^^k/t>^c^;if:.a.:Ql^gi:' m.ihisfyloiiy': •IfaiJE-VHIIVlEKSJnnf- J90J TEN THOUSAND MILES IN A YACHT j*dT . r ~"""~"-} *¦$* % *.- _# l „.# Hk .-'—vH 9ft Ir'iwlrfl^r^ te]jjj^^ ¦$r> wBL:S';.Z.- ¦SP "**^ M *< Ten Thousand Miles in a Yacht ROUND THE WEST INDIES AND UP THE AMAZON BY RICHARD ARTHUR INTRODUCTION BY WILLIAM M. IVINS NEW YORK E. P. DUTTON & COMPANY 31 WEST TWENTY-THIRD STREET 1906 Copyright, 1906, by RICHARD ARTHUR Registered at Stationers' Hall, London, England DEDICATION TO COMMODORE E. C. BENEDICT Permit me, my dear Commodore, to inscribe to you this record of the unique and memorable voyage which your indefatigable love of the sea prompted you to conceive, and your inveterate hospitality inspired you to carry out with such munificent provision for the comfort and pleasure of your fortunate guests. In turning over the leaves of this volume from time to time, may you, and those who accompanied you on the cruise, be impelled by some suggestion in the pic tures, or in a phrase of the text here and there, to fare forth again, in imagination (and with something of the delight of the actual journey) to where you took us in the "Virginia" last winter — across the tropical, sap phire seas, along the palm-fringed, Caribbean island- coasts, and upon the broad bosom of the mighty, marvellous Amazon. R. A. New York, January 6th, 1906. CONTENTS Dedication . 7 List of Illustrations . 1 1 Introduction . . The Origin of the Voyage ... •5 33 The Tail-end of a Storm 37 The Bermuda Islands . 4' The Lesser Antilles . . 5° Dominica . Si Martinique — Mont Pelee — The Ruins ofSt.Pierr : 63 Santa Lucia — The Pitons 73 Barbados ..... 76 Down to the Equator 87 A Month on the Amazon 89 The Mouth of the Great River 89 The City of Para 101 A Thousand Mile Journey Upstream 109 A City in the Wilderness 130 The Amazonian Indians 142 A Hunting Excursion . • '49 Plant and Animal Life of the Amazon Va «S4 Turning Homeward . 164 Agriculture on the Amazon . 167 Back to Para .... • '73 Rubber Gathering 176 Good-bye to the Amaz on 9 . 184 PAGE Death and Suicide in the Menagerie 188 Along the Coast of South America 190 A True Fish Story .... 191 Trinidad 196 Venezuela ..... 213 Curacao ...... 216 A Record Roll — and Others 219 Jamaica ....... 221 The Dry Tortugas 228 A Long Detour for Some Fishing . 228 A Feat in Navigation .... 229 A Day's Sport 231 The Fifty-Pound Fish We Didn't Catch . 232 Havana, Cuba ...... 240 Nassau, New Providence .... 245 Back to « Little Old New York " 250 ILLUSTRATIONS Commodore E. C. Benedict . Palms of the Amazon Region Chart of the Virginia's Course . The Steam Yacht Virginia . The Coast of Dominica Officers, Stewards and Mascottes Part of the Crew .... High Seas on the Way to Bermuda . A Derelict The Coral Strand of Bermuda .. Caribbean Natives Diving for Coins 'X Bermudan Cottages .... Coral Reefs, Bermuda .... St. George's, Bermuda .... A typical Bermudan Villa . Royal Palms, Bermuda The Virginia in Hamilton Harbor, Bermuda Roseau, Dominica .... Street Scene, Roseau, Dominica . A Mountain Lake, Dominica In the Forest, Dominica On the Hillside, Dominica . The Devastated Hills of Martinique . The Ruins of St. Pierre and Mont Pelee Ruins, St. Pierre, Martinique Fort de France, Martinique Martinique Types . The Pitons, Santa Lucia Coast-line, Barbados Rural Scene, Barbados In the Woods of the Interior, Barbados The Wharf, Bridgetown, Barbados Barbados Types I, II, III . The Main Street, Bridgetown, Barbados 80,8 PAGE 4 15 31 3**33 343537 39 40 4i434547 48 49 5o51 545657 606265 697i 72 73757677 79 1,85 82 ILLUSTRATIONS Street Scene, Bridgetown, Barbados . Native Dwellings, Bridgetown, Barbados . A Sugar-cane Field, Barbados . The Virginia at Barbados — Cleaning Ship Mouths of the Amazon .... A Rubber-Gatherer's Dwelling . On the Lower Amazon .... High-River Season on the Lower Amazon Pilot Boat and Cutter — Mouth of the Amazon The River-Front, Para A Para Avenue .... Craft of the Lower Amazon, at Para The Modern Section, Para A Business Centre, Para A Typical Para. Dwelling . Outskirts of Para The Old Section, Para A North Brazilian Church . Types of North Brazilian Beauty — I, The Municipal Park, Par-i . Off to Visit the Governor . Amazon Pilots and Our First Officer In " The Narrows," Lower Amazon The Virginia in "The Narrows" Warping Up Stream . An Island on Its Last Legs Chart of Part of the Lower Amazon A River Steamer Among the Islands An Amazonian Village A Ranch on a Tributary of the Amazon The Beach, Santarem .... A Trading Station .... Forest near the River .... A Thousand Miles from the Sea The Victoria Regia of the Amazon Lagoons A Street in Para Manaos Harbor at "High River' II 1 06. 8384 8586 888990 9'93 94 95 97 98 99 101 103 104 105107 108109noIII114 "5116 117 118 119120 121122123126127129 . 130 ILLUSTRATIONS A By- Way near Manaos The Main Avenue, Manaos The Market, Manaos .... Livers of the Simple Life . A Beauty Spot near Manaos At the Regatta, Manaos Classing and Packing Rubber, Manaos Indians of the Rio Branco Amazon Indian Chiefs in Full Dress An Amazon Indian Chief . An Amazon Eve ..... A Young Brave A Paradise for Alligators . River or Forest — Which Shall Reign ? Getting Provisions Over the Rapids of the Rio B Part of the Yacht's Menagerie . The Amazonian Jungle • . The Turtle Market, Manaos A Village near Iquitos The Rio Branco — A Tributary of a Tributary A Trading Centre .... A Gift Boatload of Plantation Products Navigation on the Small Rivers Disembarking on the Edge of the jungle Negotiating the Rapids of the Upper Tapaj6s Instituting the Wireless Telegraph on the Amazon " The Forest Pushes Right Into the River " . Commodore Benedict Assisting at Rubber-Smoking Operations The Hevea Rubber Tree Tapping a Rubber Tree Bringing Home the Day's Yield of Rubber Milk Overtapped Rubber Trees Smoking Rubber ........ Headquarters of Rubber Ranches "Biscuits" of Smoked Rubber .... PAGE "31132 '33 I36'37 139 141 142H3 H5 I46 147 151 152 ranco 153 154, 161 '57 163 164 165 166 168169171 172 173 174175176 177 177 180181 182183 13 ILLUSTRATIONS PAGE Carrying Rubber to the River for Shipment . .184 A Provision Store 185 Headquarters of a Rubber Ranch at "High River" 186 The Coast of Trinidad 193 Trinidad Coolie Types — I, II, III . . 196, 207, 209 A Palm Grove, Trinidad 197 Near Port of Spain, Trinidad 198 Rope Tree (1), Bamboo Grove (2), Trinidad . . 199 In Port of Spain, Trinidad 201 A West Indian Mulatto 202 The Blue Basin Waterfall, Trinidad . . .203 A Cacao Plantation, Trinidad 204 A Cacao Tree 205 Drying Cacao Beans, Trinidad 206 A Trinidad Coolie Fakir 210 In the Interior, Trinidad 211 La Guayra Harbor, Venezuela 213 A Street in Caracas, Venezuela . . . .214 On the Great Lagoon, Curacao 215 Willemstad Residences, Curacao .... 216 Willemstad Harbor, Curasao 217 A Plantation in the Blue Mountains, Jamaica . . 223 The End of the Road, Blue Mountains, Jamaica . 226 Among the Bahama Keys 230 The Instigator of a Commotion .... 236 Tobacco Planting, Cuba 240 Havana, Cuba 241 The Plaza de Arma, Havana 243 The Prado, Havana 244 Nassau Harbor, New Providence .... 245 Grape-Fruit Trees, Nassau 246 A Village Street, near Nassau 247 A Coral Road, near Nassau 248 Shipping a Wave, on the Way from Nassau . . 249 The Heroine of this Story — on the Day of the Re turn Home 251 14 INTRODUCTION TT is a great pleas- -*- ure to write a preface for Mr. Ar thur's little book, which records one of the rarest incidents in the lives of several of a party of close friends, with some of whom the shadows are already begin ning to grow long. The old traveller will admit that, while there 15 INTRODUCTION are other places in the world as beautiful as the islands of the Caribbean, there are, nevertheless, none more beautiful, and the man who has had a vision of Dominica and Martinique and Santa Lucia will carry with him to his grave a memory of the glory of the divine revelation in nature which will be a constant charm in. hours of hap piness and an endless refreshment in days of gloom. In the cruise of the Virginia, these islands, however, were taken en passant, going and com ing, and were not the objective. Moreover, they have been so frequently described, they are so well known to so many, and some of the litera ture concerning them is of such peculiar charm, that unless one approaches the subj'ect with an altogether exceptional knowledge, or a very broad sympathy for place and people, as well as poetic insight and an appreciative touch in de scription, it were better that he should add not a word to the existing literature. But in these pages, Mr. Arthur records the circumstances of a quite unusual experience ; so that his book has 16 INTRODUCTION an excellent raison d'Stre. Moreover, he has not attempted to rival former writers by going into detailed and intimate description, but has wisely confined himself to relating the incidents of the voyage and to giving rapid, impressionistic little pictures of the places touched at by the yacht. To him who has visited the Lesser Antilles, and even more seriously to him who has not, I recommend the reading of Lafcadio Hearn's book on Martinique and the other islands. It was in this that he first showed that wonderful capacity for putting atmosphere and color into words that subsequently made his books on Japan so altogether unique. To anyone who is interested in Mr. Arthur's little story, I should say, if it stimulates you to a desire for more, turn to Lafcadio Hearn, and all who do so will, I know, thank me for the suggestion, even though they know the book already, for it may be read many times and always with more won der than before at the rare skill of the author. But, as I have said, these islands in our Amer- 17 INTRODUCTION ican Mediterranean were taken in passage, whereas the Amazon was the object of the ad venturous longing of a party, all but two of whom (who already knew it well) visited it with a yearning for the sight of El Dorado and of the yellow " Sweet Water Sea," such as was felt in England and in Spain and in Italy and in France hundreds of years ago, when the discov eries of Pinzon and Cabral and Vespucci first came within the ken of men, and when the world of culture and of progress, led thereto by Amer- icus himself, ventured the fine guess that Brazil was the seat of Paradise and the Valley of the Amazon the very Garden of Eden. From the day that the child first begins the study of geography and learns of the Great River, his mind is stirred by imaginings of this, one of the greatest of the world's wonders, and then, as he grows in years, there comes to him in his reading and in story strange tales from this far-away land, unlike any^other, where the men and the birds and the beasts, the skies and the stars, the waters and the 18 INTRODUCTION flowers and the trees, are all unlike any that he has known. Is it strange then that in childhood lads should dream of a visit to, and that old men should hope to see, before the burden of life be lifted, the country that Raleigh knew as El Dorado, that Americus claimed was the true Garden of Eden, and that Captain Mayne Reid and Jules Verne pictured as a land of romance, whose story, like Macbeth, had murdered sleep, but so differently and so delightfully ? How vividly there comes back to me now the memory of that summer day in the middle '6o's, when the one object of my boyish worship, Pro fessor C. Fred Hartt, came home from his Amazon journey and asked me to help him un pack and arrange his specimens ! With what joy I gave up the first half of my vacation ! Then, as a lad, I caught the yearning and fever for the Great River as Hartt had had it from Agassiz and Agassiz from Spix and Martius, almost as if it had come to me by direct descent — and it is still unsatisfied, for never yet have I been able, in all of my four visits, to do there 19 INTRODUCTION what I have wanted to do and what I still want to do, and I have saudades, sweet longings for and memories of it, which will never be satisfied now, for the years creep on and the heart of the wilderness is no place for those who have passed the floodtide of life. As for my master, he died pursuing the charm of Brazil, as brave a mind, as true a soul, as gentle a heart as science or chivalry has known. The Virginia was a bare thirty days on the Great River — long enough to realize the physical aspect of the country of the Amazonian basin, with its new and strange flora, of some, at least of the fauna, of the people and of the cities. It was long enough for a superficial glance, long enough to taste and enjoy the hos pitality of the warm-hearted and open-handed Brazilians, of these people of simple taste and exquisite gentleness and sympathy, but not long enough to get into real touch with their lives, their language, their literature, their politics, their national aspirations, their customs, their folk lore or their civilization. That is only pos- INTRODUCTION sible to one who knows their tongue, who knows their history, who knows their literature, and who has not only lived long among them, but lived sympathetically and with an insatiable curiosity. This is the reason why we have in English no book or books through which the reader may become intimately acquainted with Brazil and the Brazilians, and, above all, with those