As We Stayed To Take In Wood, I
Tried To Photograph Some Of These, Our Brothers And Sisters, But The
Camera Was Nothing But An Object Of Dread To Them.
One old woman,
with her long, black, oily hair streaming in the breeze, almost
withered me with her flashing eyes and barbarous language, until I
blushed as does a schoolboy when caught in the act of stealing
apples.
Nevertheless, I got her photo.
The Pilcomayo, which empties its waters into the Paraguay, is one of
the most mysterious of rivers. Rising in Bolivia, its course can be
traced down for some considerable distance, when it loses itself in
the arid wastes, or, as some maintain, flows underground. Its source
and mouth are known, but for many miles of its passage it is
invisible. Numerous attempts to solve its secrets have been made.
They have almost invariably ended disastrously. The Spanish
traveller, Ibarete, set out with high hopes to travel along its
banks, but he and seventeen men perished in the attempt. Two half-
famished, prematurely-old, broken men were all that returned from the
unknown wilds. The Pilcomayo, which has proved itself the river of
death to so many brave men, remains to this day unexplored. The
Indians inhabiting these regions are savage in the extreme, and the
French explorer, Creveaux, found them inhuman enough to leave him and
most of his party to die of hunger. The Tobas and the Angaitaes
tribes are personally known to me, and I speak from experience when I
say that more cruel men I have never met.
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