Mrs. Dolores Doctored My Feet With Tobacco Ashes As I
Reclined In A Hammock Under The Lime Trees Surrounding Her Hut.
I did
not buy the candles, but she did; and while I silently thanked a
Higher Power, and the
Ta-tas burned to her deity, she informed me
that my countryman, the prodigal, had been carried to the "potters'
field." Not all prodigals reach home again; some are buried by the
swine-troughs.
For some time I was unable to put my feet to the ground; but Pancho,
ever active, tied in a fig tree, helped himself to ripe fruit, and
took life merrily. Pancho and I were eventually able to bid good-bye
to Mrs. Sorrows, and, thousands of miles down life's pathway, this
little friend and I journeyed together, he ever loving and true. I
took him across the ocean, away from his tropical home, and - he died.
I am not sentimental - nay, I have been accused of hardness - but I
make this reference to Pancho in loving memory. Unlike some friends
of my life, he was constant and true. [Footnote: From letters
awaiting me at the post-office, I learned, with intense sorrow and
regret, that my strange patron had gone "the way of all flesh" The
land I had been to explore, along-with a bequest of $250,000, passed
into the hands of the Baptist Missionary Society, to the Secretary of
which Society all my reports were given.]
CHAPTER XI.
CHACO SAVAGES.
The Gran Chaco, an immense region in the interior of the continent,
said to be 2,500,000 square miles in extent, is, without doubt, the
darkest part of "The Darkest Land." From time immemorial this has
been given up to the Indians; or, rather, they have proved so warlike
that the white man has not dared to enter the vast plain. The Chaco
contains a population of perhaps 3,000,000 of aborigines. These are
divided into many tribes, and speak numerous languages. From the
military outposts of Argentina at the south, to the Fort of Olimpo,
450 miles north, the country is left entirely to the savage. The
former are built to keep back the Tobas from venturing south, and the
latter is a Paraguayan fort on the Brazilian frontier. Here about one
hundred soldiers are quartered and some fifty women banished, for the
Paraguayan Government sends its female convicts there. [Footnote: The
women are not provided with even the barest necessities of life. Here
they are landed and, perforce, fasten themselves like leeches on the
licentious soldiery. I speak from personal knowledge, for I have
visited the "hell" of Paraguay.] Between these forts and Bolivia, on
the west, I have been privileged to visit eight different tribes of
Indians, all of them alike degraded and sunken in the extreme; savage
and wild as man, though originally made in the image of God, can be.
The Chaco is a great unknown land. The north, described by Mr.
Minchin, Bolivian Government Explorer, as "a barren zone - an almost
uninterrupted extent of low, thorny scrub, with great scarcity of
water," and the centre and south, as I have seen in exploring
journeys, great plains covered with millions of palm trees, through
which the astonished traveller can ride for weeks without seeing any
limit.
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