George Whitfield Ray

“ Butterflies, gorgeous in all the colors of the rainbow, flit from flower to flower; and monkeys, with curiously human faces, stare at the stranger from the tree-tops. White cotton trees, tamarinds, and strangely shaped fruits grow everywhere, and round about all are entwined festoons of trailing creepers, or the loveliest of scarlet mistletoe, in which humming-birds build their nests. Blue macaws, parrots, and a thousand other birds fly to and fro, and the black fire-bird darts across the sky, making lightning with every flutter of his wings, which, underneath, are painted a bright, vivid red. ”

“ There was the cocoa palm, the date palm, and the cabbage palm, the latter of which furnished us good food, while the wine tree afforded an excellent and cooling drink. In parts all was covered with beautiful pendant air-flowers, gorgeous with all the colors of the rainbow. Monkeys chattered and parrots screamed, but otherwise there was a sombre stillness. The exhalations from the depth of rotting leaves and the decaying fallen wood rendered the steamy atmosphere most poisonous. ”

“ As I have said, horses are left to die in the public streets. It has been my painful duty to pass moaning creatures lying helplessly in the road, with broken limbs, under a burning sun, suffering hunger and thirst, for three consecutive days, before kind death, the sufferer's friend, released them. Looking on such sights, seeing every street urchin with coarse laugh and brutal jest jump on such an animal's quivering body, stuff its parched mouth with mud, or poke sticks into its staring eyes, I have cried aloud at the injustice. ”

“ At other times flour is substituted, and on the last day of the feast ashes are thrown on all sides. At other seasons of the year the streets are quiet, and after the rural pursuits of the day are over, the guitar is brought out, and the evening breeze wafts waves of music to each listening ear. The guitar is in all South America what the bag-pipes are to Scotland-the national musical instrument of the people. The Criollo plays mostly plaintive, broken airs—now so low as to be almost inaudible, then high and shrill. ”

“ When a girl enters the matrimonial market, at about the age of twelve or thirteen, her face is specially colored with a yellow paint, made from the flower of the date palm, and the aspirant to her hand brings a bundle of firewood, neatly tied up, which he places beside her earthen bed at early morning. As the rising sun gilds the eastern sky, the girl awakes out of her sleep, rubs her eyes,—and sees the sticks. ”

“ The fire, gathering strength as it goes, drives all before it, or wraps everything in its devouring flames. Casting a lurid light in the heavens, towards which rise volumes of smoke, it attracts the attention of the native, who lifts his starting eyes towards heaven in a speechless prayer to the Holy Virgin. Madly leaping on his fleetest horse, without saddle, and often without bridle, he wildly gallops down the wind, as the roaring, crackling fire gains upon him. ”

“ The Chaco Indian, however, is seldom seen in civilization. His home is in the interior of an unknown country, which he wanders over in wild freedom. While the Caingwas are homekeeping, these savages are nomadic, and could not settle down. The land is either burnt up or inundated, so they do not plant, but live only by the chase. So bold and daring are they that a man, armed only with a lance, will attack a savage jaguar; or, diving under an alligator, he will stab it with a sharpened bone. The same man will run in abject terror if he thinks he hears spirits. ”

“ Notwithstanding such terrible savagery, however, the Indian has ideas of right and wrong that put Christian civilization to shame. The people are perfectly honest and truthful. I believe they cannot lie, and stealing is entirely unknown among them.
Many are the experiences I have had in the Chaco. Some of them haunt me still like ghostly shadows. The evening camp-fire, the glare of which lit up and made more hideous still my savage followers, gorging themselves until covered with filth and gore. The times when, from sheer hunger, I have, like them, torn up bird or beast and eaten it raw. ”

“ As a correct plan of the river had to be drawn, the steamer only travelled by day, when we were able to admire the grandeur of the scenery, which daily grew wilder as the mountains vied with each other in lifting their rugged peaks toward heaven. From time to time we passed one of the numerous islands the Paraguay is noted for. These are clothed with such luxuriant vegetation that nothing less than an army of men with axes could penetrate them. ”