of the Amazon Valley. The only English books of any value that we have were written by scientific men or mere curious travellers, not one of whom, so far as I am aware, knew thor oughly the tongue, the history, the literature or the people. While some of these books, like those of Bates and Wallace and Mrs. Agassiz, have real value, they are of little human inter est, and I know of no greater desideratum in the way of a book than just such a volume as the very brilliant Oliveiro de Lima, late Brazil ian Minister to the United States, has written of our own country — which is as thorough and as fine in its way as even Mr. Bryce's " American Commonwealth." INTRODUCTION It thus happens that the casual visitor to the Amazon has no way to prepare himself for a perfectly appreciative understanding of what he is about to see, and so must come away with a memory only of that which is patent to the eye — wide open, to be sure, but, nevertheless, necessarily far from clairvoyant. Instead of a preface I might write a book, and I am strongly tempted to do so, telling of the things Brazilian that I have come to know through residence and travel and study ; but in that case I should change places with Mr. Arthur and ask him to permit me to use his sketch as a preface. Such, however, is not the design of this little volume ; yet I hope one of these days to find time in a very busy life to say something concerning Brazil which may be of value and, I hope, of charm, to Northern readers. But I may now say this to those who may hereafter visit the Great River and into whose hands this book may fall : that if they come away from it only with a knowledge of the two INTRODUCTION great cities of Para and Manaos, they will leave it with no more substantial knowledge than that of the European traveller who should judge of the United States by a few days spent at the Waldorf and at the Auditorium Annex, with Niagara Falls seen in passing. The two Amazonian cities have many of the aspects of most recent modernity, although in their out skirts and suburbs may be seen some slight indications of the manner of life lived by the people of the country on the river banks, on the edges of the igarapds, on the little interior clearings, or in the quaint villages of only a few hundred souls, or in the heart of the forest on the seringals. In point of culture, habit of life, family organization and tradition, religious prac tice and religious legend, in the simple matter of clothing, of the organization of the home, of the table, and of the life of the day and of the night, these non-city dwellers who constitute the race are so unlike ourselves that it is doubtful even if they and we should ever be able thoroughly to understand each other. 23 INTRODUCTION To begin with, the race is practically indigen ous, Indian crossed by Negro and Portuguese, due to the fact that during the first two hundred years of colonial life there came few women from abroad, and the race was begotten of the cross ing of European fathers with Indian or Negro mothers, and then the re-crossing of these again, until the classification of the several amalgams has come to be one of the crucial problems of the ethnologist. The same causes which produced the race have produced the religion of the race, the poly theistic Catholicism, reaching back into primitive tradition and indigenous mythology, and so unlike our own notions as not to be recognizable by us as Christianity at all, except so far as we recognize a certain ceremonial which has been inherited from the Latin Church and which, with the peculiar phase that Brazilian Catholicism has taken on, is not now even disapproved at Rome. I said polytheism, because outside of the great cities, and even among the common people inside these cities, 24 INTRODUCTION the people have no conception of a triune God. They never think in terms of one omniscient and omnipotent, supreme God, much less in terms of such a God expressed in the form of triunity. Their gods are as numerous as those of Olympus, but they are the saints ; and the most childish, the most charming and always the most credulous saint worship is that of the illiterate native in this land where it is always afternoon, who is ever thoughtless of to-morrow and whose care for life is no more serious than was that of Father Adam in Paradise. It is a lazy world and an easy world, and the people — always, be it understood, outside of the great cities — live and think and worship more like chil dren than like men. Within the cities, life is very different. Among the rich, the modern spirit is everywhere manifest. Here the men generally, having abandoned Catholicism, have become Positiv- ists, and the religion is left to the frades and the women and the poorer classes. It suffices admirably for the life of the race, because it is a 25 INTRODUCTION religion of cheerfulness, not begotten of logic or contention, but corresponding very perfectly to the psychological need of the people. Outside of the great cities, it may be said that the meaning of the word " politics " is unknown. Both States, Para and Amazonas, enjoy a con stitutional form of government, but the elector ate is small, and of this small electorate only a minor part take any active interest in the matter of government, and it so happens that the poli cies of both States fall, by natural process, into the hands of those best equipped to understand and direct them, that is to say, a few of the leading merchants and the members of the learned professions, the lawyers and the doctors and the engineers. It is due to this fact, and to the fact that the real political masters of the country are so in advance of the ultimate con stituency, that we so frequently see in the great cities evidence of an attempt to secure a civili zation for which the people themselves are not yet ready. But if a fault, this is certainly one in the right and not in the wrong direction. 26 INTRODUCTION The Brazilian race as a whole has come to be quite a new and distinct people in the world. It is quite as well marked as, let me say, the Spanish or the French or the Italian, and, I may even add, the English. Our people of the United States have as yet by no means been brought into such a degree of synthetic racial unity as the people of Brazil, but the Brazilians are infinitely more unlike the Portuguese, al though they speak their tongue, than the people of the United States, taken as a whole, are un like the English, for the predominant strain is Indian and Negro, while the predominant cul ture is Portuguese, chastened by the more prim itive culture of the other races. This remark, however, has no relation to the intellectual elite of the great cities, such as Rio Janeiro, Sao Paulo, Bahia, Pernambuco, Par.4, and Man,4os, who are citizens of the world, abreast of the most modern thought. And so Brazil possesses a literature, based upon racial tradition, but woven into shape of poem or story, wholly unlike any other litera- 27 INTRODUCTION ture in Christendom, and which, to those who know it, is as beautiful as any other whatsoever, even if not as rich. It is not Portuguese, that is to say, the Portuguese of Lisbon. The Braz ilian tongue, borrowing largely from Guarani, Tupi, and the Negro dialects, with the accents and the phrasing sharpened here and softened there, has grown to be as unlike the Portuguese of Portugal as the speech of the Alabama back woodsman is unlike that of London or Edin burgh. But one who has learned the tongue, who has sung its native strains, who has dreamt under the great trees and the blue skies, in the verse of some of the rarest of poets, who has followed the story of desperate adventure and of local chivalry, who has sat at night under the stars that seem infinitely farther away than in our northern sky, or under the Indian thatch, and heard the tales of the countryside, — to such a one there comes a feeling, once he has departed from the land of beauty and of dreams, that can be likened only to the feeling of him who 28 INTRODUCTION "hears the East a-calling," calling endlessly for his return. So the South calls to the men who know it, and in our hearts there is borne an insatiable homesickness for the great Palm Land. New York, January 6th, igo6. 29 «*es f&M'**10" * ViiTJ * \ cs»*\ "CU.-***"]] 0 V u a o?'S \ofJ CJ*i0- 11J-$**W '¦H*'Vf#l 1"')^SV>H>'-V 0 r*""&"" THE COURSE OF THE "VIRGINIA" Li***"P-£fe? THE STEAM YACHT "VIRGINIA" THE ORIGIN OF THE VOYAGE \X/ hen the stanch and graceful 200-foot steam yacht Virginia cut her way through the thick ice-floes that choked New York harbor on the morning of January 30th, 1905, and moored at the New York Yacht Club's Twenty-third street station, everybody who knew whither she had sailed nearly three months before, and whence she had just re turned, admitted that she had made one of the most remarkable cruises ever accomplished by a yacht. She had steamed just short of ten thousand miles, had penetrated into the heart of 33 TEN THOUSAND MILES IN A YACHT the Brazilian wilderness, and had visited eleven other lands, besides, on her way thither and thence. This uncommon cruise had its origin in a rivalry of friendly courtesies. An eminent New York lawyer, Mr. W. M. Ivins, who has for many years been a close student of South American history, economics, and literature, OFFICERS STEWARDS AND MASCOTTES 34 TEN THOUSAND MILES IN A YACHT FART OF THE CREW and who also represents very important com mercial interests in Brazil, was one day talking with a prominent New York financier and yachtsman, Commodore E. C. Benedict, about a trip he, Mr. Ivins, was going to make up the Amazon. "I envy you," said the yachtsman. "Ever since I was a boy I have had an intense desire to see that country." 35 TEN THOUSAND MILES IN A YACHT " Come with me, then," urged the lawyer. " By the Great Horn Spoon," replied the yachtsman, with sudden decision, " I will ; but on one condition — that you allow me to come as your host. I understand the hotels in North ern Brazil are abominable, so I'll bring along a hotel that we can live in with comfort." He explained that he would charter a yacht — his own not being quite suitable for such a voyage — and make up a party. As nearly as possible, dates and an itinerary were fixed there and then, and this was how it came about that, on the afternoon of November 15th, the Vir ginia, with a party of ten men and a lad, and a crew of thirty-three officers and men, steamed out of New York harbor and turned her bow toward the equator. The party consisted of the genial host, Com modore E. C. Benedict, Mr. W. M. Ivins, Mr. E. M. Backus, Mr. C. Keep, Mr. L. Hunting ton, Mr. J. Howard Ford, Mr. Russell Colt, Mr. Charles Hastings, Dr. J. Gaines, Master M. Truesdale, and the writer of this chronicle. 36 THE TAIL-END OF A STORM TTNdr two or three days just prior to our setting out, a violent storm had swept the West Coast of the Atlantic from the Gulf of Mexico to Labrador, and though the wind had now swung round to the North, a heavy sea was still running. The seaworthiness of the Virginia was at 37 TEN THOUSAND MILES IN A YACHT once put to a fair test, and she behaved so well that we immediately gained a confidence in her that we never lost during the entire cruise. We afterwards found that though, on account of her light draft and her extensive deck houses, she had a decided predilection for rolling consider ably in light seas, she always conducted herself gallantly and soberly in rough water, and never bumped or jerked, or raced her propeller, We ran before the wind at about twelve knots, reaching the Bermudas in less than two and a half days without any incident worthy of note, except the encounter, right in our path, of a derelict lumber schooner, waterlogged and aban doned. Fortunately, we came across her just before dark. Had it been a couple of hours later, we might very well have rammed her amid ships, as she lay exactly at right angles across the line of our course, and though in her condi tion such a ramming would not have mattered very much to her, it would have been quite an unpleasant episode for us, and would further have annoyed us, inasmuch as it would have 38 TEN THOUSAND MILES IN A YACHT given a color of truth to the absurd report, pub lished by a New York newspaper two days after A DERELICT our departure, that our yacht was lost with all hands. We crept up within a few yards of the dere lict and made sure that she was abandoned. The lumber in her holds had swollen and her decks and sides had burst open. Her boats had gone, 39 TEN THOUSAND MILES IN A YACHT so her crew had evidently escaped. Shortly after, we overtook and spoke another sailing vessel, crippled by the storm and laboring along with difficulty, but able to take care of herself and make port. THE CORAL STRAND OF BERMUDA 40 w THE BERMUDA ISLANDS e arrived off the coast of Bermuda in the night, and, as the entry to the Harbor of Hamilton is long and difficult, we anchored under the lee of the Eastern shore until daylight. We then picked up a pilot and were duly guided through the coral reefs into the pretty land-locked harbor. We spent a couple of very pleasant days, driv ing and roaming about this unique and delight ful little country, enjoying its natural