Thank God! I left Chorrera and the Peruvian Amazon Company’s “Estate” to-day. I am still their involuntary guest on their steamer Liberal, with the eighteen Barbados men, four Indian wives of these, and the children of John Brown, Allan Davis, James Mapp and J. Dyall.
Dyall made a hard fight to carry off an Indian woman — his “tenth” wife. He came at 8 a.m. to say the woman Loayza had given him in Encanto refused to be left behind, and insisted on going with him. I went to Tizon who, for reasons I think justifiable, refused to allow her to go. Of course Tizon’s refusal is illegal. The Company does not own the people, and only a government authority could refuse to allow this Indian, or any Indian, to leave. Tizon says that Dyall has no means to support her, which is true; that he refuses to marry her; which is true; and that she is not the mother of his child, which is true. Dyall admits all this, but says the mother of his child was taken from him by Velarde at Occidente, that he has no woman to look after his child, and that, final and best reason, the woman herself wishes to accompany him. The woman came weeping, and protested against staying, and made a regular scene. Tizon was obdurate, and I told Dyall I should not intervene, that I thought Tizon’s reasons were good. The woman even tried to get on board the boat, but was turned off on the plank, and made to go ashore.
Poor Donald Francis came to my room, and broke down, and cried like a boy. He did not want to stay when it came to the last. He said he would be “done bad by”, and it was only his wish to get more money to go home which had led him to wish to stay on, and now even that he regretted. He spoke of his “old mother” at Barbados, how he had promised to help her, and had not done it, and sobbed, with his head on his arm like a boy. I comforted him, and said I’d go to see his mother in Barbados, and that he could stay on until December next and go then, or, if he really wished it, he could go now, and I would stop the Liberal until he was ready. I called Barnes in, and begged him to look after Francis, and see that he got off when he wanted to, and I later spoke to Tizon also. Everyone came down to see me off. Burke, the Australian, brought me a letter to post addressed to:
Mrs. P. Hefferman
2 Gladstone Grove
South Melbourne
Victoria
Australia
with the request that I would see it went safe. He said there was something “queer” with his letters, as he got no replies. Young Parr, too, brought me a batch of home letters to post, and I took them —
Mrs Parr
47 Savernake Road
Hampstead
London N.
Also Barnes and some of Gielgud’s. Everything was finished. I bade Miranda and O’Donnell special goodbyes, and after a last shake-hands with Tizon, Gielgud, Barnes, Bell, Fox, we cleared off the ropes and moved into the stream. Two fearful explosions of sound signals, and we were off. Sealy and Chase had come to bid me a special goodbye, and I saw them last — they, and Francis and Greenidge on the top of the steps waving farewells. We quickly slipped down the still water between the sandbank and the shore and with our nose in the downward current were in a moment swept out of sight. The last thing I saw was by an upward glimpse, the great white cataract pouring into the upper end of the pool. My last view of the scene of such grim tragedy as I believe exists no where else on earth today. It was just 9.45 as we left Chorrera.
Two employes of the Company are on board, one of these Jeremias Gusmán, who wrote to me at Occidente to complain of Montt having Indians in chains, and the other our old friend Garrido. This miserable coward has been at Chorrera waiting to return to Iquitos, since he was dismissed, or “sent in his resignation” at Occidente the day when he turned tail and refused to answer Bell’s question as to his statements made to the Commission in Iquitos. There is another employé, whose name I don’t know (I hear it is Pineira), and these, with the skipper, engineer, and the Brazilian Customs Officer, Mathias, constitute my society. I find Garrido, Gusmán and the other employé are at table too with us! In the Sections these ‘Perus’ are obliged to eat by themselves, and when we came up river Garrido took his meals with Bishop. Bishop and John Brown are at a sidetable on the upper deck, where the servants got their meals before, on the upward voyage; finally Arédomi and Omarino are on the upper deck too, and a dear little chiviclis272 that Macedo got for me.
We found Port Tarma at 10.30, and some Indians ran down to greet us — two nude women and a man — from a wretched little hut. This is the “port” for Oriente — Alcosta’s station, of which I have been getting such glowing accounts from Burke. The Commission go down to it tomorrow, and on to Oriente. From Oriente to Sabana, and back to Port Tarma, whence they go down to Providencia for Santa Catalina, and then to Abisinia &c., and back to Guarunes (Gwarunes) port and up to Chorrera again. This will take them the best part of a month. From Chorrera they go overland to El Encanto, and visit the stations on the Caraparaná. The Liberal is to return at once, on reaching Iquitos, and go straight to El Encanto for the rubber of that river. This, Reigada says, will be about 4th December, and nine days to Encanto at quickest will bring her there on 13th December. The Commission do not expect to see her again before the end of January, when they finish with the Caraparaná. I expect they will get to Iquitos some date in mid-February probably. They then go down the Amazon and ascend the Purus to visit some so-called “Estate” of the Company’s in the Acre territory — the only property left there. They do not expect to finish that until end of April, and get home in May.
I am going to try and get Colonel Bertie to come out and join them. Fox has begged me again and again to do this, and I see clearly that with all the goodwill in the world they cannot compile a report. They are all united as to the facts — at complete harmony with me. Gielgud, of course, I omit. He has practically long since disappeared as any serious factor from the Commission. He simply stands for a nonentity, a paid servant-of the Company with really no mind of his own — an absent-minded beggar.273 However, my preoccupation is in no wise about the Commission. I have them entirely with me, as convinced and overwhelmingly convinced as men can be, and pledged up to the hilt to damn the whole system, lock, stock and barrel.274
From Port Tarma (sic) we slipped down river, to Providencia — the port for Santa Catalina. A little hut on a clear hillside stands for the port. It was here the Aguero gang tried to make James Mapp and the other Barbados men go by force and by night up the road to Santa Catalina to ambush them on the way. We passed Providencia at about 5 p.m. Before noon we had passed through the high ranges — 600 feet fully — of hills that come to the right bank in great forested slopes. These are the boundary of inhabited land, I fancy, on that shore, the Southern limit of the Sur Section and of the Huitoto country. Thence on to the mouth of the Igara-paraná; I fancy there are no Indians, but heaps of rubber trees. But the trees without an Indian population to enslave are worthless to these hammock warriors. Tizon confessed to me three days ago that he was sure there was much more rubber in the land down towards the Putumayo, and on along its banks, but “no Indians”. On the left bank the inhabited tract stretches further down, to a point below Guarunes, which we passed at 6 p.m. This is the “port” for Abisinia, like all these “ports” a mere untidy, open shed on the bank, at the mouth of a small quebrada or tributary. We saw several cases lying there in the shed, left, no doubt, by Aguero to be fetched later on. A great number of rivers emptying in during the last few miles, in the last 20 minutes we have passed three fair sized openings on the left bank, showing where the Boras country rivers are draining that swampy region.
The moon rose bright after a glorious sunset, one of the loveliest I have ever seen. We noticed the brilliant gleam over the tree-top as she rose — a full moon, too. As soon as she was clear of the trees we saw an eclipse was in progress, and as she rose we got a magnificent view of it. A total eclipse by Reigada’s almanac. The whole visage of the moon was obscured by 8, and then clouds came and covered the subsequent stages.
I turned in early, but wakened at 2.30 with a glorious moonlight, and the lovely palm-crested forest slipping past silently and softly against a pale blue night sky. I looked long at it, and thought of the fate of the poor Indian tribes, who have been so shamefully captured and enslaved, and murdered here in these lovely regions, by this gang of infernal ruffians. I thought of Katenere, the brave Boras chief — of all the murdered Indians of these forests; of the incredible and bestial crimes of these infamous men, and wondered at the peace God sheds upon the trees. The forest, with its wild creatures, is happier far than the “centres of civilization” these Peruvian and Colombian miscreants have created and floated into a great London Company.275
I took the chiviclis into my cabin last night, and it played long with me, and nestled up and chirruped, and then I put it in the nasty cage, and covered it up warm. This morning I made Arédomi take it out to play with and feed. He and Omarino and Bishop all slept on the upper deck. A lovely morning. The river now is broad and deep, and the banks lower and lower. All suspicion of high land has passed away, and we are in the swampy region near the low, flat shores of the Putumayo. The Captain tells me that he has 66 tons of rubber aboard, and 35 tons of firewood.
The Liberal cost £7,000 in Iquitos, including costs of her passage out from England. The Company has just lost two launches in the Amazon, by accident, he tells me, and are getting a new steamer at home. He also says that he is going into the Yaguas river on his way down. This is a big tributary of the Putumayo, which comes in on the right bank above the Cotuhé. Its headwaters are somewhere behind Loreto or Pebas, I fancy. He says he entered the Yaguas last voyage, too, on returning from Encanto in October. He then had Captain Delgado and 14 Peruvian soldiers on board returning to Iquitos. An Indian “prisoner” was handed over to him at Yaguas, a man who had shot a Sr. Fonseca, — another Fonseca! — on the Yaguas. This Fonseca, I presume, is the Company’s agent there. They claim to exploit the Yaguas too! This man had brought the Indian up from boyhood, so it seems, and yet he shot him! Reigada says the Indian gave “no reason” for shooting Fonseca, merely that “someone had told him to kill him” and so he did it. He blew his brains out. I shall carefully note things in the Yaguas River, doubtless it is exactly the same state of affairs. The Captain tells me later that the place is 4 hours up the Yaguas there, and is called Recreio. It does not belong to the Company. They merely bought rubber to supply this “trader” with goods. I presume it is one of Arana’s “other” houses to drain the Company surreptitiously.
I have not said a word to any of the Barbados men (except Bishop) as to my possible, nay probable intention, of disembarking them all at some point in Brazilian territory, most likely Esperanza at the mouth of the Javari. I shall wait until we are out in the Amazon itself before I broach the subject. If only I could meet a vessel of the Amazon S.S. Company,276 with the green flag of Brazil flying, I’d transfer all of us, bag and baggage, to her. There may be a chance at São Paulo de Olivença. If I saw a downgoing Brazilian steamer there — what luck — I’d ship all hands for Manaos with a letter to the Vice-Consul to pay their passages on ship’s arrival, and to provide for the men until I got down there. That would ease my mind. I could then go up to Iquitos in this boat alone, or with Bishop, say, and give the Prefect all the information he wants, and perhaps a good deal more; collect the balance due to the men, and come down with my mission accomplished by the Athualpa early in December. Failing this I think the safe thing will be to leave all hands at the Javari, and perhaps stay there myself a day or two to see them safely booked for Manaos. The men may not like it, and may even refuse. They have a perfect right to, but if I point out that I have good reason for not wishing them to go to Iquitos they will obey me.
I may be quite wrong in fearing anything of the kind, but, on the other hand, it is such an obvious thing for these dishonest people to do. The only evidence that they do not entirely control is here with me on this boat. For all the rest they can answer. Tizon and the Prefect would give anything to avoid a scandal, and if they think this can best be effected by getting hold of the Barbados men in Iquitos it can quite legitimately be done. The court here has a perfect right to summon them, fresh from long service on the Putumayo, to give evidence, and can compel them to speak. The object, I fear, is not the men’s evidence — that is all for good, but the perversion of their evidence. If this Court of Enquiry is not sincere, and I cannot see how it can be, composed of Peruvians who have known for years of these abominable crimes (and all of them probably even bribed men) the investigation of the Barbados men would be carried out to establish just the opposite of the truth. A town that can tolerate a man like Aurelio Rodriguez as one of its leading citizens will have no qualms about protecting its well-to-do murderers against exposure. The Lima government will have a similar wish to prevent a hideous international scandal. The Prefect will say “I am going to do what is right in the Putumayo, cleanse the place of its ruffians, but I cannot allow the evidence in the hands of the Consul to go away thus, it will be held over our heads, and, instead of our action being spontaneous, it will be due to the fear of British representations.”
