William Lewis Herndon, Lieutenant, U.S.N.

“ I do not wonder at the indifference of the people to attempt to better their condition. The power of the governor to take them from their labor and send them on journeys of weeks’ duration with any passing merchant or traveller, would have this effect. At this time they have furnished canoes and rowers for the priest, and a Señor Santa Maria, bound up the river; and for the governor and us, bound down; which has taken thirty-eight men out of a population of ninety. (The whole population of the town and neighborhood, reckoning women and children, is three hundred.) ”

“ On approaching Tocache, which was their last stage with us, the Indians almost deafened me with the noise of their horns.
These horns are generally made of pieces of wood hollowed out thin, joined together, wrapped with twine, and coated with wax. They are shaped like a blunderbuss, and are about four feet long; the mouth-piece is of reed, and the sound deep and mellow. The Indians always make a great noise on approaching any place, to indicate that they come as friends. They fancy that they might otherwise be attacked, as hostile parties always move silently. ”

“ But even with all these, I would advise no traveller to trust to his gun for support. The woods are so thick and tangled with undergrowth that no one but an Indian can penetrate them, and no eyes but those of an Indian could see the game. Even he only hunts from necessity, and will rarely venture into the thick forest alone, for fear of the tiger or the viper. There are also good and delicate fish in the river, but in no great abundance.
The inhabitants are of a tribe called Cholones, which was once large and powerful. ”

“ We passed a small raft, with a house built of cane and palm upon it, containing an image of the Virgin, which was bound up the river seeking contributions. The people buy a step towards Heaven in this way with their little balls of cotton.
We passed abreast of Juan Juy; but, a long island intervening, we did not see it. It is a large village of five hundred inhabitants; it is situated in a plain, a great part of which is overflowed by the river at the full; and much rice is cultivated there. I have met with the rice of Juan Juy everywhere on the river. ”

“ It is very easy for only a few white men, armed with guns, to rob the savages of their children; for these rarely live in villages, but in families of at most three or four huts, and widely separated from each other. They never assemble except for the purpose of war; and then the sound of a horn, from settlement to settlement, brings them together.
They are also a timid people, and will not face the white man’s gun. It is possible that the story of the popero is not true, and that the whites may buy the children of the Indians ”

“ The discovery of the drops produced a sensation of deep disgust; and I have frequently been unable to sleep for fear of the filthy beast. Every traveller in these countries should learn to sleep with body and head enveloped in a blanket, as the Indians do. I saw here, for the first time, the blow-gun of the Indians called by the Spaniards, cercabatana; by the Portuguese of the river, gravatana, (a corruption, I imagine, of the former, as I find no such Portuguese word;) and by the Indians, pucuna. ”

“ The breadth of the river is a constantly varying quantity, probably never over one hundred and fifty yards, and never under thirty; banks low, and covered with trees, bushes, and wild cane. There were hills on each side, some distance from the bank, but now and then coming down to it. It is almost impossible to estimate the distance travelled with any degree of accuracy. The force of the current is very variable, and the Indians very irregular in their manner of rowing sometimes — paddling half an hour with great vigor, and then suffering the boat to drift with the tide. ”

“ They seem to have no fixed pattern, but each man paints according to his fancy; using, however, only two colors —the blue of Huitoc and the red “Achote.”
The population of the district is contained in the villages of Tocache, Lamasillo, Isonga, and Pisana, and amounts to about five hundred souls. The road between the port and Tocache is level and smooth; the soil dark, of a light character, and very rich, though thin. Nothing is sent from this district for sale, and the inhabitants purchase the cotton for their garments from the itinerant traders on the river, paying for them with tobacco. ”

“ There are remains of a garden attached to the convent, and also of instruments of husbandry and manufacture — such as rude mortars, hollowed out from the trunk of a tree, for beating (with pestles) the husk from rice, and a press for putting into shape the crude wax gathered from the hollow trees by the Indians, used by the friars “lang syne” [long ago] — all now seem going to decay. The people are lazy and indifferent. They cultivate plantains sufficient to give them to eat, and yuccas enough to make masato to get drunk on ”

“ They are conducted by a puntero, or bowman, who looks out for rocks or sunken trees ahead; a popero, or steersman, who stands on a little platform at the stern of the boat and guides her motions; and the bogas, or rowers, who stand up to paddle, having one foot in the bottom of the boat and the other on the gunwale. When the river was smooth and free from obstructions, we drifted with the current; the men sitting on the trunks and boxes, chatting and laughing with each other ”

“ Our boatmen made their appearance at 10 a.m., accompanied by their wives, bringing masato for the voyage. The women carry their children (lashed flat on the back to a frame of reeds) by a strap around the brow, as they do any other burden. The urchins look comfortable and contented, and for all the world like young monkeys.
The Indians of this district are Ibitos. They are less civilized than the Cholones of Tingo Maria, and are the first whose faces I have seen regularly painted. ”

“ We stopped at a collection of three or four huts called Oge, where there was a trapiche to grind sugar-cane; but the people only made bad rum of it. We tried to purchase yuccas and plantains; but though they had them, they did not care to sell. They only plant enough for their own necessities. Great quantities of yuccas are used, to make their masato. Below this we passed a rancho on the right-hand side, where there was a fine field of maize. This is the first settlement we have seen on that bank; fear of the savages, (or Infidels,) as they are called, who dwell on that side, preventing it. ”