beauties, its splendid seascapes and calm, picturesque, undulating landscapes. Only a few hours be fore we had been none too warm in heavy win ter clothes ; now we donned the lightest summer garments and revelled in the luxury of diving 41 TEN THOUSAND MILES IN A YACHT from the yacht into the clear, tepid waters of the harbor. The Bermudas, viewed from the ocean as one approaches them, are not very impressive, and the visitor is therefore all the more delighted with the richness and variety of vegetation and scenery which, upon closer acquaintance, they reveal to him. The islands are of coral formation, and the land is low-lying, presenting to the observer out on the ocean a flat and bare appearance. But as you pass through the shoals and into the harbor, innumerable wooded valleys and bays and hillsides covered with thick-foliaged shrubs and trees, disclose themselves, and everywhere brilliant-white little coralline houses stand out gayly from the dark green of the vegetation, making a most pleasing picture. The largest island is nowhere more than three miles in breadth, and the highest hill is only 250 feet above the level of the sea. The ocean, or some arm of it, is therefore visible from almost every hillock, and the water is generally tossed 42 TEN THOUSAND MILES IN A YACHT into picturesque whitecaps by the strong, per sistent breezes which give the sea round the islands the same reputation it must have had BERMUDAN COTTAGES among mariners when Shakespeare alluded to " the still-vex'd Bermoothes." But it is the sea that is vexed, not the islands themselves. They, indeed, are as dreamy-peace ful as weary brain and nerves could wish. Just a century ago, the Irish poet Tom Moore, who resided here during the year 1804, wrote a poem to express his delight with this little isolated 43 TEN THOUSAND MILES IN A YACHT land. Some of his lines will serve to express our feelings on landing there quite as well as they did his : — " When the zephyrs bland Floated our bark to this enchanted land — These leafy isles upon the ocean thrown, Like studs of emerald o'er a silver zone, — Not all the charm that ethnic fancy gave To blessed arbors o'er the western wave, Could make a dream more soothing or sublime.'' The group of islands composing the Bermudas is twenty-five miles in length, and consists of one hundred islands, besides a considerable number of islets, many of which are submerged at high tide. The main islands are all connected by bridges. Science has not yet been able definitely to de termine what the geological formation is which constitutes the basis of the coral superstructure of the Bermudas ; but the isolation of the islands in the wastes of the North Atlantic Ocean sug gests the idea of mountain peaks, the relic of some prehistoric continent, peaks which, though submerged, were yet near enough to the surface 44 TEN THOUSAND MILES IN A YACHT to enable the little coral insects to build their wonderwork upon them. The peaks, it is sup posed, were then forced out of the water by some upheaval, then again submerged, when fresh CORAL REEFS, BERMUDA layers of coral were built over the decomposed strata of former constructions. The Bermudas used to be a great fruit-pro ducing country, but of late years fruit has been neglected, and the soil has been mainly given up to the raising of potatoes, onions, tomatoes and Easter lilies. "The land of the lily and the 45 TEN THOUSAND MILES IN A YACHT rose" is also a land of innumerable other flowers. The passion-flower, the violet, the narcissus, the Bourgainvillia creeper, the wistaria, the gera nium, the heliotrope and the verbena spring up everywhere, and the morning glory and many other flowers bloom all the year round. This little country has a population of about 18,000, of which number only 6,500 are Whites. Our visit, we were told, was too early to enable us to see the country at its best and gayest, the social season not having begun, and the vegeta tion not being in its most attractive condition. There is little difference here, however, between summer and winter. Though only forty-eight hours' sail from New York, the islands really enjoy a perpetual summer. Thanks to the in fluence of the Gulf Stream, the climate is con tinually sub-tropical, and yet the temperature is rarely high enough to be oppressive. The ther mometer does not go above 86, and the nights are cool and breezy. The air is pure and suave, and malaria is unknown. The Bermudan houses are of simple but pic- 46 TEN THOUSAND MILES IN A YACHT turesque construction. They are dry and com fortable, being built of white coralline stone which is cut from quarries with saws, and they are whitewashed, roofs and all. Surrounded as ST. GEORGE'S, BERMUDA they mostly are by the evergreen foliage of numerous species of small palms, by the ubiquit ous cedar, and by flowers and ornamental shrubs of rich foliage, they present a cool and very in viting appearance. A group of the best of 47 TEN THOUSAND MILES IN A YACHT A TYPICAL BERMUDAN VILLA them, seen from a distance, suggests the idea of so many little white temples built to the honor and glory of some benignant Diana, some white- stoled Goddess of Purity and Health. After spending two days in this lotos-land, this country "where it seemed always after noon," we were piloted out to sea and proceeded on our way South, carrying with us memories of a thin line of island-coast, of water breaking white upon coral reefs, of wood-fringed interior 48 TEN THOUSAND MILES IN A YACHT bays, of wholesome-looking little plantations situated in pleasant, shallow vales, and of snow- ROYAL PALMS, BERMUDA white bungalows and villas grouped on low hills or nestling singly amid the greenness of thick foliage and the gay, many-colored blooms of in numerable shrubs and trees and creepers. 49 THE LESSER ANTILLES •*" I ^wo-and-a-half days of pleasant uneventful sailing brought us in sight of the first of the Lesser Antilles, the bare little island of Sombrero, and soon after we saw the first of the Leeward group, Anguilla. Then we passed in rapid succession, and got glimpses of, the islands of St. Martin, St. Bartholomew, St. Eustatius, Barbuda, St. Christopher, Nevis, Antigua, Mont- serrat, Guadeloupe, and Maria Galante. 50 TEN THOUSAND MILES IN A YACHT DOMINICA Then we came to Dominica and sailed along its lee shore until we reached Roseau, the little capital, which is situated about half way down the Western coast. In respect of natural scenery, Dominica is the ROSEAU, DOMINICA most beautiful of the Lesser Antilles. From our anchorage a couple of hundred yards off the shore of Roseau, while we were awaiting the fulfilment of harbor formalities before landing, we gazed with wonder and delight — even those of us who had seen this or similar tropical beauty 51 TEN THOUSAND MILES IN A YACHT and grandeur before — at the clear, sapphire-blue water lapping lazily on the palm-fringed shore, the dense, dark-green and light-green foliage of the near slopes, the darker density of the forest on the acclivitous sharp-ridged mountains be yond, and the fine, clear-cut, culminating peaks, each capped with a little, separate, fleecy cloud. Bermuda had pleased us with its verdure and its sunny atmosphere ; but we now recognized that Bermuda was not tropical, that its beauty was tame in comparison with this grandeur and rank tropical growth, and that its light was dull when compared with the intense luminosity of this ethereal atmosphere. We were all impatient to get ashore and make intimate acquaintance with these scenes, which so fascinated us at a distance. But we lingered awhile to watch the numerous young negroes, who had come alongside the yacht, sporting in the water like amphibians and diving for the coins which we threw to them. "God made the country," it has been said, "and man made the town." Here in Dominica, 5a TEN THOUSAND MILES IN A YACHT man's part of the work, that of town-making, does not amount to very much. As a town, Roseau is about as primitive a place as one could find on the highways or byways of the Western seas. To the observer out in the harbor, it pre sents a low, stone bulwark and a line of yellow- white, plaster buildings of unequal height, plain and unprepossessing. These are the stores and native business houses. Further inland one catches a glimpse of diminutive lath-houses, thatched with palm-leaves. At one end of the town, on a slight eminence, are half seen, half divined, several buildings of more attractive ap pearance, well-made white villas and bungalows, with charming gardens and a profusion of shrubs, palms, and creepers. These are the Governor's residence and the official buildings. On landing, we found the town a great deal more extensive than it had seemed from the harbor, from which view-point the greater part of it is hidden by some elevated ground and by the trees and shrubs which fill every vacant space. Walking in these narrow little streets 53 TEN THOUSAND MILES IN A YACHT of soil, a visitor from a big city, particularly one from a city of skyscrapers, experiences a strange sensation — that of having dropped, like Gulliver, into a land of pigmies, or of some sort of supe- STREET SCENE, ROSEAU, DOMINICA rior animal which knows how to build its own kennel — so small and so primitive are these flimsy, lath-built, leaf-thatched, windowless habi- ations. But if the houses are the houses of pigmies, 54 TEN THOUSAND MILES IN A YACHT the inhabitants are strong, well-built people. There are 28,000 on the island, and some 8,000 in the town of Roseau. Almost the entire popu lation is of Negro race, there being only a few hundred Whites — English settlers, who live mostly on their plantations up on the rich-soiled plateau or on the hillsides of the interior. Dominica is a British colony, and its affairs are administered with the usual efficiency of British Colonial government. But somehow it has not advanced and developed, as most other British colonies have done, in proportion to its possibilities. Nature has endowed few coun tries with more fertility, but beyond the produc tion of limes and a small amount of cacao and sugar, man has here done hardly anything to turn the richness of the soil to his use and profit. Yet the climate is healthy, and on the plateau and hills it is even delightful and exhilarating. The great drawback to cultivation is the difficulty of secur ing reliable and continuous labor. The native Negroes, who constitute nearly the entire pop ulation, are not under the necessity of doing much 55 TEN THOUSAND MILES IN A YACHT work. There are plenty of fish in the sea near their abodes, and natural fruits and foods to their liking grow everywhere in abundance. The cli mate is such that they require little in the way ^ BB^«l3i . ¦ — --'"4 VJS '" ^~ ¦ --"--I ¦ ;MVMm jjpgp**-' " ¦'"'¦"¦' A MOUNTAIN LAKE, DOMINICA of clothing and housing, and they have no ambi tion towards a different sort of existence. So why should they work ? But if an enterprising man, in search of fresh fields and pastures new, could solve the labor problem of the island, here is a soil for his tilling that would yield tenfold, twentyfold, yea, "a hundredfold. 56 !"¦¦'•£¦ !f*<:*R5"'-$$iy lit ¦"J". £, ** *¦* §S^|^. 1 s§Jt ;"i?-S*'*P £ i|l ii SI i** M Mk It. •¦' .".,' '£« S jj fl l ' * *Vf-llh •7 ifr,#*5v l*-^ j ¦ tm mm y h > <30 -i '¦¦ -<*mS i */ il:-; f ¥*¦':/ ', ¦ fet ¦! 1 'fl^ffltft^Ks'*' *fl mm BOISP* '"¦ ; 'TiBEi^- — ¦ tHBl.* -j' !«.' *^s£e- Ml n**£F - **^lli ¦^ / ¦ p'-". ' xS*'" .:•'*: »T JVSffii i>~. m «i£ • f j*~f^\ '¦ ' SPSS?*.'1** i^jaif' JL ,*"^8 "¦>-'i fe®^^: '~'~tkt~' -i sS ¦^'^. * j. ': 'Rs >¦" ;-' ^' ysonfeiivr ^ -Sis Iil ¦ ¦ ¦• i>*. ¦* ArtHsU?" 'If J • j IN THE FOREST, DOMINICA TEN THOUSAND MILES IN A YACHT The Negroes speak a curious lingo, a sort of French patois, originally picked up from the French settlers in the Antilles. They have softened the consonants, clipped the original words often beyond recognition, and done away with inflections and such grammatical frills and flourishes. But the young generation have all had two or three years' schooling, and speak English fairly well, besides their own lingo. The most striking feature of the town of Roseau is its Botanical Garden, an extensive park-like enclosure which would do honor to any country anywhere in the world. It is kept in perfect condition and contains fine specimens of tropical shrubs and trees not only from the countries of the Western Hemisphere, but from the Orient as well. We were curious to know why such a fine and apparently expensive gar den had been established and how it was kept up in such a poor town as Roseau, and we learnt that it had been largely developed by exchanges with and through the famous gardens at Kew, London, and that it is entirely self-supporting, 59 TEN THOUSAND MILES IN A YACHT as it provides improved plants and seeds to cul tivators in Dominica and other islands. Among the many pleasurable sensations ex perienced by us in Dominica, there were two at ON THE HILLSIDE, DOMINICA least which I, for my part, shall long remember. One was purely physical, the other mental ; the first was the joy of diving from the yacht and swimming in tepid water that looked like a sea of liquid sapphire ; the second was the quiet 60 TEN THOUSAND MILES IN A YACHT emotion of watching the approach of night over the island. The sun sank, a crimson globe, into the indigo sea, and, disappearing, threw up a flush of delicate orange and violet along the Western horizon and a faint pink glow to the arch of the firmament. The hills of Dominica on our east, but a few moments before lumin ously verdant, darkened to a sombre green, then to a vague black from which the green had vanished. And now a profound peace and a brooding melancholy fell upon the land from shore to peak. The glow of the atmosphere went out ; stars began to twinkle here and there in the heavens ; the sea became dim and shadowy. Now the hills grew into an obscure, slumbering mass. Far up the mountain side gleamed one lone light. Here and there a lamp flickered in the town. The tropic day was done. Dominica is 30 miles long and has an aver age width of 12 miles. Its area is 290 square miles. The majestic mountain Morne Diablotin rises to a height of 5,314 feet, and is the most elevated peak in the Lesser Antilles. 