Something of that kind. Besides these arguments there is a stronger. If I can get off with all my evidence intact then, knowing that this array of witnesses is held in reserve, the action of the Peruvian government on the Putumayo will be all the more vigorous and sincere. They will try to convince us that, of themselves, they have done right, so that we may never be forced into shaming them by publishing the Barbados men’s evidence, or even communicating it to them.
Despite, therefore, every objection, and all the trouble, expense and anxiety I shall be put to by leaving the men camped at the Javari for a week or so, I think it is far the safer plan, and if my mission is to be assured of being successful and not a failure that this course is my duty. It is very distasteful to me, and will cause me a lot of trouble, but I think it must be done. I should never forgive myself if, trusting to luck, I took all on to Iquitos and found I had landed them just where the Peruvians wanted, and I don’t think the FO would forgive me either. I must succeed — not fail, and to do the former I must take no risks.
Arrived at Pescaria. Here is the blackguard Cerron Quintyne told me about. The river is lower than when we came up in September last, I think. It is a noble stream and Arédomi and Omarino are looking on a new world. Arédomi says they call it Cottué — the Igara-paraná, and Harmia, the Putumayo. Whence the name Putumayo comes from it is hard to say. Lt Maw, in 1827, knew nothing of it as applied to the river, but heard of it as a place and as a tribe of Indians. It is probably Quichua, and was doubtless first applied to the Indians of the upper waters, as mayo is the word for water or river in Quichua, I believe.
We stayed at Pescaria one hour, till 5.30, and then off again. Got some firewood there; very poor stuff, and a lot of plantains and bananas, also myriads of sand flies. An incredible swarm of these pests attacked the men, carrying the firewood on board. The sunset was again magnificent, and the night came gloriously. After a fierce sun the cool of the evening was delicious, and the moon rose with a veritable column of gold, clean cut, in the river below, shining half across the stream in angular reflection. The palms stood out above the forest. We are back in the land of the myriad palm trees again. I stood in the bows till 9, talking to the Captain, and by the wheel, where a young practicante of the Punchana Indian pilots is learning his trade. He fell asleep at the wheel! Tomorrow I mean to try and go through the Barbados men’s accounts again, and get a clear statement of the final amounts. I know all except Sealy and Chase. I don’t know what was done in the final settlement with them, but it was only very small change, if any, which was made in their case. I think I have gained about £900 for the men — 20 of them all told, including Bishop and Philip, the cook.
Steaming beautifully down the Putumayo. Got the Barbados men up, one by one, and verified their final accounts. All save Walcott are satisfied. He was swindled out of his gratification of S/P 100 for his services in Abisinia — poor soul! — after Tizon and Gielgud promising me it should be given! All but two are anxious to avoid Iquitos, most of them are anxious to clear out. Eight go, in any case, straight to Barbados, and I hope the ‘Javari’ (of Booth line) can arrive in time at Iquitos to allow of their going in her. Arrived at mouth of Yaguas river (on right bank) at 10.07 a.m. A fine, broad entrance, but no current; turned up it, and steamed in practically dead water for nearly 4 hours up to Recreio, a tiny house on a high bank with a little clearing of yucca round it. The river some 110 yards broad and deep, and only ½ a mile or less current. Took in firewood there. A canoe came down from Triunfo with a man and woman and four Indian boys paddling. All dressed and civilised. The Captain says the boys are Huitotos he “brought” from Chorrera. A gift from Sr. Macedo! There are no Indians — Yaguas — near this. This man gets his caucho, or sernamby, five days or more up the river by canoe, and then up a quebrada where he has “people working”. For what, I wonder? We took about 5 balls of sernamby, each apparently a man’s load. We also took a lot of firewood, which the Liberal will pay for, either in cash or by bill. This man, Reigada says, does well. He lives on the forest, the cleared space, the river (with plenty of fish) and — the Indians. He owes nothing to the Company, and gets cash for his rubber.
We stayed here about ¾ of an hour, and then steamed on up to Triunfo, about a mile further up the river. It has also on right bank, on a high cleared space, a kitchen, and actually an ox, the remains of a former sugar cane mill for making cachaça, and several lime trees, and a full citron with ripening fruit. Also a lot of pupunha palms, with ripe fruit.277 Here were several people — three men (so-called Peruvian blancos) and a lot of similar skinned women — the sisters, cousins and aunts, and several Huitoto and other Indian muchachos. The house a veritable pigsty. The Barbados men landed and bought biscuits and cigarettes with spare cash — I presume the extra amount some of them got for working on after 31st October, the date when their accounts were closed.
I landed with Bishop and Arédomi, and took a photo of the place, and of the sisters, cousins and aunts, promising them copies to their great delight. We bought firewood here, too, and stayed a long time getting it on board. The Captain says there is little or none to be had in Brazil, and he is glad to come up the Yaguas to get it.
The man Fonseca, lately shot in this neighbourhood, was a relation of “our” Fonseca at Sabana. Bishop had heard of him. One of the boys here told Bishop that Fonseca was shot three or four days off “watching the Indians getting rubber”, so I presume it is the same thing on a smaller scale. The prisoner is now in Iquitos — the “boy” of this man Fonseca — I expect one of the captive Huitotos that were brought here. The Captain says there are no Yaguas Indians, or any Indians nearer than three days from this up stream. The proprietor of Recreio told me there is a veradero across country to Caballa Cocha of ten days, and that a canoe will go up river for seven days, and then there is a veradero to Pebas of 2–3 days. Bishop says that when he came down in the Liberal in August last, on finishing his time, they brought seven Huitoto slaves and left them at Pebas.
He says, too, that the Pachiko278 killed only a few weeks ago in Abisinia by Simon Angúlo and Zellada was a Ricagaros indian, whose wife had been outraged by one of the Peruvians, so he went on the warpath, like Katenere and for 2 years had shot at all rubber workers and others. He then gave himself up at Abisinia, being tired of the hunted life, and his end was to be brutally murdered by those two scoundrels a month ago.
Passed Recreio, going down, 4.27 p.m. it is a good mile below Triunfo. The water of the Yaguas is like that of the Igara-paraná, clear enough, although it looks muddy yellow from the deck. Several streams enter near Recreio and Triunfo of darker water. There are no tributary streams from Recreio to the mouth, the Captain says. I reckon Triunfo is about 28 miles up the Yaguas, and seven days in canoe would be about 160 miles above this, where they get the veradero to Pebas. The river is probably 250 miles long in extreme length, of which probably 60 miles (even at low water as at present) would be navigable for the Liberal, and fully 120 for smaller launches. There is an apparent rise from actual water of 8 to 12 feet. 8 feet more would be normal high water — 12 probably the utmost of flood height.
Gusmán, who is on board going away for good, is furious, Bishop says, at them not allowing him to bring his Indian “wife”. He vows vengeance, and says he will go and tell the judge everything in Iquitos about the treatment of the Indians. He wants to know if I won’t help him about his wife, Bishop says — also to help him to relate everything. Bishop told him I would not do anything in a matter of that kind. I told Bishop to tell him he should go to the Prefect, and tell him all about the way the Indians are treated. I could easily get a dreadful statement from Gusmán, if I liked, but it is not my place to question a Peruvian, and I should not be justified in doing it. Still, it is strange that at the very first this very man should have volunteered to tell me rather than Tizon what Montt was doing at Atenas.
Bishop says Gusmán wants me very much to advise him, and, he adds, that he is sure he will make a row in Iquitos. He is so angry at Macedo refusing to allow him to take his “girl” away with him. Poor little Indian girl, she has returned to her “family” at Ultimo Retiro, Bishop says. Some other ruffian will get her. The man chiefly responsible for driving Pachiko out on the warpath was one Saldana now in Iquitos. He used to abuse the women of the muchachos — Pichako was a Sabana muchacho — and when his wife was outraged he and others went off on the war path against “the House.” They got cartridges from the wives of the employés, so Bishop says. These steal from their husbands, and send out to the rebellious Indians by friendly muchachos, who are in with them. Then they lie in wait for muchachos and kill them, and get their guns and cartridges, and so it goes on. Pichako had carried this on for 2 years, until he got tired of the flights and shifts of such warfare, and walked into Abisinia and gave himself up. Then came his rumoured league with Diké, another rebellious Indian out on his keeping, and so Juan Zellada and Simon Angúlo first flog him cruelly and then shoot him.
It is a pity I am not going on to Abisinia and Morelia, with the Commission. Bishop says Pichako’s brother is still there in chains, and was sent to Morelia the other day to be kept there when the Commission comes to Abisinia. It is a hundred pities I am not going there. I’d make those scoundrels sit up.
There was a considerable look of scare on the faces of the three Peruvian blancos up at Triunfo this afternoon when I came into the house. They all knew who I was, because the Recreio man had already addressed me as “Sr. Consul”, and I can’t help thinking there is no more in the shooting of Fonseca than the simple narrative of Reigada that the boy shot him, because “someone told him to”. There has been some of the usual devilment here, too, and these rascals thought, in their ignorant way, (they are all half-castes) that I had come in some way about it. All these people nearly look upon me now as a sort of Enquirer Extraordinary, who has got to the bottom of things.
The Captain tells me that this Fonseca killed here was uncle of the villain now in Sabana. His widow in Iquitos has sold “the business” here on the Yaguas to the man I saw in the house, Azambriga by name — a Portuguese name.
The skipper tells me queer things. He has now a Huitoto sailor, a strong-limbed, very sturdy chap, about 22 or 23 years of age. This youth “belongs” to a man named Grosso in Iquitos, but won’t stay with him. He came on board the ship as a sailor last time, and Grosso came and wanted the Captain to give him a promissory note for £50 for the boy! Reigada refused, and told him he could take the man to the Police if he liked. He said Grosso dared not, because they could not have kept him. He then told Grosso he was going to pay the boy himself, too, not give the wages to him, the master and Grosso could only grin.
Reigada admits that there are plenty of Huitoto women and boys who have been sold in Iquitos, that there is always a market for them. I asked how it could be, since they could always claim their freedom, and he only laughed. Men were known to give £40 for a boy or girl, so he says. He then wanted to tell me of the two Huitoto sailors he had last voyage, when I came up. Neither is with him now. One is staying with the elder pilot, Manuel Lomas, at Punchana. When Reigada paid him off with £6 last trip he asked this boy what he would do with the money, and the boy said he was going to buy “a cap and a pair of pantaloons.” The skipper then told him the money was sufficient to buy 20 caps and pantaloons, and he only laughed and said he would give it for one of each. So Reigada handed the money to Manuel, and asked him to look after the boy, ‘Julio’ is his name, and see he was not robbed. He said “the Jews” in Iquitos would not rob him, as they did all the Indians. The other boy “belonged” to the present Portmaster of Iquitos, who had got him from the Putumayo somehow or other, but he would not stay with him, and “came to sea”. He has now gone back to the Portmaster, because he was ill. Bolívar I asked after. He was taken to Iquitos, and ran away there on arrival. Reigada says he wants to be free, and will not return to Putumayo. Pablo Zumaeta tried to get him, but failed, as he cleared out promptly. Well done, Bolívar.
