At Last The Village Of Pegwaomi Was Reached, And, Oh, We Were Not
Sorry, For The Havoc Of The Jiggers
In our feet was getting terrible!
The keen-eyed inhabitants caught sight of us while we were still
distant, and
When we reined up, Timoteo's aged mother tremblingly
said, "Yoape" ("Come here") to him, and she wept as she embraced
her boy. Truly, there was no sight so sweet to "mother" as that of
her ragged, travel-stained son; and Timoteo, the strong man, wept.
The fatted calf was then killed a few yards from the doorstep, by
having its throat cut. Offal littered up the doorway, and the
children in their glee danced in the red blood. The dogs' tails and
the women's tongues wagged merrily, making us feel that we were
joined on to the world again. I was surprised to find that we were
days out of reckoning; I had been keeping Sunday on Thursday!
During this stay at Pegwaomi I nearly lost Old Stabbed Arm. The day
after we returned our hostess very seriously asked me if he might
marry her daughter. Thinking he had sent her to ask, I consented. It
was a surprise to learn afterwards that he knew nothing at all of the
matter.
Although Pegwaomi gained no new inhabitant, I secured what proved to
be one of the truest and most faithful friends of my life - a little
monkey. His name was Mr. Pancho. With him it was love at first sight,
and from that time onward, I believe, he had only two things in his
mind - his food and his master. He would cry when I left him, and hug
and kiss me on my return. Pancho rode the pack-mare into the village
of Concepcion, and busied himself on the way catching butterflies and
trying to grasp the multi-colored humming-birds hovering over the
equally beautiful passion-flowers growing in the bushes on each side
of the path.
Surely a stranger sight was never seen on the streets of Concepcion
than that of a tired, dusty pack-horse bearing a live monkey, a dead
god, and an equally dead devil on his back! Mrs. Sorrows was
overjoyed to see me return, and earnestly told me that my first duty
was to hurry down to the store and buy two colored candles to burn
before her saint, who had brought me back, even though I was a
heretic, which fact she greatly lamented. We had been given up as
lost months before, for word came down that I had been killed by
Indians. Here I was, however, safe and fairly well, saving that the
ends of two of my toes had rotted off with jiggers, and fever burned
in my veins! Mrs. Dolores doctored my feet with tobacco ashes as I
reclined in a hammock under the lime trees surrounding her hut. I did
not buy the candles, but she did; and while I silently thanked a
Higher Power, and the ta-tas burned to her deity, she informed me
that my countryman, the prodigal, had been carried to the "potters'
field." Not all prodigals reach home again; some are buried by the
swine-troughs.
For some time I was unable to put my feet to the ground; but Pancho,
ever active, tied in a fig tree, helped himself to ripe fruit, and
took life merrily. Pancho and I were eventually able to bid good-bye
to Mrs. Sorrows, and, thousands of miles down life's pathway, this
little friend and I journeyed together, he ever loving and true. I
took him across the ocean, away from his tropical home, and - he died.
I am not sentimental - nay, I have been accused of hardness - but I
make this reference to Pancho in loving memory. Unlike some friends
of my life, he was constant and true. [Footnote: From letters
awaiting me at the post-office, I learned, with intense sorrow and
regret, that my strange patron had gone "the way of all flesh" The
land I had been to explore, along-with a bequest of $250,000, passed
into the hands of the Baptist Missionary Society, to the Secretary of
which Society all my reports were given.]
CHAPTER XI.
CHACO SAVAGES.
The Gran Chaco, an immense region in the interior of the continent,
said to be 2,500,000 square miles in extent, is, without doubt, the
darkest part of "The Darkest Land." From time immemorial this has
been given up to the Indians; or, rather, they have proved so warlike
that the white man has not dared to enter the vast plain. The Chaco
contains a population of perhaps 3,000,000 of aborigines. These are
divided into many tribes, and speak numerous languages. From the
military outposts of Argentina at the south, to the Fort of Olimpo,
450 miles north, the country is left entirely to the savage. The
former are built to keep back the Tobas from venturing south, and the
latter is a Paraguayan fort on the Brazilian frontier. Here about one
hundred soldiers are quartered and some fifty women banished, for the
Paraguayan Government sends its female convicts there. [Footnote: The
women are not provided with even the barest necessities of life. Here
they are landed and, perforce, fasten themselves like leeches on the
licentious soldiery. I speak from personal knowledge, for I have
visited the "hell" of Paraguay.] Between these forts and Bolivia, on
the west, I have been privileged to visit eight different tribes of
Indians, all of them alike degraded and sunken in the extreme; savage
and wild as man, though originally made in the image of God, can be.
The Chaco is a great unknown land. The north, described by Mr.
Minchin, Bolivian Government Explorer, as "a barren zone - an almost
uninterrupted extent of low, thorny scrub, with great scarcity of
water," and the centre and south, as I have seen in exploring
journeys, great plains covered with millions of palm trees, through
which the astonished traveller can ride for weeks without seeing any
limit.
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 55 of 83
Words from 54822 to 55833
of 83353