61 TEN THOUSAND MILES IN A YACHT On leaving Roseau we proceeded South along the shore of Dominica and got a fine panoramic view of the rest of the Western slope of this beautiful island. THE DEVASTATED HILLS OF MARTINIQUE 62 TEN THOUSAND MILES IN A YACHT MARTINIQUE Then followed a couple of hours of open sea and we reached the northern extremity of Mar tinique, a few miles from which Mont Pelee is situated. Almost immediately the effects of the great upheaval of May 8th, 1902, were manifest to us. The northward-facing slope of the island is green and forest-clad, like Dominica, which we had just left. But immediately beyond begins the devastation and the desolation. And what a devastation, what a desolation! All the northern part of the island slopes up, first gradually from the sea, then steeply and more steeply to the peak of Mont Pelee, which attains a height of about 5,000 feet. And all this sloping country (except here and there a northward-facing valley) — thousands of acres in extent — is stripped of its once gorgeous jungle, left as bare of vegetation as a cliff of rock, and covered to a depth of many feet with mud and 63 TEN THOUSAND MILES IN A YACHT dust from the exploded volcano. Along the shore the sea has cut a sharp line, and the depth of the deposit can be plainly seen. Looking at this, one cannot but marvel at the- amount of mud and dust and scoria — millions of tons — that must have issued from the crater of the volcano on the day of the eruption. When we were at Barbados a day or two later, we were told that two inches of dust had fallen on that island on the day of the eruption — and Barbados is some 150 miles distant from Mont Pelde. Three years ago Martinique was as densely wooded as Dominica or Santa Lucia. Many writers — among them the late Lafcadio Hearn in His admirable " Two Years in the French West Indies" — have applied their most subtle literary powers to its description, and found the resources of their language and art all too meagre to enable them adequately to render the forest which clothed the slope from the sea to the summit of Mont Pelee and the range which extends along the island. Now for many miles, as I have said, the land is stripped bare 64 THE RUINS OF ST. PIERRE AND MONT PELEE TEN THOUSAND MILES IN A YACHT of vegetation. Thousands of acres are abso lutely nude, not so much as a blade of grass showing anywhere on them. But some miles away from the peak the land is beginning to vest itself in green again, particularly in the ravines and valleys. The site of St. Pierre, the once gay and busy city, whose 30,000 souls per ished in a few minutes, is as sad a scene to look upon as one could well imagine. A large area of the town is completely wiped out ; on it there is nothing to indicate that habitations of men ever stood there. Along the harbor front, where the business houses and finer edifices were situated, there is now only a conglomera tion of stumps of houses, so to speak, and the whole place suggests a vast ruined cemetery of some race of Titans, with giant tombstones broken, jagged and jumbled. Of the wharves and harbor bulwarks there is hardly a trace left, and the streets are entirely obliterated, buried ten or twelve feet deep in dry mud and dust. Truly this is a sight to inspire the observer with awe and wonder and pity. The heart sinks and 67 TEN THOUSAND MILES IN A YACHT the throat tightens as the eye wanders over these charred and blasted remains and the im agination dwells on the simultaneous death agonies of the 30,000 men, women and children as they drew into their lungs the asphyxiating gases from the volcano and felt the fury-flood rise round them on that fearful May morning when the mountain belched forth its fiery vomit. We did not land at the ruined city until next day, as we were obliged to go to Fort de France to get a permit. Early next morning, we steamed back to St. Pierre and went ashore, spending a couple of hours wandering among the ruins. We picked up many an interesting souvenir and acquired others from the 'young Negroes who come here from the surrounding country to rummage for treasures. Skulls and parts of skeletons were found in abundance. On getting back to the yacht, those of us who had done the most pok ing and digging were so dust-begrimed that we were constrained to doff our clothes and plunge 68 RUINS, ST. PIERRE, MARTINIQUE TEN THOUSAND MILES IN A YACHT overboard into the clear blue waters of the harbor. The crater of Mont Pelee still sends forth a thin fume, but the steeple of the peak is almost FORT DE FRANCE, MARTINIQUE always wreathed in a small clinging cloud, which hides it from view. Two or three miles away from the ruined town a few huts of fishermen may be seen, and one intrepid planter has raised a field of sugar cane on an eminence near the ruins. For the 71 TEN THOUSAND MILES IN A YACHT rest, there is no cultivation or dwelling within several miles. Fort de France, however, eleven or twelve miles to the South, is still densely populated and seems active and fairly prosper ous. MARTINIQUE TYPES 72 SANTA LUCIA About midday we left the ruins of St. Pierre and turned south again, passing Fort de France without re-entering. After traversing another stretch of open sea, we came to the beautiful island of Santa Lucia, and, steaming along its eastern shore, we had another superb panoramic view — as at Dominica — of sharp-ridged, majestic mountains rising gradually from the sea-line, then steeply and more steeply, to culminating 73 TEN THOUSAND MILES IN A YACHT peaks ; of shady valleys with little settlements peeping out of palm-groves near the shore; of a plantation here and there on the hillside ; and, everywhere else, of the dense, dark-green tropical forest. The sea was incredibly clear and blue, and sea and land alike were bathed in an indescribable luminosity. Santa Lucia has some beautiful bays which would make splendid harbors, were they needed. Castries is a fine port and seems to serve all present require ments. The island is very fertile, but, like Dominica, it is in a backward state, for the same reasons and for the additional one, it is said, that the fer de lance, a deadly little snake, is an active denizen of the forest of this island. As we were nearing the southern end of Santa Lucia something went wrong with our steering gear and we were obliged to lie to for an hour. Very fortunately, this happened just as we came to the Pitons, the two famous cone- shaped peaks which rise sheer from the sea to a height of respectively 2,715 and 2,500 feet, and we had the good luck of seeing them with the 74 TEN THOUSAND MILES IN A YACHT color-glory of the setting sun upon their pre cipitous flanks. Santa Lucia looks like a paradise, and we were sorry indeed to leave it in our wake with out having set foot upon it. COAST-LINE, BARBADOS 75 BARBADOS The next morning, November 26th, we awoke in the harbor of Bridgetown, Barbados. Here we spent three days, coaling, provisioning, shop ping, and exploring the town and its environs. Scenically, Barbados is not nearly so interest ing and attractive as the islands we had just vis ited. It is supposed to be partly of volcanic but mainly of coral formation. It is compara tively flat and bare, though there are fine hills and woods in the interior, and plenty of palms and other trees and shrubs in patches, and an 76 IN THE WOODS OF THE INTERIOR, BARBADOS TEN THOUSAND MILES IN A YACHT abundance of flowers even in and around Bridgetown. Commercially and agriculturally, Barbados is THE WHARF, BRIDGETOWN, BARBADOS by far the most important of the Lesser Antil les. It is a great shipping centre and has an enormous output of sugar, a great part of the island being given up to the cultivation of sugar-cane. 79 TEN THOUSAND MILES IN A YACHT Bridgetown is a clean, well-kept city. The houses in the business quarter are mostly one or two story structures built of coral rock, plas ter and red tiles. They are low and plain and have no architectural pretentions. The streets are very narrow, but the blue-white pulverized coral-rock of which they are made gives them a very clean appearance. The public buildings are imposing and the residential locality of the well-to-do Whites — Bellerville — with its long avenue of cabbage-palms, its handsome villas, and pretty private gardens, is as at tractive a sight as one could see in any city. A drive along one of the numerous roads leading out of the town, or a short journey in a mule- tram, is sure to furnish entertain- BARBADOS TYPES-I 80 TEN THOUSAND MILES IN A YACHT ment. It is Negroes, Negroes everywhere; the island seems overrun with them. They are a sturdy but not very prepossess ing branch of the race. But there is one graceful feature about them — the women carry their bur dens on a wooden tray on their heads, and this gives them a fine car riage. Along every country road near Bridge town, hundreds of bare footed, white-robed girls and young women are to be seen carrying wares and food — often a weighty burden — to or from the market, and the sight is a pleasing one. We spent a Saturday evening in Barbados, and shall not soon forget the scene in the streets. Thousands, it seemed to us, of bare footed Negro girls and women sauntered about BARBADOS TYPES— II 81 TEN THOUSAND MILES IN A YACHT the narrow streets, buying and selling at the spacious market or at the little dingy lamp-lit shops. They jostled each other and the stray visitor good-naturedly, laughed and skipped, t'-sarT » THE MAIN STREET, BRIDGETOWN, BARBADOS and jabbered and flirted with the dusky young men, and sang snatches of melodies. Then, at an early hour, the lights began to go out, the swarm of hags and maidens dwindled and disap peared, and we suddenly found ourselves almost the sole occupants of the streets, excepting a 82 TEN THOUSAND MILES IN A YACHT horde of Negro watermen who waited near the wharves to pounce upon us and fight among themselves for the privilege and perquisites of rowing us out to the yacht. After that night, it was easy for the statisticians to con vince us that Barb ados is the most densely populated country in the world. It has a population of 1,200 to the square mile; of, its 200,000 souls only 15,000 are Whites ; 50,000 are of mixed race, and 135,000 are Negroes. The Whites are the governing race, and most of the wealth and business and enterprise is in their hands. Their numerical proportion is con tinually decreasing, and it is to be apprehended that Barbados may one day be the scene of cal amitous race troubles. Meanwhile, to the out sider at least, peace and order seem to prevail, 83 STREET SCENE, BRIDGETOWN, BARBADOS TEN THOUSAND MILES IN A YACHT though plots and revolt are not unknown. The British Colonial Government is certainly to be congratulated on the efficiency it has shown in NATIVE DWELLINGS, BRIDGETOWN, BARBADOS dealing with these difficult conditions and this refractory human material. The agricultural and commercial prosperity of Barbados is largely due to the fact that here the Negro is obliged to do a certain amount of work 84 TEN THOUSAND MILES IN A YACHT A SUGAR-CANE FIELD, BARBADOS or starve, for there is no land on which he can "squat." Barbados has the repu tation of being salubrious, and the White inhabitants seem fairly active and ener getic. But the tempera ture, though not oppres sive, is continually high, and, Anglo-Saxons, after a short residence, particularly Anglo-Saxon women, ac quire a pasty complexion, BARBADOS TYPES-III 85 TEN THOUSAND MILES IN A YACHT which would seem to indicate an impoverish ment of the blood and a general devitalization. After visiting many tropical and sub-tropical lands, I am convinced that a continual high temperature is not conducive to the full devel opment or the maintenance of the well-being of the Anglo-Saxon — who has been prepared, through his ancestry, for other conditions — and that, like continual cold, it is almost in evitably fatal to feminine freshness and beauty. THE "VIRGINIA" AT BARBADOS— CLEANING SHIP 86 DOWN TO THE EQUATOR "\^7"e left Barbados just before sunset on No vember 28th, and after a five days' run through stiff south-east trade winds and a roll ing, white-capped sea, sufficiently boisterous to keep the yacht dancing all the