The younger pilot, Simon Pisango, has changed his name to Perez — not Pizarro.
Poor Arédomi is bitten badly by sandflies, and has just been to see me for the Colonel’s lotion I got in Manaos from the old man before leaving. I rubbed it all over his chest and arms. He is washing up plates on board, and making himself useful, and smiles constantly — very happy. We have brought a young girl from Triunfo, a sister of Mrs. Azambuja, I think.
I intend asking Reigada why Zubiarr left the services of the Company. Whiffen stated to FO it was for dealing in stores from the Chorrera, poaching on Pablo Zumaeta’s and Macedo’s special private preserve. I have no doubt it was so, and I think in his actual mood of confidences Reigada will let it out to me. The whole game is pretty nearly up, and they all know it, and will, if I press, tell me pretty nearly all — one against the other. They are a fine pack of rascals.
Re-entered the Putumayo at 7.35 p.m. We have lost 9½ hours up and down the Yaguas, but I am glad I got a glimpse of it. There seems to be more palm trees on the banks of the tributaries than of the main river. The evening was close and the moon obscured. My little chiviclis is quite jolly. I let him run about all day, and at night only is he put into his wretched little tin cage. Saw some splendid butterflies today — different from any we got up the Igara-paraná — one small variety of orange and black round spots was exceedingly fine, and a great big yellow ochre and burnt Sienna winged chap made quite a flutter along the deck as we lay at Recreio and Triunfo.279
We got to the Brazilian frontier post at 2 a.m. and stayed there some time, and then on to the next Brazilian so-called military post — where another delay occurred. I got up and noticed that the river seemed considerably lower than when we passed up in September. The Captain says the Amazon is much higher. He reckons it 15 hours downward steaming to the Amazon from the Brazilian frontier, or from 120–130 miles. By this down-stream reckoning of Reigada’s the distance from Chorrera to the Amazon is only about 570 miles. He reckons 8 knots only down stream, but I think the vessel does more, especially in the Putumayo itself, where the current is stronger than in the Igara-paraná. The Captain says he lost 3 hours altogether at these two places, as he bought firewood at the military post.
Passed several Brazilian seringueiros’ places — huts among the trees on shore, on right bank nearly all. A fine big river at 11 a.m. called ‘Uruté', and then a long side reach of the river, into which we steamed looking for firewood at a place of a Colombian — a hut in a clearing. This is the Ticuna Indian280 country, but the Captain says these people mostly do their own rubber getting. One place we passed at the mouth of the river — their private property — the usual “estate” nonsense. Everyone we pass is a lawless squatter. This place is served by two steamers from Manaos. The Captain says up the river they have Ticuna Indians who form the “labour” of this place. We stopped again at 1 p.m. on right bank for firewood. The skipper pays £3 per 1000 billets = 1½ tons, he says. This last place is a tiny open hut in a patch of maize taller than its roof, in a clearing of about 30 yards square. The men got fruit and sugar cane — the old man with a half Indian wife, and two grown up sons, the Captain says was once a Peruvian from Tarapoto,281 but now talks Portuguese — as most of these Peruvian or Colombian squatters here do. They have lost their Spanish, so he says. There is no life on the Peruvian Putumayo, but here, on the Brazilian Putumayo, we pass huts and clearings every few miles. Also we have met several canoes, one quite a big one going up stream under sail, another, going down, had a middle-aged negro, his wife, and a boy. He waved many salutations to us. The forest is much loftier than up the Igara-paraná, and there must be a good deal of rubber here, but “no Indians”.
At 3 p.m. we are approaching a very fine line of trees.
Leavine today, called up by me, simply confirms the very worst stories against Normand — of burning and dashing brains out, and all the rest of it. The man is an absolute fiend. I find our friend, Vasquez Torres, as we thought him — the brute from Atenas that Gielgud, Barnes and we all disliked so much, — is really Alejandro Vasquez, one of the most infamous of the ruffians referred to in the Hardenburg document. He is charged by Collantes282 with revolting murders.
Bishop says Velarde gave Aristides Rodriguez S/P 7,000 to get Sabana when he went away! Aristides had got 30,000 kilos in one fabrico out of Sabana, and Velarde thought he would do the same, and so he tipped him £700 for this Section. Truly an interesting method for an English Company! The high forest land proves, on rounding a bend, to be quite a high sloping hill, cleared from the waterside up to near the top with houses showing — the first real Brazilian settlement I have seen. There is smoke at several of the huts we pass, showing where the rubber is being smoked.
3.40. Passed the high ground. It is quite a civilised little place, with steps, and a paling up to a neat little house, with the verandah painted blue and white, and the figure of a man and woman inside. The hill is cleared up to the summit, about 100 feet above the river, and is planted with bananas. Lower down, 50 yards, is a second clearing of cassava, and an open hut, of the workman or men.
We are steaming well, I should think doing close on 10 knots with a fair current with us. Tonight, about 9 or 10, we ought to be in the Amazon, and turn our noses up stream for that dreary stretch of close on 600 miles to Iquitos, where I have no wish at all to go. I questioned Leavine, P. Lawrence, Batson and Crichlow again today upon some points I was reading in the Hardenburg document. Incidentally, Lawrence, who has been at Chorrera since 1904, confirms the beatings and floggings of Indians there when loading and unloading the steamers.
The murder of the Ocainas Indians and the burning of them, some not quite dead, took place there in 1903. Bishop says he often heard it spoken of. Rafael Larrañaga283 took a leading part in it. The Ocainas were charged with killing Colombians.
There is no doubt the Hardenburg papers are in the main true. Here and there details are wrongly given. There are lies and exaggerations, but the main facts and charges are substantially correct. Moreover, hundreds of crimes not recorded there have taken place. Normand, Aguero, Fonseca, Montt, Jiménez, the two Rodriguez brothers and Martinengui, have between them, murdered several thousand of these unhappy beings. There is no doubt of it. Tizon admitted to me in Chorrera last week that the two Rodriguez “had killed hundreds of Indians”, and that Arana gave them 50% of the produce of these two sections, S. Catalina and Sabana. Normand is again and again charged by the Barbados men with killing many hundreds. Leavine today said “over 500”, that he had seen 20 Indians killed in five days in Matanzas alone, and the dead bodies eaten by the dogs and stinking round the house, so that he could not eat his food. These seven monsters have probably killed by shooting, flogging, beheading, burning, and got rid of by starvation some 5,000 Indians in the last seven years. Barnes said the Indians of the Company numbered 10,000 when he came, and there were “nothing like it now”, and he has been here only two or three years at outside. Fonseca had killed hundreds, too, — and Martinengui.
The least criminal are probably O’Donnell, Miranda and Alcosta — of the rest it were hard to choose, save that Montt lacked probably the courage of the other monsters. And this is done in the name of civilization and industrial development!
I have decided to leave the men at the Javari — conte qui conte. There are probably two of the Booth steamers now at Iquitos — the Athualpa and Javary, and I hope one or other will be downward bound, perhaps within a day of my arrival there. I will hear something of them at the places we stay at tomorrow on the bank of the Amazon.
We entered the Amazon about 2 a.m. and soon after got to Colonia Rio Jano, in the dark. We whistled there from mid-stream, but I think no one came off, and so we went on. At 6.15 we got to Maturas, where we stayed for firewood. I went on shore, and visited the church. No priest for three years, and the two men who came to show me round said there were many children to be baptised. Also their dead were buried without rites. I said I should see if anything could be done in Manaos. The church built by themselves — they apologised for its poverty — poor souls. All are half-castes — chiefly mixed Indian and white blood. Saw no negroes, but some pure whites. The place is one street of about 20 huts, well built of boards and palm thatch. The church has a big Cross in front — “nossa cruz”, as one said, and two bells on a piece of wood outside. 17 children lately died from measles — otherwise healthy. A fine stream of black water — 80 yards broad, — comes in there. They work caucho and borracha up this river; about half-a-dozen pure Indian families — mansos284 — I was told, lived there, but no “Indios bravos”. They have long since gone — gentle, kind hearted, timid Indios bravos! Many children. I got coffee from one of my guides, and his children looked happy. The house clean and well-kept; a sewing machine in every house, a child’s coffin being made in one. One of my guides — a man of 50 — had never been in Manaos; was born here at Amatura. The other was a Clarence, and had visited Manaos more than once and lived there.
A heavy drizzle all the time — like a Scotch mist — very wetting rain. The river has risen since September, but I cannot yet see how much until we get to some point where I stayed before. Matural, these people say, is Amáturá. There is a fine church up at Belem — a little higher, as the Captain says. It cost S/P 30,000 = £3,000, built by one man. A priest, he says, has gone up the Javari quite lately, and will stop at every place and baptise, &c.
We heard that two English steamers had gone up, to Iquitos, the last week. They passed Amáturá. One of them on 14th, so my guide said. This may be the Javary, due there on 15th, and to leave 21st.
I spoke to Mathias, the Brazilian Customs Officer, about leaving the men at Javari, and he says all right, he will do his best, but there is no house and little or no food! A fine outlook for them.
Steamed on all day. Close to right bank most of the time. Saw a troop of ronsocos, really capivari,285 just below São Paulo de Olivença at 5 near the mouth of the Jundiatuba River, which enters in a fine stream close on 200 yards broad. Many houses along the banks, of half-caste Indians and often pure Indians of the Ticuna tribe, but all clothes just like ordinary Brazilian squatters. From Jundiatuba up to São Paulo is near an hour’s steaming, and a lot of palm-thatched houses along the bluff for a couple of miles below S. Paulo. We passed closely into that dirty little township of evil memories (See Bates’ description of it in 1856.)286 It is a shocking thought that this wretched agglomeration of mean huts — they can be called nothing else — and dirty neglected foreshore, represents 100 years of Brazilian citizenship. In 1827 Lt Maw found a delegado here. It is now the second town on the Brazilian Amazon after Manaos, but the headquarters of the district have been moved, the Captain tells me, up to Benjamin Constant on the Javarí, to the great disgust of the São Paulo folk. These, the skipper says, have preserved their habits and customs as described by Bates. When a launch puts into their beach they crowd on board to drink and gamble, and try to get the money of the crew.
The Captain told me at dinner that the Brazilian Customs Officer on board makes him pay £1 sterling now at S/12.50. This is a further drop of 2 milreis in the pound, since I left Manaos on 17th August last. When will it end? The customs man says the latest payers report the milreis at 1/6d. now. I shall be ruined if I have to live in Brazil now. Twelve milreis to the pound is a drop of 25% in my income since I left Rio in March, when the exchange was 16 to the pound.287 How can trade of any commercial dealing flourish in a country where the value of the medium of exchange jumps in such a way? The variation from day to day and week to week can easily upset the best commercial venture in the world.288
At 9 p.m. a big steamer passed down river close to us. She had green and red light, which the Captain says none of the river craft carry — only sea-going vessels. He thinks it is the ‘Javari’ outward bound again — for Barbados and New York. A great pity if this is so. I hardly think it can be, although the masts were high and the funnel black. I think it was the Peruvian man-of-war America289 bound, perhaps, from Iquitos to the Putumayo. It has rained most of the day — a dreary drizzle like a Scotch mist, fine and wetting.
