Isaiah Bowman

“ The plain is interrupted by widely separated valleys whose green lowland meadows form a brilliant contrast to the monotonous browns and yellows of the shimmering desert. In rare situations the valley trenches enable one to look far into the Cordillera and to catch memorable glimpses of lofty peaks capped with snow.
If the traveler come to the west-coast landscape from the well-molded English hills or the subdued mountains of Vermont and New Hampshire with their artistic blending of moderate profiles, he will at first see nothing but disorder. ”

“ In South America there has lingered from the old slave-holding days down to the present, a labor system more insidious than slavery, yet no less revolting in its details, and infinitely more difficult to stamp out. It is called peonage; it should be called slavery. In Bolivia, Peru, and Brazil it flourishes now as it ever did in the fruitful soil of the interior provinces where law and order are bywords and where the scarcity of workmen will long impel men to enslave labor when they cannot employ it. ”

“ It is impossible not to be profoundly moved by so majestic a scene. A long resplendent path of light upon the water is reflected in the clouds. Each cloud margin is tinged with red and, as the sun sinks, the long parallel bands of light are shortened westward, changing in color as they go, until at last the full glory of the sunset is concentrated in a blazing arc of reds, yellows, and purples, that to most people quite atones for the dull gray day and its humid air. ”

“ Will men of the white race dig up the rank vegetation, sleep in grass hammocks, live in the hot and humid air, or will they stay in the cooler regions of the north and south? Will they rear children in the temperate zones, or bury them in the tropics?
What Gorgas did for Panama was done for intelligent people. Can it be duplicated in the case of ignorant and stupid laborers? Shall the white man with wits fight it out with Nature in a tropical forest, or fight it out with his equals under better skies? ”

“ Facts like these are vital in the consideration of the future of the Amazon basin and especially its habitability. It was the dream of Humboldt that great cities should arise in the midst of the tropical forests of the Amazon and that the whole lowland plain of that river basin should become the home of happy millions. Humboldt’s vision may have been correct, though a hundred years have brought us but little nearer its realization. Now, as in the past four centuries, man finds his hands too feeble to control the great elemental forces which have shaped history. ”

“ There are still considerable numbers of Indians who shun the white man and live in the most remote corners of the mountains. I have now and again come upon the most isolated huts, invisible from the valley trails. They were thatched with grass; the walls were of stone; the rafters though light must have required prodigious toil, for all timber stops at 12,000 feet on the mountain borders. The shy fugitive who perches his hut near the lip of a hanging valley far above the trail may look down himself unseen as an eagle from its nest. ”

“ Thus he has lived for centuries and is quite content to live today. Only coca and brandy tempt him to engage in commerce, to toil now and then in the hot valleys, and to strive for more than the bare necessities of life. Therefore it matters very little to him if his home town is isolated, or the resources support but a small group of people. He is so accustomed to a solitary existence in his ramblings with his flocks that a village of fifty houses offers social enjoyments of a high order. Where a white perishes for lack of society the Indian finds himself contented. ”

“ Corn fields surround the few scattered habitations that have been built just above the break or shoulder on the valley wall where the woodland terminates, and there are fine grazing lands. The trails follow the upper slopes whose gentler contours permit a certain liberty of movement. Then the way plunges downward over a staircase trail, over steep boulder-strewn slopes to the arid floor of a tributary where nature has built a graded route. ”

“ The oldest and most significant surface may be at the top of the country, where it is not seen by the traveler or where it cannot impress him, except in contrast to features of greater height or color. The layman frequently seizes on a piece of bad-land erosion or an outcrop of bright-colored sandstone or a cliff of variegated clays or a snow-covered mountain as of most interest. All we can see of a beautiful snow-clad peak is mere entertainment compared with what subdued waste-cloaked hill-slopes may show. ”

“ We commonly think that the typical slave is one who is made to work hard, given but little food, and at the slightest provocation is tied to a post and brutally whipped. This is indeed the fate of many slaves or “peons” so-called, in the Amazon forests; but it is no more the rule than it was in the South before the war, for a peon is a valuable piece of property and if a slave raider travel five hundred miles through forest and jungle-swamp to capture an Indian you may depend upon it that he will not beat him to death merely for the fun of it. ”

“ The shepherd of the highland and the forest hunter of the plains perforce range over vast tracts, and each brings back to the home group news that confirms the tribal choice of habitation or sets it in motion toward a more desirable place. Superstitions may lead to flight akin to migration. Epidemics may be interpreted as the work of a malignant spirit from which men must flee. War may drive a defeated group into the fastnesses of a mountain forest where pursuit by stream or trail weakens the pursuer and confines his action, thereby limiting his power. ”

“ Every pack-train from valley to highland carries luxury in the form of fruit, coca, cacao, and sugar. One would think that every importation of valley products would be followed by a wave of migration from highland to valley. On the contrary the highland people have clung to their lofty pastures for unnumbered centuries. ”

“ Its bright fields stretch up the lower slopes and alluvial fans of the canyon to the limits of irrigation where the desert begins. The fame of this charming oasis is widespread. The people of Antabamba and Lambrama and even the officials of Abancay spoke of Cotahuasi as practically the end of our journey. Fruits ripen and flowers blossom every month of the year. Where we first reached the canyon floor near Huaynacotas, elevation 11,500 feet (3,500 m.) ”

“ The broad white path that winds through vineyards and cotton-fields, follows the foot of a cliff, or fills the whole breadth of a gorge is the waste-strewn, half-dry channel of the river. In some places almost the whole floor is cultivated from one valley wall to the other. In other places the fields are restricted to narrow bands between the river and the impending cliffs of a narrow canyon. Where tributaries enter from the desert there may be huge banks of mud or broad triangular fans covered with raw, infertile earth. ”

“ It is difficult to see how a thousand Indians can be held to even a mixed allegiance. It seems impossible that word can be got to them. However the native “telegraph” is even more perfect than that among the forest Indians. From one to the other runs the news that they are needed in the canefields. On the trail to and from a mountain village, in their ramblings from one high pasture to another, within the dark walls of their stone and mud huts when they gather for a feast or to exchange drinks of brandy and chicha—the word is passed that has come up from the valleys. ”

“ If the rise of the Incas to power was not related to the topography and climate of the Cuzco basin, at least it is certain that without so broad and noble a stage the scenes would have been enacted on a far different scale.
The first Inca king and the Spanish after the Incas found here no mobile nomadic tribes melting away at the first touch, no savages hiding in forest fastnesses, but a well-rooted agricultural race in whose center a large city had grown up. Without a city and a fertile tributary plain no strong system of government could be maintained or could even arise. ”

“ They have only to call at the nearest plantation. There is always a wolf before the door of the planter—the lack of labor. Yet, as on every frontier, he turns wolf himself when the lambs come, and without shame takes a week’s work for a penny mirror, or, worse still, supplies them with firewater, for that will surely bring them back to him. Since this is expensive they return to their tribal haunts with nothing except a debauched spirit and an appetite from which they cannot run away as they did from their task masters in the rubber forest. ”