I thought I had put this in my blog
months ago, as I was entertained by reading it. The quality of the scan was so bad that it went through the digitizing processor very poorly so I just read the PDF document, never creating a proper blog
entry. Enjoy!/drf
His Vain Search for
Adventure
Slept With Escaped Convicts
and Hunted Outlaws, Had Murderer For an Escort,
Etc, Etc, But Couldn't Find a
Thrill Anywhere
By A. Hyatt Verrill
The Boston Sunday Globe - August 24, 1930.
Researched by Alan Schenker; digitized by Doug Frizzle, Mar. 2012.
Whenever I read narratives
relating the astonishing, thrilling,
not to say hair-raising adventures of explorers who have ventured for a brief
time into some untamed portion of
tropical America,
I wonder how they do it
Is adventure, like art or
music, a gift or a talent
with which one is born? Or is it, like so many things nowadays, a specialized
profession? Is real adventure pure luck or—perish the
thought!—all imagination?
For the
better part of 35 years I have been knocking about in the
jungles of South and
Central America, in the
high bush of the West Indies, on
deserts and pampas, on the bleak
snow-capped Andes. I have tramped
hundreds of miles through jungles supposedly infested with wild beasts, venomous serpents, noxious insects and hostile savages.
I have traveled for weeks on tropical streams filled with rapids and whirlpools,
my craft a frail bark or dugout canoe, my boatmen native Indians.
I have journeyed thousands of
miles on horseback, muleback and afoot through the
wildest country in South America. I have dwelt
among scores of Indian tribes who were as primitive and wild as in the days of Columbus.
I have traveled and camped, eaten and slept with chance companions
who were murderers, bandits, outlaws, escaped convicts and out-and-out
scoundrels, black, white, red, brown, yellow and all intermediate shades. But
never yet have I had what I would call a real adventure.
All Part of the Day's
Work
Of course I've run risks.
I've been in tight places and have had close shaves and I've had my full share
of hardships and the inevitable
results of tempting the Tropics—such
results as yellow, typhoid, dengue, blackwater, breakbone, Chapres and ordinary
malarial fevers. Such things are all part of the
day's work for an explorer in the
Tropics.
But I have never been held
up, threatened, robbed nor molested by any one. I have never been attacked by a
wild beast; never bitten by a poisonous snake; never treated with anything but
friendliness by Indians; never shipwrecked; never held for ransom nor inconvenienced by revolutionists (although I
have been in the vortex of several
revolutions); have never been obliged to keep my men under control at the point of a gun, nor have I ever slept with a
revolver under my pillow while plots and counterplots buzzed about my camp.
Possibly I've missed a lot. Very
probably many persons will feel that in confessing to the
above I have knocked the romance out of tropical exploration or will assume I
am lacking in imagination. On the
contrary, I possess a highly developed imagination and an intensely romantic disposition.
But as regards adventure in the accepted meaning of the
term, I take much the same stand as the
countryman who for the first time
gazed at the giraffe.
Form Your Own Opinion
Yet perhaps I'm wrong.
Perhaps after all I have had adventures. Possibly what I consider experiences might
be classified as adventures by others.
Honestly, I would like to know, and the
best way of finding out may be to relate a few of my most interesting
experiences and let the reader judge.
There was Jose and the jungle trip, for example. I was in the interior of Costa Rica
at the time. My headquarters were in
a frontier settlement in the midst
of the jungle.
As there
was no other habitable building
available, the Alcalde cleaned out
one-half of the jail and informed me
that the house and all it contained
were mine.
As a rule I carry my own
guide and servant with me on my expeditions, but on this occasion I was without
in A. D. C, for I had expected to find a satisfactory man in the village. But none of the
able-bodied males could be induced to work and I turned to my friend, the Alcalde, in my dilemma. He scratched his nose in
perplexity.
Then a brilliant Idea came to
him.
"There is Jose.
Senor!" he exclaimed. “He knows the
jungle like an Indian; he knows the
ways of the birds and beasts and he
is an honest man."
"Excellent." I
agreed: "And who is Jose?”
His Faithful Murderer
"He is only a
murderer," the Alcalde assured
me. "He is here awaiting the
police who are to take him to San
Carlos, where he is to
remain in prison for life. But the
police will not arrive for two weeks. In the
meantime the senor is welcome to him. The senor need pay him no wages and each
night he will sleep in the jail, so
he will be no expense to the
senor."