time, we reached the mouth of the great "Inland Sea," the " King of Rivers," the " Mediterranean of South Amer ica" — as the Amazon has been variously called. The only events worthy of particular mention during these five days were the fine sunsets, and they were, indeed, events. Two, at least, of our party, and generally more, whatever we hap pened to be doing at the time, would give up half-an-hour to the contemplation of these gorge ous solar displays. O for a collection of those five master-paintings of Nature ! Yet a painter who should depict on canvas such sunsets as those would be looked upon as a fantastic per- verter of reality, color-drunk and visually mad. 87 TEN THOUSAND MILES IN A YACHT They were not at all alike in their composition and general scheme, though the colors repre sented each evening were much the same. I will not attempt to describe these magnificent sights, and will only mention that the colors were re markable for the fact that there were none of the ordinary tones in them. Every color was an exceedingly delicate ethereal half-tone. There were no full reds or blues or yellows, but orange and gold-reds, lemon and topaz-yellows, turquoise blues, lilac-violets, and the green that one sees in the gleams of certain opals, while the arch of the sky overhead would be flushed with a faint coral-pink. RUCUWYThW * A MONTH ON THE AMAZON THE MOUTH OF THE GREAT RIVER TX 7^ crossed the equator at sunrise on De- * cember 3d, and, two or three hours later, sighted a low line of land, the coast of North ern Brazil. For the past couple of days, we had kept well east of the South American shore to avoid the strong northward-setting current. But such is the force of the easterly current along the equator, caused, it is believed, by the sweep of the Amazon into the ocean, that we had been carried in a few hours seventeen miles still fur- 89 TEN THOUSAND MILES IN A YACHT ther eastward, although we were at the time over fifty miles from the land. Even at this dis tance from the mouth of the river, the natural sapphire blue of the tropical ocean is discolored ON THE LOWER AMAZON to a dark olive-green by the yellow waters of the mighty stream, and it is said that this dis coloration is observed as far out to sea as two hundred miles. These facts gave us our first sense of the marvellous volume and force of the Amazon. 9o HIGH-RIVER SEASON ON THE LOWER AMAZON TEN THOUSAND MILES IN A YACHT Some seventy miles from Para, we came across a pilot boat and took a Brazilian pilot aboard. Soon after, we were told that we were now on the Amazon : but there was nothing visible to indicate the fact, except the increasing yellow ness of the water; for we had lost sight of the land again, and to all ap pearances were out on the open sea. And no wonder we failed to discern the banks, for the river is estimated to be about two hundred and fifty miles across at its mouth. The estuary contains hundreds of islands, among them the great island of Maraj6, which is over two hundred miles long, and over one hundred and eighty broad, that is to say, con- 93 PILOT BOAT AND CUTTER- MOUTH OF THE AMAZON TEN THOUSAND MILES IN A YACHT siderably larger than Switzerland, or more than twice the size of Massachusetts. Marajo divides the river at its mouth into two main outlets, of which the southern is called the Para River. This we entered and we found it to be in itself so wide that only one of its banks could be seen. This branch, too, contains scores of islands, some of them big enough to look like the mainland. As we steamed along, large fish leaped out of the water about our bows, and we got our first THE RIVER-FRONT, PARA 94 A PARA AVENUE TEN THOUSAND MILES IN A YACHT view of things which, of absorbing interest that day, afterward became commonplace and weari some by reason of their continual reiteration — floating islands and patches of shrubs and rank grass, tree trunks and other debris. And here begins the scenery of the river, scenery which CRAFT OF THE LOWER AMAZON, AT PARA is more or less typical of hundreds of miles of the Amazon Valley ; for there is little change on the Lower Amazon, and not very much on the whole length of the river, except in the 97 TEN THOUSAND MILES IN A YACHT THE MODERN SECTION, PARA grouping of the details, the contours of the stream and its islands, and the width of the vistas — a broad expanse of yellow, muddy water, low lying mainland or islands covered with dense jungle growing right down into the water, a wall of dark green matted foliage in which palms of many varieties are abundant, a tangle of shrubs and creepers, with rank grass and reeds among the tree trunks; and beyond this wall of forest nothing visible but the sky, the A BUSINESS CENTRE, PARA TEN THOUSAND MILES IN A YACHT land being only a few feet out of the water and seldom rising above or falling below one general level. THE CITY OF PARA We came within sight of Pari at sunset, and anchored for the night some eight miles off, going up to the city at daybreak next morning. Those of us who had not been on the Amazon before were surprised to find Pari such an ex tensive and important place. Hundreds of ves- ¦Wg^mmyy! Ull WW^Q) !3*;!Fy A TYPICAL PARA DWELLING TEN THOUSAND MILES IN A YACHT seis — ocean liners, men-of-war, river steamers, launches, tugs, lighters, and small sailing craft of picturesque appearance — lay in the harbor, telling a tale of much traffic and many cargoes. Para is a curious mixture of beauty and ugli ness, in which respect, of course, it does not differ from most other cities. The river front is occupied by trapiches — landing jetties and stor age sheds — and the first street behind these is the commercial street of the port, containing the offices and storehouses of the importers, rubber merchants, brokers, and shipping com panies. Beyond, the city extends in narrow streets to the section of retail trade, where cheap imported articles are sold at amazingly high prices. Here one may board a mule tram- car and emerge into a broad avenue leading to the modern section of the city, where handsome residences and fine public buildings and squares planted with tropical trees greet the eye. In this vicinity is the Botanical and Zoological Garden, which contains a most interesting col lection of living specimens of Amazonian birds, TEN THOUSAND MILES IN A YACHT beasts, reptiles, plants, and trees. Off the main thoroughfares, in little tile and plaster houses, often windowless, dwells the mass of the popu- OUTSKIRTS OF PARA lation, while on the outskirts of the town, near the primitive forest, in huts of lath and mud thatched with palm leaves, lives the poorer class of indolent dark-skinned people. 103 TEN THOUSAND MILES IN A YACHT The population of Para is estimated at about one hundred and thirty thousand, and an aston ishing mixture of races composes it. There are a few hundred Europeans — English, Germans, and Portuguese mostly — engaged in shipping, banking, importing, and the buying and export ation of cacao and rubber. The rest of the population are Brazilians, Negroes, Indians, and all possible blends of these three. IN THE OLD SECTION, PARA 104 TEN THOUSAND MILES IN A YACHT Para being just under the equator, we were prepared to find it intolerably hot. Hot it is, but not intolerably. The perpetual trade wind that blows in from the Atlantic and across a great part of the con tinent fills the air with moisture, but keeps down the temperature. In the Lower Amazon the thermometer ranges about 87 de grees in the shade in the daytime all the year round, and falls several degrees at night. At Manaos, one thousand miles up the river, as we found later, the average temper ature is from six to eight degrees higher. On our return from Manaos, an official inquired of the Commodore the difference between the temperature of Manaos and that of Para. " It is about eight degrees warmer at Manios," was 105 |« hIlJlI A NORTH BRAZILIAN CHURCH TEN THOUSAND MILES IN A YACHT TYPES OF NORTH BRAZILIAN BEAUTY— I the Commodore added- the reply, at which the face of the official assumed a blank ex pression. The uni formity of tempera ture at the equator renders a thermome ter of little use, and the significance of degrees is not well understood. But the face of the official lighted up with un derstanding when At Manaos I used to wilt six collars a day; here in Para I don't need more than three a day." Everywhere in the Amazon valley the humid ity of the air is very great. The least exertion produces profuse perspiration. Yet the heat is not oppressive or overpowering, and one never hears of a case of sunstroke. We were fortun ate, however, in that the Virginia always lay 106 TEN THOUSAND MILES IN A YACHT well out in the stream when at anchor, and we got the full benefit of such breezes as might be stirring. Our fine awnings and many electric fans, too, kept down the temperature on the yacht considerably. Our recollections of the Amazon would doubtless be much less pleasant had we been obliged to eat and sleep ashore. We remained five days at Para and learned much about the people and their life. We were most hospitably re ceived and enter tained by the Gov ernor and other prominent citizens, and the press chron icled our doings minutely from day to day and showed us every courtesy. We here saw being brought in and handled large quanti ties of crude rubber, types of north Brazilian BEAUTY-II 107 TEN THOUSAND MILES IN A YACHT a product which is the material basis of prac tically the whole human life of the Amazon Valley. Without it, it is safe to say, the millions of acres drained by the great stream and its tributaries would to-day be uninhabited, except by an occasional tribe of redmen. But more of rubber anon. THE MUNICIPAL PARK, PARA 108 OFF TO VISIT THE GOVERNOR (Silk hats and 127° in the sun) A THOUSAND MILE JOURNEY UPSTREAM Taking two pilots aboard on the evening of December 8th, we weighed the two anchors we had been obliged to use on account of the cur rent, and started on our long inland cruise. The Amazon pilots never use chart or compass, and it was a marvel to us how they find their way among the labyrinthine channels and innumera ble islands and shoals, especially at night — for we travelled night and day. Yet most of them 109 TEN THOUSAND MILES IN A YACHT know the banks and shoals and currents for more than two thousand miles. We awoke the next morning in the Narrows, some eighty-five miles of channels through scores AMAZON PILOTS AND OUR FIRST OFFICER of- islands, large and small. The breadth of these channels varies from eighty or ninety yards to half a mile or more. The banks of the islands are very low, so low that the soil is rarely seen ; the dense forest growth pushes right down into the river, forming a wall through which it IN "THE NARROWS," LOWER AMAZON TEN THOUSAND MILES IN A YACHT would be difficult to effect a landing without bill hooks and axes. Here the forest is perhaps more gorgeous and luxuriant than anywhere else on the river. The trees are of considerable height and girth, closely set together, densely leafed, and of great variety. Palms of many kinds are conspicuous everywhere, and rich- tinted orchids and other forest flowers stand out gayly from the dark and the luminous greens of the heavy foliage. There are no hills, and the traveller's view is stopped short at the wall of forest. Here and there is a clearing of a few square yards, and on it, set upon thin piles, stands the most primitive sort of palm-leaf hut, the rude dwelling of a seringueiro, or rubber- gatherer. These livers of the simple life are mostly Negro-Indians and Negro-Indian-Brazil- ians. As we steamed along, the women, and often the men — who seemed to be at home for the day with nothing to do — would gaze at us languidly, without stirring from their squatting or leaning positions, too lazy or dull to lift a hand in answer to our salutations, though their "3 y TEN THOUSAND MILES IN A YACHT numerous naked children, with more energy, curiosity and good will, would run out to the end of their tottering canoe-jetty, reply to our THE "VIRGINIA" IN "THE NARROWS" greetings, and wonderingly watch our (to them) strange white craft disappear up the river. The following morning at daybreak we found we had emerged from the labyrinth of islands into the full, broad stream. Now we hugged 114 TEN THOUSAND MILES IN A YACHT one shore, now the other, darting across the river every hour or two to avoid the strong cur rent. Here the river varies in width from three to seven or eight miles, but its broad expanse is more often than not still shut off from view WARPING UP STREAM by large islands, some of them many miles long. This phenomenon continues all the way up the river; there are islands everywhere and in every stage of being, from those just beginning to form and grow shrubs and trees to those whose last vestiges are just being swept away by the 115 TEN THOUSAND MILES IN A YACHT current. But when you come to a stretch of open river you have the sensation of sailing on a broad sound, like Long Island Sound, and looking up one of the big tributaries where it AN" ISLAND ON ITS LAST LEGS flows into the main stream is like looking into a big bay or gulf. Three or four hundred miles up, the land be gins to rise a little