“ MONTEVIDEO. Montevideo, the capital of Uruguay, is "one of the handsomest cities in all America, north or south." Its population is over 350,000. It is one of the cleanest and best laid-out cities on the continent; it has broad, airy streets and a general look of prosperity. What impresses the newcomer most is the military display everywhere seen. Sentry boxes, in front of which dark-skinned soldiers strut, seem to be at almost every corner. Although Uruguay has a standing army of under 3,500 men, yet gold-braided officers are to be met with on every street. ”

“ In a larger house, a hundred yards away, an earthenware lamp, with cotton wick dipping in raw castor oil, sheds fitful gleams on a dying woman. The trail of sin is only too evident, even in thoughtless Pegwaomi. The tinselled saints are on the altar at the foot of the bed, and on the woman's breast, tightly clutched, is a crucifix, but Mrs. Encarnacion has never heard of the Incarnate One whom she is soon to meet. ”

“ Their houses are palm-walled, with a roof of palm-leaves, through which the rain pours and the sun shines. Their chairs are logs of wood, and their beds are string hammocks. Their wants are few, as there are no electric-lighted store windows to tempt them. Let us leave them in their primitive simplicity. Their little, delicately-shaped feet are prettier without shoes and stockings, and their plaited hair without Parisian hats and European tinsel. They neither read nor write, and therefore cannot discuss politics. Women's rights they have never heard of. ”

“ But do they really worship the Virgin, or God, through her? I answer that in enlightened countries where Roman Catholicism prevails, the latter may be true, but that in South America, discovered and governed by Romanists from the earliest times, millions of people worship the Virgin without any reference to God. She is the great goddess of the people, and while one may see her image in every church, it is seldom indeed that God is honored with a place—then He may be seen as an old man with a long white beard. ”

“ My blanket was wet through and through with the green slime through which we had waded and splashed for hours, but we curled ourselves up under a beer barrel tree and tried to sleep. The howling jaguars and other beasts of prey in the jungle made this almost impossible. Several times I was awakened by my guide rising, and, by the light of a palm torch, searching for wood to replenish the dying fire, in the smoke of which we slept, as a help against the millions of mosquitos buzzing around. ”

“ The airs strike one as being very strange, and decidedly unlike the rolling songs of British music.
In those interior towns a very quiet life may be passed, far away from the whistle of the railway engine. Everything is simplicity itself, and it might almost be said of some that time itself seems at a standstill. During the heat of the day the streets are entirely deserted; shops are closed, and all the world is asleep, for that is the siesta time. ”

“ There the driver will sometimes cruelly leave them, when, after his arm aches in using the whip, he finds the animal cannot rise. For the veriest trifle I have known men to smash the poor dumb brute's eyes out with the stock of the whip, and I have been very near the Police Station more than once when my righteous blood compelled me to interfere. Where, oh, where is the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals? Surely no suffering creatures under the sun cry out louder for mercy than those in Argentina? ”

“ BOLIVIA Bolivia, having no sea-coast, has been termed the Hermit Republic of South America. Its territory is over 600,000 square miles in extent, and within its bounds Nature displays almost every possible panorama, and all climates. There are burning plains, the home of the emu, armadillos, and ants; sandy deserts, where the wind drifts the sand like snow, piling it up in ever-shifting hills about thirty feet in height. Bolivia, shut in geographically and politically, is a world in itself—a world of variety, in scenery, climate, products and people. ”

“ In the more isolated districts, there may still be found numbers which are born and die without ever feeling the touch of saddle or bridle. Far away from the crowded busses and perpetually moving hansoms of the city, they feel not the driver's whip nor the strain of the wagon, as, with tail trailing on the ground and head erect, they gallop in freedom of life. Happy they!
In all directions on the prairie ostriches are found. The natives catch them with boliadoras, an old Indian weapon, which is simply three round stones, incased in bags of hide, tied together by twisted ropes, also of hide. ”

“ The land is one great, wild, untidy, luxuriant hot-house, "built by nature for herself." The puma, jaguar and wildcat are here at home, besides the anaconda and boa constrictor, which grow to enormous lengths. The Yaci Retá, or Island of the Moon, is the ideal haunt of the jaguar, and as we passed it a pair of those royal beasts were playing on the shore like two enormous cats. As they caught sight of us, one leapt into the mangrove swamp, out of sight, and the other took a plunge into the river, only to rise a few yards distant and receive an explosive bullet in his head. ”