Jose, a stocky half-breed,
grinned when the Alcalde explained
matters. The tiny jail was vermin-infested and crowded with rascals each night,
and he was overjoyed at the idea of
spending his days in the jungle.
He proved a veritable
treasure to me. Never have I employed a better bushman, and he was as faithful
as only a dog or an Indian can be. From
dawn until dark we tramped and hunted the
jungles, Jose, the condemned
murderer, carrying my loaded rifle and alone with me in the
heart of the tropical forest.
He was booked for lifelong
incarceration in San Carlos Prison—there
being no capital punishment in Costa
Rica—and it would have been the easiest thing in the
world to have shot me in the back.
Provided with my guns and ammunition, he could have lived for months in the jungle without fear of capture; he could have
escaped to Nicaragua or to Panama,
and even had he been taken and his act proven be would have been no worse off.
But I don't believe the idea ever entered his head. At any rate I never
gave it a thought and I never considered it an adventure.
In the Guiana Jungle
From
Costa Rica
the scene shifts to the Guianas. I had been traveling by canoe for weeks
up one of the big jungle rivers and had
penetrated far beyond the last outposts of civilization,
where only the primitive Indians
dwelt in widely separated villages and where few white men had ever been.
I had been visiting an Indian
village in the jungle-covered hills
and had returned to my camp beside the
river with my five Indian boatmen, my half-breed captain and my Negro camp boy.
Darkness had fallen; we had finished
our dinner of broiled monkey and cassava bread when the
grizzly-headed Boviander captain raised his hand warningly, listened intently and
remarked:
"Bateau she been comin, Chief."
"Maybe an Indian family
coming downstream." I
suggested.
The Captain shook his head.
"No, Chief," he
declared, "she not Buck (Indian) bateau. She been white man or mebbe black
fellows."
The rattle of paddles on
gunwales was now plain and a moment
later a large boat filled with men appeared silhouetted against the pale shimmer of the river.
Our camp fire threw a ruddy light, and from
the strange craft came a hail in
broken English, asking if we were Indians.
Then the
voice inquired if he and his comrades
could camp with us. Seeing no reason to refuse and knowing there was no good campsite elsewhere for several
miles I assented.
Asking for Tobacco
A moment
later a big bateau grated on the
bank and fully 20 men scrambled ashore. Who or what they
were I could not be sure, but by the
faint light from the fire I could see that some
were black, others brown and one or
two white, that all appeared to be ragged and wild looking and that they jabbered among themselves
in patois French.
The fellow who had first
hailed us—a big gaunt, bewhiskered fellow in short canvas breeches and ragged
shirt, strode forward, thanked me for permission to camp and asked if I could
spare any tobacco. I did not have an oversupply, but knowing how a smoker
craves tobacco in the bush I told
Sam to open the provision chest and
give the fellow a couple of tins.
As he watched Sam, he unquestionably
saw the other
tins of tobacco, the trade goods, the supplies, the
matches and other articles. He knew,
too, that we had arms and ammunition, fishing tackle and money. But he asked
for nothing else and, expressing his thanks, joined his comrades,
who had lighted a fire and were spreading palm leaves for beds.
Wondering at this, for no one
dreams of going into the Guiana bush
without hammocks, I strolled over to their
camp and, to my surprise, I noticed that there
was no sign of the inevitable rice
and coffee being cooked. Only a miserable bony sunfish was being prepared.
The leader evidently read my
thoughts and remarked that he and his friends were short of provisions, having
journeyed a long way.
Not a Thing Missing
In the
bush one shares what one can with the
other chap and, returning to my
camp, I had Sam break out sugar, coffee, rice, beans and pork, and adding a
haunch of peccary to this, I sent the
food to the strangers.
The food put them in gay humor, and far into the night they
sang, laughed and joked. Our supplies, our arms, our equipment remained
unguarded and unwatched as we slumbered in our hammocks, until, as usual, the first streaks of dawn, the
clattering of toucans and the
squawking of parrots and macaws aroused us.
Our unknown companions of the
night had already broken camp and were embarking in their
big, battered and patched canoe.
Never have I seen a tougher
appearing crowd than they, but they were good-humored; they
shouted thanks and farewells, and noisily pushed off and vanished around a bend
of the river. Not an article of ours
was missing, not a thing had been disturbed— and yet, as I knew, the
fellows must have been desperately in need of provisions, arms and equipment.
Already I had begun to
suspect who and what they were, and,
later, I found my suspicions confirmed. They were escaped convicts from the
penal settlement in French Guiana, the most desperate and ruthless Apaches and thugs,
and their bewhiskered leader was
thrice a murderer.