higher out of the water, and except in the high-river season, assumes the appearance of regular banks — though even here these are only a few feet high — and the huts are built on the soil instead of, on piles in the swamps, as they are lower down. As you 116 CHART OF PART OF THE LOWER AMAZON Showing the numerous channels, lakes and igarapes .50 < m50mH>2m50>sozoroEHzD CO TEN THOUSAND MILES IN A YACHT ascend the river, the land rises very gradually a few feet higher still ; the forest becomes less dense and luxuriant, and the country looks more habitable. Cacao plantations begin to appear, recurring at intervals all the way up to Manaos, AN AMAZONIAN VILLAGE and here and there a courageous pioneer has cleared a patch of land, made a homestead, and raises a few head of cattle. A line of low hills now varies the scene, and presently a range of mountains, with a peak nearly a thousand feet nq TEN THOUSAND MILES IN A YACHT high, appears on the northern mainland, a re freshing sight in this flat wilderness of forest and water. Then come some red clay cliffs and a picturesque tier of hills on the southern bank. About four hundred miles from Para is the town * W**- '¦£%*& §§S ^§L i • j j im i , Ba b ^Tr? ^W: A RANCH ON A TRIBUTARY OF THE AMAZON of Santardm, situated on a terrace, with hills be hind it and a broad white beach before. It lies a little way up the Tapajos tributary, whose waters are comparatively clean and clear. The town has a population of more than five thou sand, mostly dark-skinned people, and has a TEN THOUSAND MILES IN A YACHT considerable trade in cattle and cacao. One hundred and twenty miles further up is Obidos, a smaller town, also a centre for the shipment of cacao. At this point the whole expanse of the Amazon is contracted into a channel one and a quarter miles wide. Here the depth of water is 350 feet [the greatest depth of the river is said to be about 975 feet]. But the stream immediately broadens out again. There are two or three other small towns and villages be tween Para and Manaos, but they, as well as the Asiafl It! THE BEACH, SANTAREM 121 TEN THOUSAND MILES IN A YACHT larger towns just referred to, are very primitive places, inhabited mainly by people of mixed breed. As the traveller stands on the deck of his A TRADING STATION boat, say somewhere just above Obidos, and gazes upon the river and along the wall of forest — now but a few yards away, now dim and shadowy in the distance — he is impressed, through his physical eye alone, with the im mensity of this waste of waters and this wilder- ifl 3^H - Bi^^S-P'^ral ¦ralfallfli iS***^*"*!9*$¥'*G"rri""""""*%i i i?iflJxH!t8l y* ™gr S. i"K-i^^' — * ~^^ *jj &{E||@ ^£r^^^^S y- *M$£rXm '' W>5 oaH < TEN THOUSAND MILES IN A YACHT ness of low, jungle-covered deposit of earth (for that is what most of the land is, a mere deposit). But to get a full sense of the vastness, he must let his mental vision wander further and wider, first east and west over a line 3,000 miles long, up and down the main river, then up each of the great tributaries, and then north and south over a tract of some other hundreds of miles, across the Amazon Valley — the tract traversed by the Amazon itself, a plain abounding in lakes, swamps, Canals and islands. The area of the water surface alone, in the Amazon Valley, in cluding the valleys of the tributaries, cannot be less than 25,000 square miles. The average depth of the main river being about 200 feet, and the current sweeping down at the rate of from two to three miles an hour, the mind of the observer is paralyzed when it endeavors to conceive the volume of water which is thus emptied annually into the sea from this valley. Above Santarem, as I have said, the land lies higher out of the water. The forest near the river is less dense : it is not the same impene- 125 TEN THOUSAND MILES IN A YACHT trable wall of jungle as lower down : you can see into it a little way. The character of the trees and shrubs is less riotously wild and lux uriant, and palms are not nearly so plentiful. A THOUSAND MILES FROM THE SEA But there is still an abundance and great variety of aboreal and floral beauty. Early on the morning of the fourth day after our departure from Para we came to the con fluence of the Rio Negro and the Amazon. The latter here makes a sharp bend to the south, and the Negro, flowing straight into the course of the Amazon, at first appears to be the main stream. But there is no mistaking long 126 THE VICTORIA REGIA CF THE AMAZON LAGOONS TEN THOUSAND MILES IN A YACHT which is the great river and which the tributary, for the thick yellow waters of the Amazon are seen to sweep the black-coffee-colored waters of the Negro right over to the northern bank, and when the two streams at length intermingle, the black Negro does not at all modify the color of the yellow Amazon. 129 A CITY IN THE WILDERNESS The city of Manaos is situated six or seven miles up the Rio Negro, on elevated land. During the high-river season of the Amazon, however, in June, the waters of the Rio Negro are backed up for many miles, so that the river- level at Manaos is some fifty feet higher than it is in December, and the site then appears much lower. A noted phenomenon of the Amazon system is that the high-river season does not occur at the same time in the main stream and the tribu taries, owing to the fact that they are fed from widely separated sources. The higher reaches 130 TEN THOUSAND MILES IN A YACHT of the Amazon receive the melted snow from the Andes. Most of the other streams are swelled by rainfall. Those of us who had not visited Mangos be- A BY-WAY NEAR MANAOS fore were astonished, after traversing nearly a thousand miles of wilderness, to find such a well- built and imposing city — more astonished than we had been at Para. We were first of all struck by the great number of large trading vessels, 131 TEN THOUSAND MILES IN A YACHT some of them ocean steamers from Europe, that lay in the harbor ; and when we went ashore we were amazed to see broad avenues and well- paved streets, a cathedral, a splendid opera THE MAIN AVENUE, MANAOS house, fine public buildings and residences, elec tric cars, electric lamps, pretentious stores, restaurants and cafes, parks, a merry-go-round, and other appurtenances of a thoroughly modern town. " Manaos," said our young Yale wit, in 132 THE MARKET, MANAOS TEN THOUSAND MILES IN A YACH1 describing the town, " is known as the Paris of the Amazon — by those who haven't been there." But the term might be used, appropriately enough, by those who have been there ; for the makers of Manaos seem in many things to have taken Paris for their model, and have given the place a sort of Parisian air. The visitor, however, is soon reminded that he is still in the backwoods. If he gets thirsty — as he is liable to do with the temperature at about 95 in the shade and 125 or 130 in the sun — and sits down at one of the cafe tables on the sidewalk to take a drink, he has to produce something like the equivalent of a dollar for his beverage; and, while sitting there, he will see go by many men and women of dark and mixed breed, and but few of pure white race ; and if he jumps on a car and rides out of town a little way, he will find that the simple life has not been altogether abandoned here. Indeed, he need not go out of the main avenue to see well- grown children whose limbs are untrammelled by any stitch of clothing, and probably one-half 135 TEN THOUSAND MILES IN A YACHT of the fifty thousand pairs of feet that walk in the fair streets of Manaos and in the woods of the vicinity have never worn shoes — for shoes are needless to them. The people are remarkably clean and orderly, and most of them receive at least a rudimentary edu cation. The upper class, the profes sional men, mer chants and gov ernment officials, are typical of the best Brazilian as piration and cul ture. Manaos and Para are distinctly the most progressive and modern cities in the northern half of South America. We remained for a week at Manaos, and the prominent citizens there did their utmost to sur- 136 LIVERS OF THE SIMPLE LIFE A BEAUTY SPOT NEAR MANAOS TEN THOUSAND MILES IN A YACHT pass the people of Pari in showing us honor and hospitality. They gave us a banquet and organized a rowing regatta for our entertain ment. To the regatta the whole city seemed to turn out, and hundreds of craft of every de- AT THE REGATTA, MANAOS scription, from the oddest sort of native dugouts and small sailing junks to ocean steamers of several thousand tons burden, took some part in the function. The principal citizens and their families spent the afternoon on the Vir ginia out in the stream, and appeared to enjoy themselves thoroughly. 139 TEN THOUSAND MILES IN A YACHT A steamboat excursion on the Rio Negro was also organized by the citizens, the Virginia being the vessel of honor. Many prominent Manaos people came aboard on this occasion, and the yacht, with all her bunting flying, steamed some miles upstream, thus establishing the record of penetrating further into the great Brazilian wilderness of water than any other yacht had ever gone. Manaos is now the principal market for rub ber on the Amazon, having superseded Para in this respect. All the rubber from the tributaries in the State of Amazonas goes there for classi fication, taxation, and sale, and it is exported thence direct to Europe and America. Nearly 1 7,000 tons, Of a value of about $35,000,000, were exported from this centre last crop year. There is an export duty on this product of about twenty-three per cent, of its market value, a simi lar duty being levied at the city of Pard on the rubber from the State of that name. Immense revenues are thus derived by the two States of Para and Amazonas. And this 140 TEN THOUSAND MILES IN A YACHT explains why the cities of Pari and Manaos, particularly the latter, are such imposing capi tals, with such fine public buildings and works. There being practically no works or roads to build or maintain, and no development to expend money upon in the interior of the country, almost the whole of the large revenue of the States of Para and Amazonas is available for expenditure in the two chief towns. nS&Ji m uri nil f i *>¦¦• ii-1 fetli ;; g*[Efifi KieRBJ fMES5!'!mt-.- ¦_£¦ --¦ aWSmWrnmrn •^^^^^^ ¦<*.• "* ¦ r'-"" ¦!^.r.-v-f^~\ E 1 /.'¦'¦'^Bf' CLASSING AND PACKING RUBBER, MANAOS 141 TEN THOUSAND MILES IN A YACHT THE AMAZONIAN INDIANS We were not able to see any thing of the life of the Amazon Indians during our stay on the River. Indeed, we encountered but few pure- INDIANS OF' THE RIO BRANCO bred aborigines, though we came across a pronounced aboriginal strain in every -village and town. We were told, however, that the scanty population of the upper regions of the Amazon and its affluents is mainly composed of Indians and half-castes, who have gradually been brought within the pale of civilization by communication with trad ers and rubber-gatherers. At the present time, it is only in the imperfectly explored upper reaches of the rivers that any of the wild and dangerous tribes are to be met with. 142 Bf'T'tH AMAZON INDIAN CHIEFS IN FULL DRESS TEN THOUSAND MILES IN A YACHT The Amazon Indians are diffident about ap proaching towns, and they have no more deal ings with the White mer chants and settlers than are required for the satis factio n of their most urgent wants. They prefer to live in soli tude or with a very few even of their own people. They are wonderfully expert in hunting and in catching fish. The latter they generally shoot with arrows pro jected from bows which are worked with the feet. They also kill their prey with barbed spears and darts. They use the blowpipe with 145 AN AMAZON INDIAN CHIEF TEN THOUSAND MILES IN A YACHT great skill. This formidable weapon is a hollow reed, ten or twelve feet long through which very slender darts, poisoned at the tip, are blown with such force and precision that an animal or bird may be brought down at a distance of thirty yards or more. The great advan tage of this weapon is its silence, the ambushed hunter being able to shoot a number of darts at his victim without revealing his presence. It is stated by Amazonian ethnographers that the Indian does not stand the heat as well as the Negro, and that he suffers from it even more than the White man. 146 AN AMAZON EVE A YOUNG BRAVE TEN THOUSAND MILES IN A YACHT A HUNTING EXCURSION While we were at Manaos, some of us went on an interesting hunting excursion. Starting from the yacht in one of our steam launches at three o'clock in the morning, and accompanied by a pilot, we went down the Negro for some miles and turned first into a lagoon and then into an igarape" or long, narrow inlet. Here at daylight we had such shooting as would ravish the heart of any gun enthusiast. Herons, storks, cranes, ibises, parrots, ducks, and many other birds abounded ; monkeys fled from tree to tree before us; an occasional sloth could be seen, with his long arms round a tree trunk crawling up at a snail's pace ; huge turtles lay lazily on the mudbanks; and in the water, dark-red and gray dolphins sported near us, and alligators in profu sion poked their eyes and the top of their skulls above the surface for us to shoot at. Two of us, taking our courage