We stopped a long time in the night getting firewood at Boa Vista, and did not leave it until 6 a.m. in a drizzle of rain like yesterday morning. The Captain complains of the increase in price of things here in Brazil. Not content with the milreis rising in value, these people now ask the most absurd prices for everything they possess. Here with the biggest world of firewood in existence, a forest literally without bounds, and dry wood for the mere felling of it at their doors, they asked us yesterday MR$ 72 per 1,000 faggots, roughly 11½ tons of firing. This represents at 12,500 almost exactly £6, or £4 a ton, rather more than coal is at Iquitos! The skipper refused to pay this, and got the wood for less, by pressing gold on the man.
I asked this morning what men wished to stay at Javari, and who would go on to Iquitos? I find that all but Philip Lawrence now wish to stay at the Javari, and go down to Manaos by first boat. Only Bishop and John Brown, with his wife and child, will go on with me, and Philip Lawrence the ex-cook of Chorrera. No danger from these if interrogated, and little or no danger of their being interrogated under any circumstances.
Here is the list now, as I have given it to the skipper for his landing lists at Javari and Iquitos.
James Mapp — wife and child
Allan Davis — wife and child
Alfred Hoyte — wife and child
Reuben Phillips and wife
James Lane
Clifford Quintin
Joshua Dyall and child
Sydney Morris
Evelyn Batson
Augustus Walcott
Edward Crichlow
Westerman Leavine
Joseph Minggs
14 men — 4 women — 4 children
The following go on to Iquitos:
F. Bishop
John Brown, wife and child
P. Lawrence, also two indian boys
Arédomi and Omarino
The chief difficulty is the food question, as I gather there is no food at Esperanza. I mention it to the Captain and find he has plenty of spare grub he can sell. He brought an extra stock, he says, and did not leave it at Chorrera. I calculate quantities with Bishop and Allan Davis and James Mapp, and decide on buying the following approximately:
140 lbs rice
80 lbs beans
70 tins of meat
100 tins of sardines
1 Barrel biscuits
Salt, sugar, tea and 10 tins milk for the infants.
I will leave Davis and Mapp in charge of the party. I have written letters for the Captains of downgoing steamers to convey the men to Manaos and recover the passage money from the British Vice-Consul at Manaos, and I wrote to latter asking him to look after the men until I arrive. So everything is ready, except to get the men’s cheques (or giros) on the Company’s branch in Iquitos, and then I am ready for everything.
4 p.m. — We have had quite an interesting day. At 10 a.m. we stopped at a lofty bank on left shore of the river, steep and fully 35 feet above present level, with steps at top. This is Palmares, a line of huts below Belem. Here we got firewood and I went on shore. The two houses at this point were very cosy and well fitted, the most comfortable one could imagine for this locality, and such people — the soil amazingly rich, everything planted looked gigantic. Sugar cane as thick as one’s arm almost, and a great variety of fruits, and hibiscus flowers too. A turtle pond, with plenty of turtles, 25 bought this morning, one of the men said. Fine pawpaws, and delicious pink cherry peppers and pineapples as fine as Pernambuco290 ones. The yucca or cassava very fine too and plenty of hens and chickens, some of which we bought. I saw a couple of lovely green parrots with blue heads, and, of course, their wings quite uncut.291 They were perched on one of the houses, and very tame. The owner asked £4 each! Then a very fine mutum292 — a beauty — and he was offered for £2, but I declined. Finally, the dono da casa came down to £1, but I further declined. It was not the price so much as the distance to carry him, and I believe I can get one in Pará cheaper.293
Everyone nearly on shore enjoying this beautiful natural history store. The forest round was lovely, only a tiny clearing, but each yard of it fruitful. Near the edge of the cliff the grass grew luxuriantly, and there was a patch big enough to feed a cow and sheep or goats. These people might live in absolute clover, if they would only work. They do nothing but rubber. “The rubber pays for all”, just as in the South it is “coffee pays for all”. There everything needed is bought with money from coffee — here it is pretty much the same, except that even the things needed cannot be bought, so that the money goes in absurd tomfoolery and waste. Then just up above us we can see Belem with its far famed church costing £3,000. This corresponds to a nobleman’s private chapel at home — without the chaplain. No priest within a 1,000 miles, and Belem itself is only a one man’s place — what in West Africa we should call a “factory”. I don’t object to the Church, however, it shows some mind and soul above the ordinary along this melancholy river, but most of these people, when they have money, waste it on jaunts to Manaos, or on silly things quite unneeded. Houses with no beds, never a book within a week’s journey or a schoolmaster, but accordions that cost £10, and a diamond ring, or gold watch chain for flashing down the pretentious sidewalks of Manaos, and often much more paid for much worse there — ladies from Poland.294 Food at this place is lavished on these people by Nature. I never saw such vegetable profusion, right up to their doors, otherwise they would be starving, for it is not the labour of their hands gives them this.
At Iquitos, the skipper says, you often pay S/10 (£1) for 25 lbs. weight of Ucayali beans. These beans are very similar to the brown bean of Portugal, and constitute one of the chief articles of diet along the river. They are often imported, he tells me, from Portugal, more and more, in fact. In front of us here at Palmares stretch one of the great island sandbanks of the Solimões. This one is over ten miles long I should think. It goes far out of sight, and we have been steaming between it and this northern or left shore of the river for a long time. It is still exposed to a great height above water, and is now covered with arrow grass and shorter, softer grass. There must be some thousands of acres of this splendid soil on this one island, and for six to seven months each year it lies there fallow. Beans could grow like wild fire in it, and a score of other things. It is the silt of all the banks and lands right up to the Andes washed down each flood, and is rich as the Nile lands. All that is wanting is human labour to sow it. With beans at £1 for 25 lbs. in Iquitos, here alone is a field of profitable labour, far better than spending dreary and miserable days (at the best) in the depths of the forest gathering rubber milk, or (at the most) murdering and torturing the poor forest Indians to make them do this gathering.
We left Palmares at 11, and steamed on past Belem at noon. It is a fine clearing, belongs to a man named Mafra of Italian descent, but a Peruvian, like many of these Solimões magnates. A fine tiled house, and some big iron-roofed stores, and a line of palm-thatched huts for the workpeople — just beyond it a river mouth. Every proprietor has his own river, with a steam launch snugly stowed away. The clearing round the houses a big one, and the famous church has two towers. The skipper says the priest when he comes here makes a good thing out of it, as Mafra is devout, and has a regular flare-up on these bi-annual occasions. He works rubber on this river and another beyond it, which we come to at 12.30. This river is broader, fully 160 yards broad at mouth, and has an alvarenga or lighter anchored in the middle of the mouth. This to receive cargo — goods or rubber — for or from the passing steamers, also to guard the mouth of Mafra’s main quebrada. Every “estate” its own river, and woe betide the stranger or rubber pirate who intrudes. This one our chief pilot, Manoel Lomas, says he has ascended for 6 hours in a big steam launch, or say 50 miles, at high river. He says Mafra owns Ticuna Indians up it, and they work the rubber. No Brazilian Government launch, I presume, has ever, since the world began, been up this river, and, God knows, what may go on there, in spite of the Church and its towers out here on the high banks of the Solimões. Mafra himself may be a godly man, but when it comes to owning Indians in these Amazon forests I fear for the body of the Indians, more even than for the soul of his owner.
The great sandbank continues far beyond Belem, bounding our left view up stream for miles. One such bank of soil — for it is not sand but a rich blackish soil — with a thousand chinamen upon it, would feed a kingdom. There is no felling of timber or clearing required. The great river does that. It just piles up millions of tons of gleaming drift, washed clean and harrowed and shining as the water subsides from the crest, and leaves them stretched out for miles to sun and rain for enough time annually to raise two crops each year. Before the water covers them again they are covered with rich grain, and as each rising river will gradually deposit more silt, the central parts rise annually, and then first the embauba or sloth tree comes, to be gradually followed by all the forest growths until one sandbank turns into an island forest. This island will some day again disappear, mile by mile, tumbling and swirling away with topping trees and ripping leagues of forest into some new opened chasm of the mighty waterway; channels that this year have 60 feet of water, and are the main route for the Liverpool steamers will close up, and become island the year after.
Now, as I write, a stretch of fully 4 miles broad of river opens to left and right between the islands. I am sure of this, that in a reorganised South America, when the Monroe Doctrine has been challenged by Germany and happily dispatched under her shot and shell, the valley of the Amazon will become one of the greatest granaries of the world. Also, too, I believe it will be peopled with a happy race of men. It supplies practically for the asking all the essentials of human existence, and this in a climate that for an equatorial latitude is superior to anything else in the world. All it needs is the touch of a vanished hand.295 The Portuguese (and Peruvians and others) have killed off in a shameful and cowardly fashion the aboriginal Indians, who, had the Jesuits296 gained the day over Pombal297 and the Colonists, would have today numbered millions. The murderers have put nothing in the place of those whom they destroyed, neither civilization to replace savagery, nor white humanity to replace the copper — all they could do and have done was to pull down, not to build up or create. This mighty river, and far beyond its shores of this great continent, awaits the hand of civilization. Four hundred years of the Spaniard at its sources, and 300 years of the Portuguese at its mouth have turned it first into a hell, and then into a desert. No sight could be pleasanter than the flag of Teutonic civilization advancing into this wilderness. The Americans have got their part of America, and it will take them all their time to civilize themselves. Germany, with her 70,000,000 of virile men has much to do for mankind besides giving us music and military shows. Let loose her pent up energies in this Continent, and God help the rats who have gnawed at it so long. Law and order would have meaning then, and justice and labour advancing up this mighty river would subdue the forest and found cities, and realise here in these glorious wastes the glowing words with which Bates closes his book — “for I hold to the opinion that, although humanity can reach an advanced state of culture only by battling with the inclemencies of nature in high latitudes, it is under the Equator alone that the perfect race of the future attain to complete fruition of man’s beautiful heritage — the earth.”
I share Bates’ belief, and I believe that the people for the task are “neither Saxon nor Italian”, but our friends the Germans. Not the Americans or Canadians, or anything Latin or Latinised. The curse of this Continent has been its Latinization. With everything in its favour — incomparably ahead of the desolate prairies of the northern America, already peopled by millions of gentle, docile and industrious beings — what have 400 years of “Latin civilization” done for it? Reduced the many millions of the Andean plateaux to a tenth of their number and to a condition of slavery that is unique among white governing races of the East, and murdered the wilder dwellers of the wilderness in every conceivable barbarous manner — not in order to replace them with white settlers and agriculturists, but solely in order to enslave their survivors in the interest of a handful of sordid, mean-souled and ignorant squatters. And to this has succeeded the pillage of the forests — vegetable filibustering replacing human filibustering, in order that the ignorant mob of Pará, Manaos and Iquitos may visit Paris or Lima, and indulge the sensual appetite with the vices of both.298
We did not arrive at Esperanza until 1 a.m. this morning. I had long since turned in, and had hoped we should lie there until daylight, so as to arrange for the landing of the men. However, the Captain called me to say the young Customs Officer in charge had very willingly allowed the men to land, and to sling their hammocks under the house. This young man came on board, and in true Luso-Brazilian amity embraced me, and I cordially responded, each patting the other’s back. It was a pleasure to see the frank brown face of a decent-looking warm-hearted Brazilian, after the unmitigated murder type I’ve been accustomed to in the Peruvian Putumayo. He begged me to give directions to the men not to get drunk. We landed plenty of food for them, and I wrote orders on any down going steamer and to Mr Dening, the Vice-Consul in Manaos, to look after the men on arrival and pay the conveying vessel.