“ The first business of the boatmen when the canoe is secured, is to go off to the woods and cut stakes and palm branches to make a house for the patron. By sticking long poles in the sand, chopping them half in two, about five feet above the ground, and bending the upper parts together, they make, in a few minutes, the frame of a little shanty, which, thickly thatched with palm leaves, will keep off the dew or an ordinary rain. Some bring the drift wood that is lying about the beach and make a fire ”

“ If a practiced marksman, he will kill a small bird at thirty or forty paces. In an experiment that I saw, the Indian held the pucuna horizontally, and the arrow blown from it stuck in the ground at thirty-eight paces. Commonly the Indian has quite an affection for his gun, and many superstitious notions about it. ”

“ THE PUCUNA. 147
canoes to Huanuco, with the same cargo, and in addition some rice and rare birds. Travellers go up by the river when it is low and by land when the river is high. The returning party were going down on balsas, which they had constructed at Tingo Maria. These balsas are logs of a light kind of wood, called balsa wood, placed side by side, half a foot apart, and secured by other pieces lashed athwart them. A platform raised on small logs is elevated amidships for the cargo to rest on; and the rowers, standing upon the lower logs, have their feet in the water all the time. ”

“ I had a note from the governor, not written, but signed by himself, requesting to know how many men I wanted, and saying that he hoped to see us in the pueblo early to-morrow. We excused ourselves from going to the town, and requested him to send the men down to the port for their pay. This he would not do, but insisted that we should pay at least at Lamasillo. We always pay in advance, and the boatmen generally leave their cotton cloth, in which they are nearly always paid, with their wives. ”

“ TINGO MARIA. 137
Any number of mules may be had in Lima at a hire of about seventy-five cents a day. I paid more; but this was to be expected, for I bargained with the muleteers that they were to stop where I pleased, and as long as I pleased. The feed of a mule will average twelve and a half cents per day. The load is two hundred and sixty pounds. It would be difficult to persuade a muleteer to take a traveller all the distance. They do not like to leave their own beat, and the traveller has to change his mules, on an average, every hundred miles. ”

“ There are also gay and fragrant flowers in the gardens of the Indians.
Ijurra shot a large bat, of the vampire species, measuring about two feet across the extended wings. This is a very disgusting-looking animal, though its fur is very delicate, and of a glossy, rich maroon color. Its mouth is amply provided with teeth, looking like that of a miniature tiger. It has two long and sharp tusks in the front part of each jaw, with two smaller teeth, like those of a hare or sheep, between the tusks of the upper jaw, and four (much smaller) between those of the lower. ”

“ We paid eight (dollars for the hog, twenty-five cents for salt, twenty-five cents to Don Isidro, who brought him down to the port, and fifty cents to the same gentleman for butchering him. The wife and children of the owner took their pay for salting and smoking out of the hog himself. Our friends going up stream (according to Ijurra) stole half; and what was left spoiled before we could eat it.
Every body is a Don in this country. Oar Indian boatmen, at least the Poperos, are Dons; and much ceremonious courtesy is necessary in intercourse with them. ”

“ We dared not attempt it under oar, and the canoe was let down along the shore, stern foremost, by a rope from its bows, and guided between the rocks by the popero — sometimes with his paddle, and sometimes overboard, up to his middle in water. I am told that “balsas” pass in mid-channel, but I am sure a canoe would be capsized and filled. The mal-paso is a quarter of a mile long, and an effectual bar, except perhaps at high water, to navigation for anything but a canoe or balsa. ”

“ The hills on the other side are much more bare than is common, having only a few small trees and scattering bushes on them. We were quite objects of curiosity, and most of the people of the village came in to see us ”

“ The governor of the district had been at this place within the hour, but was gone to Tocache, which we understood to be two coceadas further on, or about the same distance that we had come over from the port to this place.
Distance is frequently estimated by the time that a man will occupy in taking a chew of coca. From the distance between the port and Lamasillo, it appears that a chew of coca is about three-fourths of a league, or thirty-seven and a half minutes. ”

“ Most of their time is spent in sleeping, drinking, and dancing. Yesterday they were dancing all day, having a feast preparatory to going to work to clear ground, and make a chacra for our “Lady of something,” which the priest, in his recent visit, had commanded; (the produce of this chacra is doubtless for the benefit of the church or its ministers;) and I have no doubt the Indians will have another feast when the job is done. ”

“ The marksman, when using his pucuna, instead of stretching out the left hand along the body of the tube, places it to his mouth by grasping it, with both hands together, close to the mouth piece, in such a manner that it requires considerable strength in the arms to hold it out at all, much less steadily. ”

“ The hill on which the port of Tocache is situated, is about thirty feet above the present level of the river, and by boiling point is one thousand five hundred and seventy-nine feet above the level of the sea.
A canoe arrived from Juan Juy, and a party of two from Saposoa by
150 IBITOS.
land. These are towns further down the river. Each party had its pitakacs, (hyde trunks,) containing straw hats, rice, tobacco, and tocuyo listado, a striped cotton cloth, much used in Huanuco for “tickings.” It is astonishing to see how far this generally lazy people will travel for a dollar. ”

“ Neither will he discharge his pucuna at a snake, for fear of the gun being made crooked like the reptile; and a fowling-piece or rifle that has once been discharged at an alligator is considered entirely worthless. ”