in both hands, landed and penetrated some distance into the woods to 149 TEN THOUSAND MILES IN A YACHT investigate the great unknown, to " sense " the forest and get the feel of it. We kept our fin gers on the triggers of our Winchesters, but there was really little danger. Hardly any ani mal in the Amazonian forest will attack a man unless it is brought to bay. Even the snakes will scuttle away at the sound of a man's approach. But we paid the penalty of our intrepidity, never theless; for we found, on getting back to the launch, that our persons had been invaded by some sort of forest vermin, and we could rid ourselves of them only by the application of chemical preparations on our return to the yacht. In spite of the game we brought back, we were duly "guyed" by those who had stayed on board. " How much did you have to pay the natives for those birds ?" " You came home by way of the market, didn't you r These are samples of the insulting questions that were fired at us. One unfeeling member of the party remarked that there must have been 150 A PARADISE FOR ALLIGATORS RIVER OR FOREST— WHICH SHALL REIGN? TEN THOUSAND MILES IN A YACHT so much to shoot at that we couldn't possibly have avoided killing something. " But," he added, " what they hit is history, and what they missed is mystery." GETTING PROVISIONS OVER THE RAPIDS OF THE RIO BRANCO 153 TEN THOUSAND MILES IN A YACHT PLANT AND ANIMAL LIFE OF THE AMAZON VALLEY It is not my in tention to insert here a treatise on the flora and the fauna of the Ama zon region. There are plenty of books on these subjects to which anyone sufficiently inter ested can readily turn. I will merely refer briefly to the PART OF THE YACHT'S MENAGERIE principal foriTlS of animal and plant life which are to be met with along the river. The rich, alluvial soil, and the warm, humid atmosphere of the Amazon region combine to produce the most wonderful variety of vegeta tion that can well be conceived. Almost every 154 TEN THOUSAND MILES IN A YACHT form of tree and plant, it would seem, is repre sented in these forests. There are numerous kinds of gigantic trees whose woods are admir ably suited for building and cabinet-making ; there are several species of rubber-bearing trees and vines ; there are spice-yielding trees and plants ; aromatic herbs ; plants that give many of the most useful of our drugs ; others that yield oils; woods from which fine dyes may be extracted ; others that produce vegetable ivory ; roots that are excellent foods ; trees and shrubs that furnish textile fibres, resins, gums, balsams and essences ; and fruits and nuts in profusion. Here in this jungle, indeed, is natural wealth enough to set up and maintain two or three kingdoms, could man only live and work in it and maintain health and comfort. With but little labor, roots and seeds spring up and rap idly mature. Corn, coffee, sugar-cane, tobacco, cocoa and all tropical fruits grow with a mini mum of assistance from man. The Mandioca root (which also yields the product we call tap ioca) furnishes a flour called farinha. This 155 TEN THOUSAND MILES IN A YACHT flour is the staff of life of the Amazon popula tion, much more so indeed than bread is the staff of life with us of the Temperate Zone. Palm trees of many varieties are to be seen everywhere, but particularly on the Lower Amazon. Orchids of strange form and brilliant coloring, and tree flowers which, in the mass, often look, from a distance, like patches of yel low or red flame, afford a pleasing relief from the eternal green of the forest. Like the plant life, the animal life of the Amazon country is amazingly abundant and va ried. Nearly every known family of animals, excepting the enormous quadrupeds of the des erts and plains of the Old World, is represented. There are at least eight species of monkeys, probably many more. There are two species of the feline order — the spotted panther and the tiger-cat. Of the canine tribe, there are the red wolf and the Brazilian wild dog. Of the weasel family, there are the Brazilian otter and two or three other species. There are several sorts of quadrumana belonging to the omniverous class. 156 THE AMAZONIAN JUNGLE TEN THOUSAND MILES IN A YACHT In the order of ruminants, there is nearly every species of deer — the paludosus of the marshes, the rufus of the higher lands, the campestris of the plains, and the nemorivagus, a small animal which lives mostly on the shrubby land. Of the pachyderms, there is the tapir, the largest mam mal of the Amazon region, whose skin is as thick and tough as the elephant's. There are three kinds of wild pig. The rodent class is represented by half a dozen species, and there are more than that number of varieties of the toothless order, which live entirely on ants, worms and insects. Then there is the sloth, a most ungainly, harmless, and pathetic-looking creature. There are three or four kinds of vam pires and several sorts of bats. The marsupials are represented by the sariguea and the didel- phis murina. Snakes of every description abound, from harmless little things a few inches long to the deadly rattle-snake and the enor mous boa-scytale which will crush an ox or a tapir to death and devour it bones and all. Of the order of the cetaceans, there is the great 159 TEN THOUSAND MILES IN A YACHT peixe-boi or cow-fish, the largest fresh-water fish in the world, and the boto or Amazon dolphin. The former is herbivorous and the latter carni- verous. The cow-fish attains a length of ten feet and its flesh is said to be a very good food. There are two kinds of dolphin, called the white and the red, though in the water they appear gray and dark-brown. The former is harmless, the latter is very dangerous. They go in schools, and are constantly seen following large and small craft and coming to the surface to breathe. Turtles and alligators are extremely plenti ful. Turtle meat is the beef and mutton of the Amazon, and is served at the tables of rich and poor alike at least two or three times a week. Agassiz, the great naturalist, says that " the Amazon nourishes about twice as many species of fish as the Mediterranean, and a more con siderable number than the Atlantic Ocean from one pole to the other." The most important fish, the one which, next to turtle meat and farinha, is the chief article of food in the coun* 1 60 TEN THOUSAND MILES IN A YACHT try, is the pirarual or redfish. Notable among the denizens of the Amazon waters and swamps is the electric eel, which, upon coming into con tact with cattle on the banks of the lakes and PART OF THE YACHT'S MENAGERIE— MACAW AND PARROTS rivers, gives them a shock strong enough to knock them down. The birds of the Amazon region, too, present an extraordinary variety. I will not attempt to mention more than a few. There are two species of vultures, twenty-three of hawks, and eight of 161 TEN THOUSAND MILES IN A YACHT owls. Notable among the many singing birds are the bright-yellow sabid, which has a strong and melodious but unvarying voice; the hum ming bird ; the bem-te-vi, which hops from branch to branch; and the black and yellow chechdo, which builds a long, sleeve-shaped nest and hangs it from the branches of the highest trees. There are many kinds of pigeons. Of the climbing species, there is a great variety, of all sizes : these are invariably green, or green and yellow. There are the macaws and the toucans, the maracanas and the paroquets. The web-footed tribes, of course, are legion. One of the most notable of these is the guard {ibis rubra) whose feathers change color as the bird ages. The pheasant class is represented by half a dozen varieties. The waders, too, are everywhere in evidence. If, while on the river, the traveller takes the trouble to get up at daybreak, he will be re warded by a sight which he will never after wards forget — the sight of the feathered myriads of the forest and the swamps seeking their 162 TEN THOUSAND MILES IN A YACHT morning meal. Later in the day, one might think that there was not a living creature, except insects, within twenty miles. Truly this is a paradise for birds and beasts and fishes. And what a world of beautiful, curious, monstrous, and fantastic creatures has been evolved in the conditions here pertaining! THE TURTLE MARKET, MANAOS 163 TEN THOUSAND MILES IN A YACHT TURNING HOMEWARD; We left Manaos on the evening of January 19th, after a stay of eight days. As we quitted our mooring out in the river and turned down pp^ ggjpfc-*''" ' / .. • ¦Jgjj'. /¦¦--*>¦¦ $!( j-.-^-h ¦'. Si*- ¦ ¦^^Slwl 'J- ¦¦ '" -»'.'¦•' --^ ^s^» ¦ ** ¦?. ¦ - A VILLAGE NEAR IQUITOS stream, the whole city seemed to be watching our departure and waving us a cordial farewell. " I'm glad we got away by sunset," said the Commodore. "I'm glad we got away, by Heaven!" re- 164 TEN THOUSAND MILES IN A YACHT joined our principal witmaker. He had had all he wanted of the " inland sea," and was rather knocked up by the heat, but he had no intention whatever of casting any aspersion on the good THE RIO BRANCO— A TRIBUTARY OF A TRIBUTARY people of the town, whose reception and enter tainment of us could not have been more cordial. It was Commodore Benedict's intention at one time to take the yacht right up to Iquitos, 2,200 miles from the ocean, for the river is easily 165 TEN THOUSAND MILES IN A YACHT navigable to that point and large steamers from Europe penetrate that far. But we found on reaching Manaos that we had little to gain in ex perience or pleasure by going further ; for the thousand miles of the Amazon which we had seen had shown practically every phenomenon of the river that we could possibly see by ascending an other 1,200 miles. The Commodore remarked that it would simply be " 'and so forth ' scenery." '¦.' >Jffik. I*1. pit "]lfl A TRADING CENTRE 166 TEN THOUSAND MILES IN A YACHT AGRICULTURE ON THE AMAZON Coming down the river we kept to the middle of the stream nearly all the way, to get the bene fit of the current. We stopped for two or three hours at San tarem, a good place to get monkeys, parrots, and curios, with which we duly loaded up. Some eighty Americans, we were told, Southern Con federates, settled here after the American civil war, and engaged in agricultural and pastoral pursuits. Only two or three of these now re mained. One keeps a tumble-down store and another has a prosperous cattle ranch. We had a very interesting "yarn" with each of these voluntary exiles. The same day we landed further down at the most important ranch on this part of the river, Cacaol Grande, where we were very hospitably received by the proprietor, a young Brazilian of good type and refinement. He showed us over his place, where he raises horses and cattle, cacao, beans and maize, and dries large quan- 167 TEN THOUSAND MILES IN A YACHT tities of fish. When we left he very kindly sent aboard the yacht a boatload of the products of his ranch. He informed us that ranching there would be exceedingly profitable if it were A GIFT BOATLOAD OF PLANTATION PRODUCTS only possible to get men to labor. But such laboring men as care to live on the Amazon pre fer the free, meagre, lazy existence of the rubber- gatherer. We were exceedingly interested in looking over this ranch-plantation, but none of 168 TEN THOUSAND MILES IN A YACHT us would have cared to lead the lonely life of the proprietor and his pathetic little wife. Many optimistic people look forward to the time when the Amazon country will be thickly NAVIGATION ON THE SMALL RIVERS populated and prosperous plantations will oc cupy the river front on each side for thousands of miles. I am aware that it is generally as rash a thing to foretell what will not happen as to predict what will happen ; but I cannot see in 169 TEN THOUSAND MILES IN A YACHT the future the thick population and the prosper ous plantations that have been prophesied. There certainly will be development on the higher lands ; but on the lower Amazon, for some hundreds of miles, there seems little pros pect of reclaiming the alluvial flats from the grip of the river. A great deal of this land is submerged in the high-river season, and if the forest were stripped from it, the river would eat it up like so much salt. As for the upriver region, the whole popula tion of the immense State of Amazonas does not amount to 400,000 — and the habitable portion of this State is estimated to be 1,185,000 square miles in extent ! Only on the banks of the principal rivers and tributaries, and of the lakes, where rubber is to be found, is there any noticeable indication of human life. There are rivers, even close to Manaos (such as the Janapery, which is only 170 miles away), whose banks are quite uninhabited by civilized people. Thousands of square miles of the territory of the State have never been 170 TEN THOUSAND MILES IN A YACHT exploited in any way and have been but very imperfectly explored. There is hardly any immigration to the DISEMBARKING ON THE EDGE OF THE JUNGLE Amazon country from foreign lands, the hardy native Brazilian alone venturing to make a home in these forests. Owing to the importance of the commerce in 171 TEN THOUSAND MILES IN A YACHT rubber, however, all the large rivers are regu larly served by modern steamers from Para or Maniios. On some of the rivers, where it is im possible for steamers to navigate, launches of light draught are used by the traders, who push their way with astonishing intrepidity into re gions that seem altogether inaccessible. NEGOTIATING THE RAPIDS OF THE UPPER TAPAJOS 172 TEN THOUSAND MILES IN A YACHT BACK TO PARA We made another stop at Breves, a small vil lage among the Islands of the Narrows — where a INSTITUTING THE WIRELESS TELEGRAPH ON THE AMAZON station of the Amazon Wireless Telegraph, in which some of our party were concerned, was being completed — and then continued our course 173 TEN THOUSAND MILES IN A YACHT to Para, which we reached on the morning of December 23d. We spent Christmas Day here very quietly, and in the night sailed over to Soure, on the ^^ ..