—with the exception of the Statistician,—and he quite evidently expects them to defer to him as would his pupils. I can see already that this irks them.

I wonder. I wonder. Men isolated in far mining-camps sometimes arrive at a pitch of hate in which they shoot one another. What will these professors do?

I am realizing that they will afford a fascinating study in psychology as our journey progresses. I shall attempt, as I record my observations, to show something of the effect of the trials of tropical jungles upon the tempers of eight white men cooped up in a camp together.

Of seven, I should say. For shall I be able to psychoanalyze myself? I don't know. Without doubt, I, the recorder, will shine as an angel of forbearing patience against the tantrums of the rest. For, after all, I can but record how they react upon me, myself remaining the basis of measurement.

I flatter myself already that I shall be less affected than some, at least, of the others, for two perfectly logical reasons: (1) because I have done much of this sort of travel before; and (2) because I like it and have come on this expedition with the firm conviction that I am going to have a good time.

In three days we start, provided that all the rush of last-minute hold-ups that come to every big expedition, however efficient may be the transportation expert, can be satisfactorily smoothed out. The most awkward of the tangles is about mules. Everything dealing with mules comes inevitably to a tangle. The tale of this one is a preliminary insight into the difficulties which I anticipate with the professorial complex.

I have closed a contract with the mule-financier for the whole train and am ready to start. Such were written instructions. Now it devolves that a certain great American mining company, eager to do their bit for the advancement of science, offer through their local manager to place their organization at the service of the expedition.

They can convey the men and about half the baggage, by train and by auto-truck, over the southern route to their farthest mine; and there they can arrange for guides and pack-mules to go on to Espía, a ten-day journey instead of fifteen.

This is, of course, munificently generous. The Director can hardly afford to refuse an offer which will save so much money to the expedition. Yet my contracts have been made under the seal of the American consul. The Director, in his zeal to accomplish as much as possible for the holy cause of science with the funds at his disposal, insists that half the contract be repudiated. A startling instance, here, of the type of mind that will sacrifice everything to the furtherance of the cause. The Director's naïve argument is that the contractor ought to be well pleased with a contract for half the baggage, since that will be more business than he has ever done in the course of a normal year. Of course it is; and the contractor will be pleased enough to get it; and, since he is a half-breed, he probably expects to be outmanoeuvered, one way or another, by the white men. But that, it seems to me, is scarcely the way for an eminent director to view an agreement, even if it is with a mere mule-packer.

It is an impasse. I can get the Director's point of view. He must conserve the funds. But the mule-packer must have some sort of hazy, unscientific point of view. I bow before higher authority. All that I can do is to introduce the director to the mule-man and let them argue it out in the office of the American consul.

In the meanwhile I go shopping with the Statistician, who has suddenly awakened to the horrid realization that he must ride on a mule amongst craggy passes and precipitous paths. He has been so absorbed in calculations that the thought has never entered his mind before. He had arrived here by train, and he would presently, after sundry further uncomfortable travels, be seated in a boat at Espía. He didn't know how; nor was it his business to inquire. He is rather indignant at the idea that he must risk his life in this manner.

I can foresee much distress for this gentleman. He has never ridden on anything wilder than a Pullman car. He has never slept in a tent. He has never fired a gun. He is particular about his food. I shudder for the awakening that will soon be his.

An irascible old wolf, he seems to be, too. He has quarreled with every member of the party already, and he is at this writing not on speaking-terms with any one of them. They tell me that on the steamer, when they threw dice for drinks and he lost, he refused to pay, insisting that they had framed him up for a joke. Yet, underlying his eccentricity is a vast store of kindliness. If I find him a saddle with high pommel and horn and straps wherewith he may be fastened into his seat, he promises me a whole pound of tobacco which somebody gave him as a parting gift and which he doesn't smoke. Neither do I: it's one of those intimately advertised brands.

Ilimane, meaning in Aymará 'The Splendid God.' In the Foreground are eucalyptus trees carefully imported and acclimatized.

The Serrated Cliffs of La Paz Gorge

So, in the middle of the confusion of getting packs made up and attending to the hundred and one last-minute commissions, I must go with this difficult old gentleman and scour the market for a fool-proof saddle. And then he tells me his typewriter needs fixing.

It must be clear to the reader of this record that the equipment of a transportation expert should include a wishing-cap and a magic carpet.

Last minute news: The mule matter has been settled. The Director has come to an "amicable" agreement with the contractor. The latter gets as much as the mining company can't carry for nothing. The contractor seems to be fairly satisfied. A little quiet sleuthing elicits the fact that he didn't have enough mules anyway; he was about twenty short of the minimum requirement for carrying our six tons. He thought that we should get away on the customary mañana.

I found a wonderful saddle for the Statistician—horn and crupper and flaps and straps, and stamped leather all over. A bargain at twenty-three dollars.

But he hasn't given me the tobacco.

I have also fixed his typewriter. He had come to the end of the ribbon and didn't know how to reverse it.

To-morrow morning we start, via the mine. I'm getting my contractor off this afternoon. He bets, with a grin, that he will get there first in spite of the rival auto-trucks.

The Director, who has a bandit complex regarding all South Americans, indulges in a spasm of gloom, and wonders whether or not he will get there at all.

I am perfectly willing to go with the contractor. But, "My God!" moans the Director, who then will expertly transport the mule-train we must make up at the mine, and who will tuck a certain helpless scientific gentleman into bed during those ten days of haphazard tenting along the trail?

To me it is all one. I should have a very much easier time with the contractor. But, "for the sake of science," I cheerfully accept the position of nurse-maid.

Is there going to be any interest in the orthodox detailed description of travel?—"At such a day at such a time we reached such a place and so and so happened?" I think surely not. I shall record, therefore, only such things as may strike me as worthy of taking up the time of a blasé metropolitan; and I shall carefully eschew nice exactnesses of time and place and season. By which virtue, as I have promised, my record shall be devoid of all scientific value and shall therefore be different from all other records of travel.