“ How can a town be governed properly when its capital is three thousand miles distant, and the only open route thither is, by river and sea, a month's journey? Perhaps the day is not far distant when Cuyabá, the most central city of South America, and larger than Corumbá, lying hundreds of miles further up the river, will set up a head of its own to rule, or misrule, the province. Brazil is too big, much too big, or the Government is too little, much too little. ”

“ Thousands of orange trees growing by the roadside, filled with luscious fruit on the lower branches, and on the top with the incomparable orange blossoms, afforded delight to the eye, and notwithstanding the heat, kept us cool, for as we rode we could pluck and eat. Tree ferns twenty and thirty feet high waved their feathery fronds in the gentle breeze, and wild pineapples growing at our feet loaded the air with fragrance. ”

“ Women have crossed themselves and run from me in terror to seek the holy water bottle blessed by the father. Doors have been shut in my face, and angry voices bade me begone, at the instigation of this black-robed believer in the Virgin. Congregations of worshippers in the dark-aisled church have listened to a fabulous description of my mission and character, until the barber would not cut my hair or the butcher sell me his meat! Many a mother has hurriedly called her children in and precipitately shut the door, that my shadow in passing might not enter and pollute her home. ”

“ Planting a hugh palm in the ground, with a long bamboo nailed to the crown, we then solemnly unfurled the Bolivian flag. This had been made expressly for the expedition by the hands of Señora Quijarro, wife of the Bolivian minister residing in Buenos Ayres. As the sun for the first time shone upon the brilliant colors of the flag, nature's stillness was broken by a good old English hurrah, while the hunter and several others discharged their arms in the air, until the parrots and monkeys in the neighborhood must have wondered (or is wondering only reserved for civilized man?) ”

“ The peculiar rasping noise you now hear in the undergrowth has nothing to do with busy civilization—'tis only the rattlesnake drawing his slimy length among the dead leaves or tangled reeds. No, all that is past, and this is an old new world indeed, and romance must not rob you of self possession, for the rattle means that in the encounter either he dies—or you. ”

“ The inhabitant of these treeless, trackless solitudes, which, with their waving grass, remind one of the bosom of the ocean, develops a keen sight Where the stranger, after intently gazing, descries nothing, he will not only inform him that animals are in sight, but will, moreover, tell him what they are. I am blest with a very clear vision, but even when, after standing on my horse's back, I have made out nothing, the Gaucho could tell me that over there was a drove of cattle, a herd of deer, a troop of horses, or a house. ”

“ Penetrate into the dark, dank forest, as I have done, and ask the question. The only answer is the howling of the monkeys and the screaming of the cockatoos. You may start when you distinctly hear a bell tolling, but it is no call to worship in some stately old Inca temple with its golden sun and silver moon as deities. It is the wonderful bell-bird, which can make itself heard three miles away, but it is found only where man is not. Ruins of the old Incan and older pre-Incan civilizations are come across, covered now with dense jungle, but their builders have disappeared. ”

“ In a description of Argentine village life, I could not possibly omit the priest, the "all in all" to the native, the temporal and spiritual king, who bears in his hands the destinies of the living and the dead. These men are the potentates of the people, who refer everything to them, from the most trivial matter to the weightier one of the saving of their souls after death. Bigotry and superstition are extreme. ”

“ I can only describe Roman Catholicism on the South American continent as a species of heathenism. The Church, to gain proselytes, accepted the old gods of the Indians as saints, and we find idolatrous superstition and Catholic display blended together. The most ignorant are invariably the most pious. The more civilized the Criollo becomes, the less he believes in the Church, and the priest in return condemns him to eternal perdition.
"It is not necessary to detail the multitude of pagan superstitions with which the religion of South America is encumbered. ”

“ In this mad race for life, men, horses, ostriches, deer, bullocks, etc., join, striving to excel each other in speed. Strange to say, the horse the native rides, cheered on by the touch of his master, is often the first to gain the lake or river, where, beneath its waters at least, refuge may be found. In their wild stampede, vast herds of cattle trample and fall on one another and are drowned. A more complete destruction could not overtake the unfortunate traveller than to be caught by this remorseless foe, for not even his ashes could be found by mourning friends. ”