^MMWmWmmWIfL %?Jm 1 '^ym^..^ ^m^m "THE FOREST PUSHES RIGHT INTO THE RIVER" Island of Maraj6, forty miles away, where we awoke next morning. We went there to get some tarpon fishing and stayed a couple of days. The sport, however, was not at all lively, though we landed one good-sized tarpon and a number of queer-looking fish, whose names I will not attempt to spell. We spent nearly a week more at Para, and 174 TEN THOUSAND MILES IN A YACHT one day took the opportunity of going off in our big launch to the Ihla das Ongas — the Island of Tiger-Cats — where we saw the seringueiros gathering rubber. COMMODORE BENEDICT ASSISTING AT RUBBER-SMOKING OPERATIONS 175 TEN THOUSAND MILES IN A YACHT RUBBER GATHERING There are sev eral trees and shrubs which yield rubber, but the principal source of the supply is the Hevea Brasil- iensis, a tree which attains to a height of fifty or sixty feet. The coagulated milk of this tree is the crude "Parii" rubber of our market, which now sells at about $1.25 to $1.35 per pound for fine quality. To obtain it, the seringueiro makes incisions in the bark of the living tree with a small hatchet, and below the incisions attaches small 176 THE HEVEA RUBBER TREE TAPPING A RUBBER TREE ¦ i» if- """ '"¦'¦^•"W** ¦ A1" / -'?& -'.^*i\J' <¦ v -* < J C ¦ v'-.-'M) i •'¦", v \ ' 'Jst '¦ il "v ">|'^''.V'. ;'-' N* - f 4w T -,. • "'•¦:-'-'-' / V ii f ' | r-.-. ¦ ) '% "¦ *¦ ¦ .- t~' . ¦*¦' BRINGING HOME THE DAY'S YIELD OF RUBBER-MILK TEN THOUSAND MILES IN A YACHT tin cups. The sap, which is just like milk, oozes for about an hour, and partly fills the little cups. When the seringueiro has tapped the last of the hundred or so of trees in his charge, he returns to the first and begins collecting the rubber-milk from the little tin cups. The small pailful which he thus obtains every morning, when there is no rain, is then taken to his hut and the liquid is coagulated and cured by a process of smoking. A fire is made of Uauassu or Urucury palm nuts, which give forth a dense, acrid smoke. Over this fire is placed an earthen cone-shaped vessel with a hole in the top, out of which the smoke escapes. The seringueiro then takes a piece of wood, shaped like a paddle, and dips it into the milk, some of which clings to the wood. This is then held over the smoke, when much of the water in the latex evaporates, leaving a layer of brown gum on the paddle. Layer after layer is smoked on to the paddle in this way, and the operation is continued day after day, until a ball of fifty or sixty pounds is obtained. In this form the rub- 179 TEN THOUSAND MILES IN A YACHT ber is sent to the rubber market at Para or Manaos. If the seringueiro has been careful in smoking the milk, and has allowed no foreign . ..Sl"..i. *J OVERTAPPED RUBBER TREES matter to get into it, the rubber is classed as Fine when the ball is cut open at the market. If it has not been well smoked, it is classed as Entrefino Medium, and the waste, of which 1 80 SMOKING RUBBER HEADQUARTERS OF RUBBER RANCHES TEN THOUSAND MILES IN A YACHT there is usually a good proportion, is known as Sernamby or Coarse. Last crop year, ending June 30th, 1905, more than 33,000 tons of rubber of a value of nearly $67,000,000 were exported from the Amazonian forests. 7. ¦::¦:;:¦:, ^r ""-W ¦¦¦•.¦'•¦I .. IB i|HHHHBpf^HM»P^ ' BISCUITS " OF SMOKED RUBBER 183 TEN THOUSAND MILES IN A YACHT GOOD-BYE TO THE AMAZON We finally left Para on the evening of Janu ary 2d, after having spent just a month on the Amazon. We were all agreed that the greatest CARRYING RUBBER TO THE RIVER FOR SHIPMENT of rivers was quite as marvellous and interesting as we had read or been told it was; and though after a month we had all had enough of it, not one of us would have missed for anything the rare opportunity afforded by the most genial 184 !-.Ji. ^Ifedte A PROVISION STORE ¦ ™" ' *^w W'^si,wT\nvfkfi HEADQUARTERS OF A RUBBER RANCH AT "HIGH RIVER' TEN THOUSAND MILES IN A YACHT and liberal of hosts of seeing the wonders of the mighty stream and its amazing forests under conditions of comfort and immunity from the worst of the many trials that ordinarily beset the traveller in these regions. We had brought with us a goodly store of fireworks, and just as we were leaving Para these were handed over to the crew, who illum inated the yacht with them and shot a large number of fine rockets into the night as a part ing salutation to the city and the river. 187 DEATH AND SUICIDE IN THE MENAGERIE. ' I %E fireworks referred to, unfortunately, were the cause of a slaughter and a suicide. Among the many live animals we had collected up the river were two pacas — a sort of small, comely-looking native pig. These two pacas were kept on deck behind the wooden grating that runs round the stern of the yacht. While the fireworks were being let off by the crew, a barrel, containing a powerful rocket which had just been ignited, capsized, or else the rocket shot out at the wrong end — no one seems to know just what happened. But at any rate, one of the poor pacas was killed. This we did not know at the time. Next evening, when we were out on the ocean, some one thought of letting the pacas out on deck for exercise. One of them came out willingly enough. The other one would not budge. But it was not mere 188 TEN THOUSAND MILES IN A YACHT pig-headedness that made him stay where he was. He really had a very good reason for not stirring ; he was dead. The other fellow immediately jumped up on the taffrail and com menced to walk round the extreme stern of the yacht, stretching his neck out seawards and apparently estimating the distance of the drop to the water. Whether he imagined the sea was a plain, over which he could scamper, or whether he knew it was water, and, being a swimmer, thought he could breast his way through it to his native forest, no one can tell. We could see he was contemplating a jump and we did our best to prevent him. But he took the plunge and disappeared into the ocean and the night. Poor fellow, he doubtless made a tasty supper, that evening, for some rapacious sea monster. 189 ALONG THE COAST OF SOUTH AMERICA -* I ^he day after leaving Para, January 3rd, we ¦*¦ found ourselves steaming merrily up the Brazilian coast. The water had lost a good deal of its yel lowness, but was still of a dark olive-green — the effect of the Amazon water which is carried up by the strong current that always sets north along this coast. The sea was smooth, but there was enough roll to set the yacht swinging again. In the afternoon, we were off the coast of French Guiana, and just before sunset we sighted the famous, or infamous, He du Diable — Devil's Island — where the ill-starred Dreyfus spent four years in solitary captivity. We passed within twelve or thirteen miles of the island. As we came abreast of it, the sun sank over and be hind it, enveloping it in a weird conflagration of orange and violet and light green hues, and this 190 TEN THOUSAND MILES IN A YACHT effect added to the strange feelings with which we regarded the prison-island. The next day the water had lost all trace of the yellow Amazon, and had again become a vast expanse of liquid sapphire. The sea was heavier, but the day was delightfully cool and clear. On January 5th, the sea had gone down somewhat, but we still rolled too much for com fort. The current running with us here was so powerful that we found we were spanking along at the rate of nearly fifteen knots an hour. A TRUE FISH STORY Here I must tell a fish story. It is such a re markable fish story that if I myself had had any thing to do with the catching of that fish, I shouldn't dare mention the matter. But / didn't catch him. Nobody did. He caught himself. This is what happened, and how it happened. It was the evening of January 5th, about ten o'clock. The yacht was gliding through the sea at nearly fifteen knots an hour, and rolling about 191 TEN THOUSAND MILES IN A YACHT twenty-five degrees. One of the stewards was sitting in the dining-room (the dining-room of the Virginia is on deck, forward). He was doz ing and dreaming — doubtless of the girl he left behind. Suddenly he was awakened by some thing swishing through the open window, over his right shoulder, close to his face. Before he could open his eyes, he heard the flop of some thing weighty on the floor beneath the dining- room table, and then, to his amazement, he saw the gleaming back of a good-sized, tail-flapping, all-alive-o fish. A brother steward was immed iately summoned, then nearly the whole crew, and the fish was duly measured and weighed. The official report made him 2 feet 3 inches long, and gave him. 3^ pounds avoirdupois. He certainly made a famous leap, to get out of the sea into that dining-room. Allowing for a pos sible lurch of the yacht in his direction at the moment of his jump, he still must have leaped in a curve over twenty feet long in order to clear the railing of the yacht and the passage-way be tween the railing and the dining-room, and to 192 THE COAST OF TRINIDAD TEN THOUSAND MILES IN A YACHT pass through the window and land under the table. We showed our appreciation of the remark able feat of this athletic fish by making an en joyable meal of him the following morning. As there were at that breakfast at least one mil lionaire and some strange fellows, we might have sung the fish's requiem in the words of Ariel in " The Tempest " — " Nothing of him that doth fade But doth suffer a sea-change Into something rich and strange." In our party was a former Fish Commissioner of the State of New York. This irrefutable authority pronounced the long-jumper to be a Spanish mackerel. 195 TEN THOUSAND MILES IN A YACHT TRINIDAD ; m 1 ' mf* WF i2 The sixth of January was a glorious day, the sun full and strong, but so tempered by the ocean breeze that one could lie in it for half-an- hour at a time, without be ing over-roasted, and derive a keen satisfaction from letting it pervade the fibres of one's being — a satisfac tion which was easily en hanced by the thought that in New York, our regular habitat, the thermometer at that moment was regis tering zero. In the afternoon, we sighted first the beautiful Island of Tobago (Robinson Crusoe's Island) and then that earthly paradise which is called Trinidad. We 196 TRINIDAD COOLIE TYPES— I TEN THOUSAND MILES IN A YACHT reached the northeast corner of the latter about 5.30 p. m., and sailed along the north coast, getting, while the light lasted, a fine panoramic view of its imposing mountain ranges and forest slopes, and its prosperous-looking little ¦;";,: ; >-f m.% *¦< ¦ MMW-I'; V f?f?T' WMiw& ¦ ¦i. ' ":W^^ A PALM GROVE, TRINIDAD villages by the sea. We made the northwest corner of the island at 10 o'clock that night, went carefully through the Dragon's Mouth — a narrow channel between the main island and a smaller one — into the Gulf of Paria, and 197 TEN THOUSAND MILES IN A YACHT dropped anchor off Port of Spain shortly be fore midnight. At daylight next morning we found ourselves surrounded by a fleet of rowboats, full of sturdy, NEAR PORT OF SPAIN, TRINIDAD jolly, gayly-dressed black gentlemen and ladies anxious to wash our linen and sell us things for which we had neither use nor tolerance. But the water police would not allow them to come right alongside; for we were under a ban: we 198 (1) ROPE TREE (2) BAMBOO GROVE, TRINIDAD TEN THOUSAND MILES IN A YACHT had come from the region of fevers, though we were all manifestly in good health. At first, the medical officers seemed deter mined not to let us land without subjecting us IN PORT OF SPAIN, TRINIDAD to a period of quarantine. For two or three hours we had to kick our heels impatiently, un certain whether we should get ashore at all, or whether we should be obliged to weigh anchor and slink off northward without ever coming 201 TEN THOUSAND MILES IN A YACHT into closer contact with this beaute ous, happy-looking land, which, a couple of miles away, there be yond the harbor- front, seemed to be beckoning to us and promising so much delight. Finally, how ever, we did get permission to land. And then, for two days and a half, the yacht saw very little of us, except at sleeptime; for we found Trinidad quite as fascinating as it had promised to be. We enjoyed the hospitality and culinary resources of the principal hotel, took never-to-be-forgotten drives round the shore, through the pictures que Coolie village, out into the country, among the hills, through cacao plantations, and up to A WEST INDIAN MULATTO THE BLUE BASIN WATERFALL, TRINIDAD . . ... ." k