The S.S. Javary, I learned to my regret, had gone down river four days ago, and the Athualpa had passed up to Iquitos on 13th — eight days ago! It will take us all our time to catch her even now.
Bishop reports two occurrences typical of these people. In the night one of the crew threw overboard his pup — the fat dog Greenidge gave him at Chorrera. Such a cowardly act! He thinks it is the 2nd cook — a tall, lanky, pock-marked Peruvian of pure white blood, looks like a weedy Spaniard. It appears this coward had threatened to throw the dog over if it came near the galley. At 9.30 p.m. it was playing with Bishop, when he went below, but at 1 a.m. when the men were roused for shore it was gone. Poor, podgy baby! It has met a horrid death, either by his young struggle in the great river or else eaten by an alligator.
Second circumstance — the attempt of the Chief Engineer of this vessel to get hold of Dyall’s baby son. Dyall is a blackguard, it is true. Bishop says Dyall was going to “give” his son to the Chief Engineer, as the Indian woman on board tells him he is not its father, that it is the son of an Indian man, as well as of an Indian woman. For this reason Dyall does not treat it well, and the Chief Engineer tried to get it from Dyall. I gave orders at 1 a.m. that, as Dyall had brought the child from Chorrera as his, he should certainly look after it, and refused to allow this deal in humanity. So the little Dyall disembarked too along with the rest. We got off at 3 a.m. in a clear enough night, and soon reached the second or main mouth of the Javari, where a great conflict of rivers occurs. There is often an overfall here, but tonight none — only a terribly strong current. Although the distance from Esperanza to Tabatinga is only 6 miles we took 3 hours doing it!
At Tabatinga at 6 a.m. with the Brazilian green flag flying, and the Khaki-clad artillerymen of “the great Republic”. The Sergeant, a handsome young caboclo, with five red stripes on his arm, came quickly on board, and we got our papers on the instant, and off again. He was very spick and span, with starched collar and cuffs showing, and well polished boots, picking his steps through the mud and sedge of the bank to the gangway. A true type of Brazilian — clean, nice-looking, and conceited, but with amiability stamped on his features.
On to Leticia, the Peruvian frontier post, 1 mile up stream, and here we were delayed over three hours. We got there at 7 a.m. and did not get away until near 11. I could not understand the reason for delay as the skipper had told me he intended pressing on at all costs to catch the Athualpa in Iquitos. He told me after we had got under way, saying he was ashamed to have to confess to me what kind of authorities his country possessed.
It appears that last night four of the cholo soldiers of his garrison had deserted — escaped down to Brazil in a canoe. They had been on the opposite bank of the river in a hut to arrest contraband at night that was alleged to be slipping by there in canoes, and they took the opportunity themselves to slip off in a canoe, and had gained the sacred soil of Brazil. Well, the Commissario and the Peruvian Lieutenant in charge of the force at Leticia had actually insisted on trying to compel the Liberal to go back down river, into Brazilian waters, to catch the 4 deserters. The Captain had refused, pointing out the illegality and the pains and penalties attaching — how it was quite impossible for a Peruvian vessel to arrest men on Brazilian soil, and that the Liberal would herself be arrested. They had declared they would take soldiers and manage it themselves! All they wanted was the vessel to return so that they might chase the deserters! His refusal had so preoccupied them that it was near 11 before he got away.
I hope these four deserters will be happy in Brazil. They have escaped from the vile slavery of Peru to a better life. Perhaps they are the very same young Cholos I saw first at Leticia in August, to whom I gave cigarettes. Anyhow, I am very glad that these young men have got away to a country where they will be free, and may earn good wages too.
It was very hot at Leticia indeed, and a cooling rain storm gathered and fell soon after we left. The river there has risen some 8 feet I should think since I passed up in August and found the Esperanza high and dry. The sticks, &c. of the framework she erected show their noses out of water, but the bank itself is completely out of sight.
Many beautiful butterflies on board; some I have not yet seen, quite different from our lovely Igara-paraná varieties, notably today a green and black swallow-tail of vivid colouring, and a white and black, beautifully ringed. The Captain says the river has fallen an inch or two last day, but otherwise is rising. The big rise of the Upper Ucayali is due now and should shortly begin to appear down here. Anyhow there is now plenty of water for the Athualpa to steam by night as well as by day, so if I can catch her at Iquitos we should be in Iquitos in 3½ days, not bad going for 1200 miles. We stopped at a wooding place on north bank, in the midst of the ancient Loreto, and bought 1500 billets of wood from a Spaniard at S/P 25 per 1000. This is £2.10.0 as against £3 (cheapest) in Brazil, but the Captain says the Brazilian wood is better value. The clearing we stopped at is clearly old, the grass short and clipped by 4 head of cattle. No plantation at all, but many popunha palms and with ripe fruit too.299 We got a lot of these — my little boy Omarino climbed one clean stemmed palm, from which the spikes had been removed. He tied my handkerchief round his ankle, and went up in a jiffy. The Brazilian negro, who was at Providencia when Mapp and the other Barbados men were to be ambushed by Aguero’s cannibal muchachos is on board, going away after five years’ service in the Company. He was very busy getting the fruit off the nearest palm with a long stick I passed up to him. I wandered further into the cleared space to gather some flowers, and saw two lovely black and yellow birds up a tree, by several hanging nests. They did not fly away but looked at us. Pinheiro came after me and told me the name of the bird — Jaura, I think he called it, and then he hurriedly said he wished to make a “declaration” to me of what he had seen in the Putumayo during his five years. He spoke with bitterness, and I gathered at once that here was another, like Gusmán, who desired to give the show away. I said nothing to Pinheiro, but later on told Bishop that if the man came to see me in Iquitos I should find out from him the facts as to the attempt to ambush the Barbados men, but that, of course, any declaration he had to make must be before his own Consul. It is another witness, however, ready to speak out, and that is all for good. I have broken into the Den of Thieves, and there will be many now will turn King’s Evidence if the Prefect wants the truth.
I gave the Cholo sailors some cigarettes while they were getting the firewood on board — or rather I gave a packet to one sailor, and he at once distributed all round, keeping only one for himself. They are fine lads, always smiling and willing, and if properly handled by decent white men, would make a splendid race. The owner of the house was away when we arrived, but he returned in time to get payment for his firewood — a Spaniard, the Captain says. I presume he squatted here, as all have done along the river banks. The ancient town of Loreto has quite gone, only two or three scattered huts like this in the forest with here and there the remains of a fruit palm or other planted tree. This Spaniard had two small canoes, the ordinary dug-outs of this river, and one rather larger dugout — boat-shaped — with gunwale and a palm-thatched pamalcari over the stern. I asked out of curiosity the price of this. He said he had made it himself, and it was not for sale. When asked, however, what its current value was he said £30, and added he had refused £25 for it, offered him in gold. The thing would have been dear in Europe at £4. Here its intrinsic value was much less — for all needed for its making was an axe, saw and adze. The forest gave the timber free for the cutting and the palm for the thatch, the whole of the materials were entirely free, and there was only needed the human labour with the few needed tools. I saw to-day one of the bits of sandbank planted with Yucca or cassava. The plant had shot up splendidly, and all this quite recently grown — only a tiny patch of it. It shows what might be done with this fruitful soil, for this cassava was not two months old I am convinced.
The Engineer is driving the engines all he can, and they still hope to get into Iquitos on Thursday, although I see no hope of it. Loreto is 248 miles from Iquitos, and we have not done more than 100 miles per full day yet, since we got into the Solimões from the Putumayo.
Just above Loreto saw the mouth of a quebrada, this is the Amaka-yaco, a small river that goes up to a veradero with the Yaguas, the Captain says, but on my map its veradero is shown as connecting with the Cotuhé. The Pebas river goes to the Yaguas.
At Pebas, the skipper, says we should have stopped to take cattle up to Iquitos, but now, as he is afraid of missing the Athualpa, there is no time for this visit. I am sorry for this, as he says the Yaguas Indians there still wear their forest garb of fibre, something like the Bangola women’s dresses on the Upper Congo. I have one of these dresses given me by Tizon in Chorrera, but I’ve not seen them worn by any Indian yet.300
As a strange enough illustration of things out there, the Captain tells me the little mestizo table boy, Victor, is a cousin — a first cousin — of Tizon! It appears an uncle of Tizon’s, in some government position, passed this way once, and this little boy of 12 or so (as under pantry boy) is one of the souvenirs of the journey. An Indian mother, of course. The boy is a very nice looking, polite little chap. It is a pity his father did not do his duty by the little fellow. Tizon does not know of the relationship, Reigada tells me. He has refrained from telling him, and possibly the little boy does not know anything of his parentage. He is a charming little chap, clean, bright and very good-looking. The steward boy is almost pure Indian, and a fine young chap, slim and graceful with good limbs.
Today has been trying from its heat, but the increase of pace we are now trying at nightfall gives more breeze. The Captain says (to his disgust) that neither the Comisario nor the Lieutenant had the slightest conception that there was anything wrong in their going down into Brazil and recapturing the four runaway soldiers by force. It is easy to see how raids across the Caquetá into Colombia, and wholesale catching of Colombians and Indian tribes en masse can be conducted by the Normands, Jimenezes, and other agents of the Peruvian Amazon Company in those wild, unknown regions, where here, at this century guarded frontier of Brazil and Peru, where each country has maintained troops and officials for almost quite a hundred years, a Peruvian magistrate and Military Officer were anxious to do the same thing and to requisition a steamer belonging to an English Company for the adventure. Fortunately, Reigada’s better sense, and, to some extent, I fear, my presence on board, prevented this escapade. It gives a pretty good measure of the lawless minds that reign up here, when two of the high officials of Peruvian authority were actually furious at not being able to carry out what would really have been an act of war against Brazil. I must get the names of these two heroes — I shall report them to the Prefect; in the interest of Peru herself it is only fair he should know what dangerous guardians he has on the Eastern frontier.
Every hour now draws me nearer to my interview with him, which will, I think (and hope), be of much interest. I shall speak very plainly, very civilly and kindly, too, but I’ll call a spade a spade, and a slave shall not be termed a “labourer”, or this atrocious slavery of the Putumayo referred to as an industry.
If necessary, I’ll call in Bishop and Stanley Lewis, whom I hope to find in Iquitos, and will give the Prefect Gusmán and the Brazilian negro Pinheiro as further references. If I can get three days in Iquitos it may be the best part of my journey.
We made a fairly good night’s run. A glorious sunset last evening across the wide reaches of the river. The river seems to me today to be surely rising. Quantities of the little floating weed, like miniature water lilies in bunches, are being borne past, and quite a tide of sticks and half submerged trees, all showing the rise of tributaries higher up. We are now well in the Peruvian Marañon, and in the more thickly inhabited reaches of the river. Many little huts and embryo clearings, and sometimes quite an estate. One of these we passed about noon called San Tomás was quite an edifice — a two-storied house with a sawmill behind it, and several other signs of industry. The first — indeed the only indication of industry in the proper meaning of the word — that is seen, I fancy for a good thousand miles of this great highway. Elsewhere the evidence of industry lies only in a house or store “waiting for the rubber to come in.”
The rubber industry so-called, even when unattended by crime and oppression of the Indians, is on the Amazon — throughout Brazil or here in Peru — one of the most harmful pursuits a people could have given themselves up to. Every man has long since abandoned himself to this wretched rush for “black gold”,301 as some one has called it. All else is neglected, not even thought of. Agriculture and the uses of the soil; the comforts of life; the joys of society, and the welfare of the community have been sacrificed in the rush to get rich. The demoralization of the Spanish methods of dealing with a subordinate people has here reached a climax. Regular work, the great need of the region, the one thing that would have reclaimed the wild Indian tribes from their irregular and fitful life has been entirely lost sight of.
Every man flies to get rubber — by hook or by crook; and all who can try to get it through the labour of someone else. The petty trader is the next step in the commercial ladder. He gets the rubber from the vicarious collectors by comprehensive swindling it would be hard to match anywhere else in the world. Iquitos, which has no church, has a large colony of Jews. It also has a big colony of Chinese, half-castes — that is to say a Chinese cross with the Cholo Indian, and quite a good physical type it is. The Jews are the predominant business factor in Iquitos, and since I have struck this Peruvian Amazon I have solved a riddle that has often puzzled me. In Johannesburg, before the war and probably since it, a Jew was habitually written of in the press and spoken of colloquially as a “a Peruvian”. I never heard an explanation or reason given — now I see its force.302
We have stopped once looking for wood, without success. We stayed at quite a pretty beach with a nice little house embowered in a beautiful garden with a high fence round it. The men all landed to get oranges, which, the skipper said, were plentiful. Omarino and I stalked some glorious butterflies — green and black spotted, and a magnificent crimson or scarlet and black barred. We went about it in a half-hearted way — with our fingers. Omarino caught one thus — a white and red, but I let him go at once, and he flew away uninjured. I could not bring myself to crush the little palpitating body between my fingers.
A heavy storm in afternoon — not much wind — but a sultry rainfall. We are due to reach Pebas sometime this evening, so I am told, where we shall stop for firewood. Here, the Captain says, the Yaguas Indians come quite in their original native garb — a dress of Chambira fibre plaited into a voluminous garment covering the whole body. Tizon gave me one, but I have not seen it worn yet. We shall not reach Pebas by daylight, however, and I fear there will be little or no chance of seeing these Indians. The strange thing is how have they survived and preserved their native customs, and dress, when all elsewhere along these 2,000 miles of river every Indian has merged in garb and external show into the ranks of his so-called civilizers. Generally this garb is a shirt and dungaree or cotton pants, with a wide, coarse straw hat. It is singularly unbecoming, and the bronzed, beautiful limbs of these men are so picturesque it is a crime to replace the fono or bleached bark loin cloth with this miserable gear.
After dinner a conversation with the Chief Engineer. This man looks a thorough ruffian. He took part in the attack on Serrano and the subsequent murder of the Colombians on 12th January, 1908.303 This subject was raised on our way to the Putumayo in September, over the piece out of the young pilot, Pisango’s ear,304 and I noticed the Engineer’s face during the talk at dinner. It was hard and nasty. He said never a word, but I thought he realised that Reigada was being “pumped”. I mistrust him thoroughly, and don’t wonder at Hardenburg’s reception on this boat, as described by himself, with this man as one of his hosts.
Our talk tonight was on the expense of running the Liberal. He says she cost £6,000 to £7,000, and has been at Iquitos since December 1904. Her running expenses are £3,000 p.a. at least. The following are some of the items, according to the Engineer:
| The Captain — salary | £30 per month |
| 1st Engineer — salary | £25 per month |
| 2nd Engineer — salary | £20 per month |
| 1st Pilot (Manoel Lomas) | £18 per month |
| 2nd Pilot(Simon Pisango) | £15 per month |
| 1st Cook | £12 per month |
| 2nd Cook | £9 per month |
| 1st steward (Colmenares) | £12 per month |
| 3 table boys (each £3 per month) | £9 per month |
| 5 or 6 Quartermasters – young Cholo sailors who can steer, each £9 per month |
£45–£54 per month |
| Total: £195–204 |
The rest I don’t know, but the crew, all told, comes to 30 hands.
The food is very dear, too, and firewood also, so I should put the running expense at well over £300 per month.
How, on earth, anything is left over for the English shareholders after all these Peruvian parasites have had their thwack at the rubber, beats me. Put the total output from the Putumayo now at 450 tons per annum — much of it very inferior rubber — average price now when things are good cannot be above 3/-a lb. or, say, about £390 a ton. I doubt if it fetches so much. Put the European gross return at £80,000 per annum, and I believe it represents the maximum received. The initial expenses out here under the scheme of elaborate swindling of everyone — Indians and shareholders — these people have carried through, must walk off with pretty nearly the whole of this sum. It must be borne in mind that nothing is paid for the rubber. I don’t for a moment believe that the goods paid to the Indians come to £1,000 per annum prime cost. Young Parr, the storekeeper at Chorrera, thinks that 1/-to 1/6d. represents the true value of what is given to each Indian for a whole fabrico in many sections, and I am inclined to agree with him.
The fabrico at Occidente yielded about 12 tons brought in by about 400 “workers”. They would get, perhaps, £30 to £25 worth of pots and pans, powder, fish hooks, a hammock or two, and other trash — if so much — for some £3,000 worth of rubber. Velarde would get probably £250 commission on it, and Macedo, perhaps, the half of that, and then the Iquitos house eats up £5,000 a year in salaries and £30,000 a year in “goods” bought.
I reckon that if the total income be, say, £80,000 from rubber sold in London, at least £65,000 of that sum stops here to enrich this handful of thieves and murderers. Pablo Zumaeta with his £2,000 a year, Macedo with his £3,500 to possibly more per annum, Loayza probably £2,500 per annum, each Chief of Section £1,000 per annum, and then the Dublés, Rey de Castros,305 and other official and non-official hangers on must eat up a pretty big sum, too. The people who are robbed are — at this end, first and foremost the Indians, and then the lower employés, like the poor peons and Barbadians. These with nominal salaries of S/P 50 to S/P 80 per month really get at the end of a long spell of work perhaps £10 to £20. Some of the Barbados men, after five years or six years almost of work, have not a single penny. Their salary, say at S/P 50 per month came to £60 per annum. But instead of this being paid to them they were compelled to buy all sorts of things at from 400% to 600% profit, so that I doubt if the actual cash expenditure to the Iquitos house for a S/P 50 empleado ever came to or comes to more than S/P 20 per month.
At the other end, of course, the English Shareholders are being magnificently robbed. They have put up some £130,000 in cash, and Arana himself has 700,000 shares to exploit. In return they are the accomplices of a gang of thieves, who don’t own a yard of land and exist on piracy and murder. Enough — I am sick of the whole thing, but Please God, I’ll make some of these ruffians sit up yet, as well as save the Indians.
Reading Harry Johnston’s Negro in the New World, which I like. He sent me the “first copy” (so he says) and I find it interesting in the extreme, and well done. I wrote him a long letter today on the modern slave trade here in S. America, which the great world does not respect.
Did not turn in, sat up waiting for Pebas which we reached about 11 p.m. just up the mouth of its own river. Men on shore for timber and big logs. An old Peruvian named Julian Ruiz owns this place, so Reigada says. He came on board, and then I saw two Yaguas Indians306 in their fanciful costume by the dim lantern light on the beach. They were helping our crew with the scantlings, and carrying enormous beams on board with the utmost ease. I got them brought up on deck in the electric light, and was truly amazed. The costume beats anything I have ever seen. They are bound round the bows with immense streamers behind, and the whole body clothed in this soft rustling fibre. It is all dyed a rich soft terra-cotta red, and the pale, handsome features of these two men looking out from these filaments were a revelation. One was tall, the other shorter, both young and handsome. The faces were exceedingly agreeable and shy and modest. Both looked down on the deck as we examined them. Their skins were coloured too, pink with annatto,307 I fancy. It looked like African cam wood powder. The taller young man might have stood for an Inca prince, regular features, soft gentle eyes, a beautiful mouth and downcast, pensive glance. I lifted his face twice to try and meet the eyes, but he smiled gently, and looked down again. He had two bunches of red parrot feathers over the ears. Their two wives were on the beach, and I went to visit them, but they both held down their heads and put up their arms to cover their faces, so I could not do more than glance at them by the lantern — the old man, Ruiz, introducing me in Yaguas. The Captain says these Yaguas are “free”, but the word needs definition here. I presume they are all in debt to this old man Ruiz. He looks 68 or 70 at least and the Captain says was born here at Pebas, and is “the boss of all the Yaguas”. He is also the “Governor” of Pebas. When I asked how it was these Indians had not disappeared or merged like the Ticunas and others along the river into the “civilised” squatter type, Reigada said he did not know, but a minute later the explanation came. There are priests here — a mission of Augustinians, and paid and maintained to some extent by the Peruvian Government, keeps two priests in the Yaguas country, and this has been going on apparently for a very long time. This is, I think, the explanation of the salvation of this noble, graceful tribe. Lt Maw’s description of them, as he saw the canoe arrive here at Pebas in 1827, would apply today. They have been saved by the missionaries — that seems clear. Reigada says that few Yaguas go to Iquitos, and when they do it is in ordinary garb. Some three young men came on board after midnight, as we left, sent up with bundles by old Ruiz. He and the others went off up the hill by lantern light to the house, which lay hidden away in the darkness. I much regretted we had not come here by daylight so that I might have photoed these four Indians. I gave the men cigarettes, and they smoked them with pleasure. Both were seemingly very strong, for I saw the tall young man lift tremendous big logs and carry them easily on board at a half trot, and the other man once lifted four of the scantlings together and brought them along on his shoulder. The crew carried only one scantling each at a time. I suppose these poles are for building in Iquitos.
Pebas is said to be 20 hours’ steaming from Iquitos up stream. The Huayna reckoned it 120 miles, so I think it is more than 20 hours against stream to the Liberal. She has taken a good 24 hours from Leticia, which is only 120 miles from Pebas. However, the Chief Engineer says we shall arrive in Iquitos at 6 p.m. tomorrow, Thursday. I hope so sincerely.
I stayed up till after 1 a.m. looking at the banks, and thinking of this Yaguas tribe. It is a pity I have no time to visit their country. According to Reigada, they work rubber for Ruiz, and also for some other man lower down the river, but they appear to be quite untouched by the proximity of mail steamers, Prefects, &c.; &c.;
The older man, Ruiz, however, is the “Governor” of Pebas. See Lt Maw, Herndon and others for the definition of this term of governing in the Peruvian Montaña. Reigada says that Ruiz is the governor, and the “Indians work rubber for him”. It is like the old sarsaparilla business in Maw’s and Herndon’s time. If the tribe is untouched, the Peruvian method of “administration” is equally so. A century has brought no betterment of method, while on the Putumayo we have Pizarro and the crimes of the sixteenth century in full swing. What a country!
I fear I am going to have an attack of gastritis as in Pará in July, 1908.308 That awful memory is with me still, and the symptoms that have developed today recall the beginnings of that attack. A nasty bitter taste in my mouth after everything I eat or drink. It doesn’t matter what it may be — food or drink, meat, bread, tea or wine — as soon as it is swallowed this acrid, unpleasant taste, as if my mouth were filled with quinine follows. And this, accompanied as it is by the extraordinary irritation of the skin that has arisen since we left the Putumayo, makes me fear very much I am in for another bout of that dreadful infirmity of stomach that laid me low for 3 months in 1908. I shall go to the Doctor of the Athualpa as soon as we arrive, and knock off all meat &c.; from tomorrow.
Heavy rain and thunder clouds all along the sky. Great quantities of weed, &c.; drifting down, and the river is surely risen much the last few days. I shall be very glad to reach Iquitos now, especially as I feel worse today, and fear much that it is a gastric attack. My Pará attack was acute gastritis, and I don’t want another up here, too, with this long journey before me to get to anything like comfort or care, and to be sick on the Athualpa with a landing in Manaos and worry there over the Barbados men would be the last straw. If we get to Iquitos in time I shall go straight to the Doctor of the Athualpa.
Today is cool. The cholo sailors are clearing everything up and getting the ship smart for her arrival at the local capital. I looked through Congo letters and others I got on 9th November, and have arranged them for answering when I turn my face down-stream, I hope on Sunday next the 27th in Athualpa.
Spent a lazy day, not writing much or doing anything. I played with my little chiviclis in the morning, it is a dear little thing, and will soon be as great a pet as the one we had up the Madeira river in May 1908,309 which got blown overboard in the tremendous tornado that swept our decks coming down river one afternoon. I keep it warm and cosy in my cabin every night, and early morning Arédomi or Omarino come and take it out, and much of the day I leave it free to play run and chirrup — and eat.
We are passing many more houses — chacra as they are called here — mostly of Indians, in tiny clearings. At about 2, we sighted the mouth of the Napo on our right, and anchored alongside the main bank on the opposite side — the south bank of the Marañon — at a line of houses embowered in trees that is called Muruku.310 Here we got plenty of firewood, and fowls, ducks, eggs, &c.; The settlement is one of Indians and half-castes, gentle-faced beings, and all clad like the ordinary dwellers of Peru or Brazil. I went on shore with Omarino and the young pilot Pisango, who is a fine young chap with a handsome pure Indian face. He bought ducks for his home in Iquitos. I merely looked at the houses, three or four scattered along the bank about 100 yards from each other, with agreeable garden and grounds between and around them. I saw bread, fruit, guavas, cocoa, cassava, plantains in great quantity, peppers, maize, sugar-cane and other fruit trees I did not know, all scattered in great confusion mixed up together “through other”, as we say in Ireland. Also, of course, the beautiful Popuña palm, called here Pifwa, and chontadura in Colombia.
We left this Muruku village at 3 p.m. and the skipper now confesses that we cannot possibly arrive tonight, as I knew all along. It is 8 hours’ steaming, he says, from the Napo up to Iquitos, and so we shall slow down presently, so as to arrive at daylight. This is better than going alongside at midnight, and getting noise and mosquitoes.
As regards the Yaguas Indians and the Pebas river, I passed last might, I have got further particulars from the Captain. He says old Ruiz works the Indians for rubber — that his son has “charge of them” 6 days’ journey inland or up stream, and lives at the headwaters of the Yaguas river. The man Azambuja we saw at Triunfo on the Yaguas river has others of the Yaguas “to work for him”.
Also “traders and others” go up the Yaguas to “trade with the Indians”. I wonder what are the exact conditions of such trade. The Indians are clearly the Sons of Obedience today, as they were in Maw’s time. The two young men last night were both from far away, and had obviously only reached Pebas last night, as their wives were sitting by their bundles on the bank, while they helped so vigorously to load the Liberal with the old “Governor’s” logs and saplings. We did not take nearly all he had there piled up waiting shipment, as we were pushed for time, and he has made some arrangement for a down-going Brazilian steamer to call for them for Manaos. One of the young Indians, old Ruiz said, came from 6 days away — the other, the taller and better looking youth, from only 4 hours away. I never saw gentler faces, or more agreeable expressions on any faces than on those of the two young men in their truly extraordinary garb. I shall get Arédomi painted and clothed in it at home, and have him photographed and presented to Dilke311 and the Anti-Slavery people at a great meeting! That will be an idea to enlist sympathy.
The Captain tells me the Pongo de Manseriche,312 which was successfully passed in May or June of this year by the P.A. Company’s ‘Cosmopolita’ under Captain Lores is not even a rapid — merely a compression of the Marañon between the two last buttresses of the foothills of the Andes. After passing the Pongo de Manseriche, however, rapids soon occur, and the river is not navigable for steamers. A boat with 10 knot speed, according to Lores, could always pass the Pongo. A Peruvian Company called the Cia. Gomera del Marañon, is working the rubber (Jebe Debil) and Indians above the Pongo de Manseriche. Reigada describes it “as a poor thing”: it sends its produce down to Iquitos on balsas — i.e. rafts. The P.A. Company doubtless have some interest in helping the U.S.A. Syndicate to try and open up the Santiago. This river comes in just above Manseriche, and it was to begin the survey of the river and “conquest” of its “warlike” Indian tribes that the Cosmopolita went up this year.
As to the future of all these concerns, they can have only one — failure and rank failure. The reasons I’ll not put here, but they may be summed up generally speaking, in the faults of the Peruvian character, which will quite eat up the overseas energy and vicarious control of European or U.S.A. Boards of Directors.
Take, for instance, the Ucayali river. This, the true Mother of waters of the Amazon system, is still the principal feeder of the Iquitos export market. It used to send caucho — the rubber of the Castilloa tree — now none — and it is taking up “rubber”, i.e. the milk of the Hevea brasiliensis, or ‘fine Pará’, as they call it. The caucho was a great source of wealth, but the caucheros have destroyed in ten years, the Captain says, every milk-bearing Castilloa, within reach of the banks of the Ucayali. How many Indians of the riverine tribes have also been destroyed, God alone knows. An entire industry ruthlessly killed in a decade. The exactly similar characteristics of the Spaniard of Pizarro’s time holding the field today. The Putumayo bears full testimony to that. There is an English Company, and see the fruit of the alliance! The rubber and the Indians — the Company’s property is fine — hopelessly ruined in less than ten years, and this by a syndicate enjoying the full support of the highest authorities in Peru. Arana Hermanos, as the Prefect assured me, had “performed distinguished services” to the Government, &c.; and were an eminently civilizing agency. If this be so, what of the lonely cauchero, himself by no means milkfed, who goes after the milk of the Hevea or the Castilloa — machete in hand, and murder in his heart? God help the tree and the Indian it shelters who stand in his path. We have, too, the added element of swindling — witness Israel’s magnificent success with the Pacaya Company — his “Estate”, if you please, just up the Ucayali. I see no hope for the Amazon under Peru at all, and very little for the Amazon under Brazil. Peru has, far and away the better and finer people — I mean her rank and file — her Indians who constitute the population of Peru, but her governing classes are too few, too weak, too corrupt to raise or enlighten the Indian mass. While pretending to the name of a Republic, she is not even an oligarchy.
The day has passed wearily. Lots of houses all the afternoon. After passing the mouth of the Napo at 3.30 we went by a side or north channel between islands, leaving the main channel to our left. We got to a place called Santa Thereza at 9 p.m. where the Eliza, a launch of P. P. Morey & Co.,313 was lying at anchor, and we sent a letter to her. The Stewards and all were there, and ‘Lincoln’ told me her name and gave me further information. He is almost a pure Indian, a lad of 18 or 19, with a queer broad face, gentle and loving, and grey-black eyes with a wild look. Fine limbs, like all these Indians, and a very gentle, kindly manner.
Turned in at 10, after talk with ‘Lincoln’ in broken Spanish.
272 This is a small rodent-like animal with a reddish-brown fur that looks a little like a cross between a guinea pig and squirrel.
273 A reference to Rudyard Kipling, “The Absent-Minded Beggar” (1899):
He’s an absent-minded beggar, and his weaknesses are great—/But we and Paul must lake him as we find him-/He’s out on active service, wiping something off a slate-/And he’s left a lot of little things behind him!”
274 The other Commissioners returned to England in April 1911 and together wrote a detailed report on the affairs of the Company — although Gielgud refused to sign it. The content of the report concentrated mainly on aspects of improving rubber production and had a comprehensive analysis of the Company’s estates and assets. The report also confirmed the disgraceful treatment of the local Indians and confirmed the Barbadian statements detailing the long history of horror.
275 The corresponding Black Diary entry for 16 November contains a series of discrepancies over time. There are in fact numerous statistical differences between times and weights stated in the Putumayo Journal and those given in the Black Diary, but they are often too insignificant to bother about. In this entry, however, the concentration of mistakes makes it worthwhile.
16 November. “The skipper C. Reigado gave me assurances in front of Tizon, Gielgud, Barnes, that the men could land where they pleased. So off on my last fight! Passed Port Tarma at 11.30, naked Indian women, the last I shall ever see probably. Came to the great highland forested ridge at 12.15 — it is over 500 feet high — fully 600–700 I think — a curving sweep — three or four parallel ranges, of forested upland.”
In addition to the different spelling of Reigada to that adopted in the genuine manuscript (a name the forger seems constantly to confuse) there is an error concerning the arrival of the Liberal at Port Tarma. This is given as 11.30 here and as 10.30 in the Putumayo Journal. The relevant entry in the Putumayo Journal continues: “Before noon we had passed thro’ the high ranges — 600 feet fully — of hills that come to the right bank in great forested slopes”. In the Black Diary they reach the same place at 12.15 and the height suddenly takes on a definite but incorrect 500 feet qualified by the comment “fully 600–700 I think”.
276 In 1910 there were four main transatlantic shipping companies running regular services between Europe or the U.S. and the Amazon. The Booth Line, established in 1866, was the oldest and largest and had five transatlantic steamships and over forty smaller vessels working the river itself. The Brazilian-Lloyd company mainly dealt with north American traffic as did the Hamburg America line. Germany was served by the Sudamerikanische Dampfschiffahrts Gesellschaft. The bulk of Amazon traffic was served by the Amazon Steamship Navigation Company, a London registered Company.
277 Bactris gasipaes — A palm tree reaching twenty metres in height, initially isolated, over time it forms a clump of trees. The trunk is covered in rings of black thorns which may also occur on the spathes and veins of the leaves and the axis of the infloresecence. It has long fronds, up to three meters, and flowers of separate sexes of a similar colour and size, appearing on the same cluster. The small conical fruit, red or yellow when ripe, has a thin skin and a yellow or orange edible pulp that is very acidic and is always cooked before it is eaten. Each cluster may produce over two hundred fruit and it is widely seen in market places throughout the Amazon. It was the only palm to be successfully domesticated by the Amazindian who used the root as a vermicide, the trunk for making walls, fences, bows, arrows, clubs and fishing rods while the leaves served for thatching roofs and for weaving baskets.
278 This seems to be the same figure elsewhere referred to as ‘Chico’ and ‘Rochipo’.
279 The collection of butterflies that Casement made during his journey in the Igara-paraná was eventually presented to the Zoological Museum of Dublin and remains part of the collection.
280 Ticuna or (Tucuna) Indians occupied the forest on the northern side of the Solimões. First mentioned by Cristobal d’Acuña, and frequently referred to by Bates op. cit., the most important study of these people was carried out by Curt Nimuendajú (1883–1945), who eventually died while living among them in 1945. See C. Nimuendajú, The Tukuna (University of California Publications in American Archaeology and Ethnology 1952), also H.S.I Vol III The Tucuna.
281 About one hundred and twenty miles south-east of Rioja in the Peruvian montaña, Tarapoto is nowadays a centre of northern Peru’s cocaine industry.
282 See Hardenburg op. cit., pp.262–63. The description of Vasquez’s murder of three Indian women with sticks of wood was so disgusting that it was edited out of Collantes’s statement.
283 Rafael Larrañaga was the son of Benjamin Larrañaga and was part of the initial party of Colombian caucheros which entered the Putumayo forests.
284 Manso means tame, timid or harmless as opposed to Indians bravos — untamed, aggressive and dangerous.
285 Capivara are the largest of the Amazon mammals and the world’s largest rodent — the name means “master of the grasses”. Average weight around 50 kilos with front legs shorter than the hind limbs, no tail and the eyes, ears and nostrils set high on the head so that they are out of the water when the animal swims. Partially webbed feet help the rather clumsy animal move easily through the water. They are still intensively hunted throughout the Amazon. Casement possibly introduced the first pair to Dublin zoo.
286 São Paulo de Olivença is the town where Bates was forced to turn back towards England as a result of an attack of ague. His impressions of the place were not good, “The inhabitants were utterly debased, the few Portuguese and other immigrants having, instead of promoting industry, adopted the lazy mode of life of the Indians, spiced with the practice of a few strong vices of their own introduction … The principal residents … were the priest, a white from Pará, who spent his days and most of his nights in gambling and rum-drinking, corrupting the young fellows and setting the vilest example to the Indian … I remained at St Paulo five months; five years would not have been sufficient to exhaust the treasures of its neighbourhood in Zoology and Botany. Although now a forest-rambler of ten years experience, the beautiful forest which surrounds this settlement gave me as much enjoyment as if I had only just landed in a tropical country.”
287 Casement left the Brazilian capital Rio de Janeiro and his position as the British consul-general in March 1910 and after travelling by train south to São Paulo and then into Argentina to Buenos Aires and Mar del Plata for a holiday he returned to Europe, stopping briefly in San Salvador de Bahia. Despite the fact that Casement remained consul-general of Brazil until his resignation from the Foreign Office in June 1913 he would never see Rio de Janeiro again. A situation that suited him since he detested the place.
288 Despite frequent stabilization programmes, most recently the Plano Real, chronic inflation has remained the curse of the Brazilian economy throughout the twentiethth century and, indeed, throughout most of Latin America.
289 The Peruvian gunboat America, constructed by the Camel Laird Company based in Birkenhead, Liverpool, arrived in Peru in 1905 and was immediately deployed in patrolling the waterways of the Peruvian Amazon. Equipped with two large cannons, it was capable of carrying up to 50 soldiers and was one of a number of British-built gunboats sold to the Peruvians at the start of the century. See Jorge Ortiz Sotelo, La Cañonera America (Lima 1989); also Fernando Romero, Iquitos y la Fuerza Naval de la Amazonia (1830–1933). Britain was almost single-handedly responsible for arming both the Peruvian army and navy in the sixty-five years before the outbreak of the First World War and the America played a dominant role in 1911 in the war against Colombia and the battle of La Pedrera.
290 Pernambuco is a province of north-east Brazil still famous for its succulent, sweet-tasting pineapples.
291 From Casement’s brief description this would appear to be the Blue-fronted Amazon (Amazona aestiva aestiva) — one of the more common species of Amazon parrot. Once captured, most birds have their wings cut so they are easier to domesticate.
292 A type of Amazon chicken.
293 Casement brought a number of birds and animals on his Amazon trips, many of which he later gave to Dublin Zoo. Pará remained, however, the main marketplace for captured wild animals. Today, the largest black market economy in the Amazon after illegal wood sales is in the sale of endangered birds and animals. On his 1911 trip to the Amazon Casement brought a hyacinthine macaw, which spent a lot of time perched on his shoulder and which he eventually gave to William Cadbury.
294 This reference is to the large number of Polish prostitutes in Manaos during the rubber boom. In March 1997 Manaos was once again denounced in the Brazilian press as a centre for child prostitution and child sex tourism.
295 A passing allusion to Tennyson, “Break, Break, Break” (c. 1834):
And the stately ships go on/To their haven under the hill;/But O for the touch of a vanish’d hand,/And the sound of a voice that is still!
296 In 1608 the Jesuits were authorized by Philip III to christianize the Guaraní and a network of missions or reducciones was established throughout the territories of southern Brazil and present-day Paraguay. Each mission was set up as a self-sufficient theocracy governed by two Jesuit missionaries, one charged with domestic affairs, the other directing spiritual matters. Though the Indians were under the constant supervision of the Jesuits they were at least offered protection from the white settlers and bandeirantes (Brazilian slaver hunters). In 1759–60 the Portuguese crown, feeling threatened by the power of the Jesuits, ordered their expulsion from Portugal and Brazil and seven years later they were expelled from their missions in Spanish territories. The most effective missionary on the Upper Amazon was Father Samuel Fritz (1654–1724). Born in Bohemia, he was the first man to preach among the Amazindians living between the rivers Napo and Negro and set up the first mission on the Putumayo. See Journal of the Travels and Labours of Father Samuel Fritz in the River Amazons between 1686 & 1723 (Hakluyt 1922). Casement sympathized greatly with the Jesuit cause and considered their missions as the only example of successful colonization in the Americas. He expressed this view in an unpublished book review for the Manchester Guardian written as he sailed from England for the Canary Islands at the end of 1912 — a draft of the review is still preserved in the National Library of Ireland {MS 13,073 [10/ii]}.
297 Marquis of Pombal — Sebastião José de Carvalho e Mello (1699–1782) — was a Portuguese statesman and Prime Minister from 1756 to 1777. Regarded as Portugal’s first enlightened despot, he tried to implement liberal and anticlerical legislation and ordered the expulsion of the Jesuits from Portuguese colonies.
298 Casement’s support for Teutonic civilization as opposed to Latin or British colonization was a preference born of his increasing disillusionment with the British empire and his closer association with the movement for Irish independence. But in the times he lived he was not alone in holding such an opinion. In 1911 Casement began to argue that Britain’s increasingly anti-German stance would bring the world to war, a prediction that proved correct. Nevertheless, Casement’s view of German civilization was overly romantic. German methods of imperialism, mainly in the Cameroons, and in south-west and east Africa, led to disgraceful crimes against ethnic minorities and tribal people. The German suppression of the Hereros uprising in Namibia between 1904–07 is now held to be the first genocide committed by Germans this century. Casement’s views on Germany were most concisely argued in an essay “Why I went to Germany”, written just before he left Germany for Ireland in April 1916 and published a week after his execution in the Evening Mail (New York) on 10 August 1916.
299 The Black Diary records this incident as follows: “(Got wood & popunha peaches at a clearing at ancient Loreto.” Peaches is completely the wrong words to describe these small, acid-tasting bunches of fruits.
300 These bark costumes are still preserved in the anthropological department of the National Museum of Ireland.
301 “Black Gold” was the vivid term used to describe rubber during the boom period.
302 This South African usage as a term of contempt for Central and Eastern European Jews probably derives from the setting up in Kimberley of the Polish and Russian Union (P.R.U.).
303 This is the battle between Colombians and Peruvians that Hardenburg and Perkins had witnessed and led to their capture, imprisonment and loss of their property. As a result Hardenburg stayed on in Iquitos to build a case against the Peruvian Amazon Company.
304 The only fragment referring to Casement’s upriver journey includes this incident {MS. 13087 (26/1)} 17 September 1910: “Up the Putumayo river on board the Liberal.”
305 Carlos Rey de Castro was Peru’s Consul in Manaos but was also receiving significant funding from the Peruvian Amazon Company for looking after the Company’s interests in Brazil. The Commission discovered, when inspecting the Company’s books at Manaos, that Rey de Castro had been “loaned” £4,600. Rey de Castro was also the figure responsible for “editing” Robuchon’s book En El Putumayo y sus afluentes (Lima 1907), the Company manifesto which justified its work as “civilizers”.
306 The Yagua are one of the Peban tribes, occupying the region of the lower Putumayo and Napo rivers. See H.S.I, Vol.III, pp.727–36,
307 Anatto, Bixa orellana, was the standard body stain and dye used by the Amazon Indians, known as achiote in Peru and Urucú in Brazil. Made from the crushed skins of the pod-like fruit.
308 After spending the best part of 1907 as Consul in the Brazilian coffee port, Santos, Casement was posted at the start of 1908 to Belém, capital of the Amazon state of Pará. He arrived there on 21 February 1908 on board the S.S. Clement and, coincidentally, travelled from Madeira with Julio C. Arana, another first-class passenger. Casement appears to have enjoyed his first few months in Pará. He set about reorganizing the Consulate with his usual zeal, which he found was totally disorganized and improperly situated given the level of British investment in the city. In late April he made a journey to report on the progress of construction of the Madeira-Mamoré railway. In July he was struck down with an attack of acute gastritis and on doctor’s orders was forced to leave the fever-ridden climes of the Amazon and travel to Barbados to convalesce. He left Belém on 26 July aboard the S.S. Cearense and spent several weeks in Barbados before returning to Belém. He finally left his post on 17 November 1908 and sailed for England aboard the S.S. Lanfranc, spending Christmas in Ireland before taking up his new position as Consul-General in Rio de Janeiro.
309 Within a few weeks of arriving as Consul in Pará in 1908 Casement went on a long mission to make a report on the progress of the Madeira–Mamoré railway — possibly the most ambitious railway construction folly ever undertaken. Efforts to build a railway around the 225 miles of unnavigable rapids of the Madeira river and so improve access between rubber-rich lands of northern Bolivia and the main rubber markets at Manaos and Belém had been undertaken as far back as 1872 but each time met with disaster. Following the signing of the Treaty of Petropolis in 1903 and the ceding of the Acré territories by Bolivia to Brazil, Brazil in return was bound to build the railway for Bolivia and in 1908 Percival Farquhar, the American entrepreneur, began work. Casement arrived a few weeks later and sent an encouraging report {Casement — Cheetham FO 128/324} about the work in progress. Despite the loss of thousands of lives in the construction the railway it was finished in 1912 at the moment when the bottom fell out of the Amazon rubber market.
310 In Black Diary the name of the village is given as “Murupa”.
311 Sir Charles Wentworth Dilke (1843–1911) published Greater Britain: a record of travel in English-speaking countries during 1866 & 67 (1868) about his travels in America and the Pacific. He became a Republican and Radical MP in the same year. Nevertheless, he held office as under-secretary for foreign affairs under Gladstone, and was regarded as a potential successor to the leadership of the Liberal Party until he was defeated at election of 1886 after a marital scandal involving accusations of adultery. Dilke rendered important services to the A.S.A.P.S. during his time in the Commons, to which he returned in 1892.
312 A famous stretch of the Marañon above Borja where treacherous currents and eddies render the river impassable. It is here that the Amazon ceases to be navigable.
313 The Morey family was another established Iquitos commercial dynasty with a fortune made from rubber, whose local power matched that of the Aranas. In 1911 Casement also started to attack the Morey family as he tried to undermine the commercial control of the Aranistas.