Poor devils! they never won through. Ignorant of the treacherous river, its currents and its rapids, they took a wrong turn, went over a cataract and
perished to a man within a few hours after they
had left our camp. It was the great
adventure for them, but hardly an
adventure for me.
The Soul of Hospitality
At another
time I was in the interior of Santo Domingo,
in a wild, unsettled district. It was raining in torrents, the night was coming
on and, having expected to reach a village before dark, I was not equipped for
camping. My only companion was a
West Indian colored boy and it looked as if we would pass a miserable night in the saddle.
Presently, to our joy, we
came to a tiny clearing with a palm-thatched hut. At our approach a man
appeared in the doorway of the hut. He was a swarthy, fiercely-mustached fellow
with bushy brows and reddened eyes, and was far from
prepossessing. He was clad in patched cotton garments, wore a battered sombrero, carried a long-bladed, cross-hilted machete
and a heavy revolver at his belt. For a moment
he peered at us and then, as I asked
if we could stop for the night, he
grinned, doffed his hat and declared that his house and all it held were mine.
He was the
soul of hospitality. Humble as was his hut, he did his best to make us comfortable. His woman,
a plump, good-looking half-breed, fanned the
smoldering fire into a blaze, prepared coffee and baked tortillas while our
host brought out chicha and cleared a space in one corner and spread a cowhide
and palm trash for our beds.
With our garments dried and our
stomachs lined, we chatted with our
fierce-visaged host.
At that time revolutionists
and bandits were as thick as ants throughout the
republic.
It was not wise to express an
opinion for or against a political party, but as our host appeared to take a
keen interest in the situation and
explained he had kept out of sight for fear of being drawn into the forces of one side or the
other, I related all I had seen or
heard.
He, too, had had experiences
and he told of service in the last
revolt, showed an ugly bullet wound on one leg and a livid scar made by a
machete on one shoulder, and conveyed the
impression—though without bragging—that he was something
of a firebrand himself. But I noticed he did not mention names or places in his
stories.
When I left his home the
following morning he refused to accept any payment for his hospitality; gave me
directions as to a short cut across the
mountains, and with a hearty "May you go with God. Senor," he waved
his hand in farewell.
A few weeks later there was great rejoicing throughout the province. The most feared bandit in the country, a murderous rascal named Galvin, but
more widely known as "El Lobo," had been taken. He had put up a
savage fight and was brought in literally cut to pieces. He was a shocking
sight; but I recognized the
blood-stained, pallid face of the
dying bandit as the face of the fellow who had given me shelter that stormy
night.
By all recognized rules of adventure
tales he should have cut my throat while I slept, should have held me for ransom, or at the
very least should have robbed me. But he did neither,
and so, again, adventure passed me by.
Another
time, while in Central America,
I was starting forth from a tiny
wayside inn long before dawn. My way was over an unfrequented road across
mountains with no houses for miles, and I foresaw a lonely ride.
As I entered the patio where my horse stood saddled, the mozo inquired if I would object to having a companion on my journey, explaining that another caballero was traveling in my direction.
Presently the caballero appeared—a
burly figure whose features were unrecognizable in the
darkness.
He expressed his pleasure at the prospect of a companion
on the lonely road and mounted a
splendid white horse. For hours we rode side by side, talking and chatting, and
I found my unknown comrade a most
delightful and interesting individual.
When at last the gray light of dawn enabled me to see his face I
discovered that he was a gigantic, atrociously ugly-looking Negro with a huge
scar-across one cheek, which had twisted his thick lips into an evil leer.
We breakfasted beside a
spring on the mountain side and, an
hour or two later, reached the
summit of the pass. Here the fellow halted, and, informing me that his way
led over a trail to the south, he
shook hands cordially, wished me a safe journey and rode off through the forest.
Late that evening I reached San Mateo, and threw
myself with a sigh of relief into a hammock swinging at the
inn. The proprietor plied me with questions as to my trip and asked casually if
I had met anyone on my ride. As I spoke of my chance companion
and described him, the face of the easy-going innkeeper paled and he glanced nervously
about.
"Madre de Dies!" he
exclaimed, crossing himself. "The Americano senor bears a charmed life, then. Know you not that you rode with the Evil One himself? No other
bears such a scar on his face. It was Panchito Gomez,
senor—the outlawed leader of the last insurrection. There is a price of 3000 gold
pesos on his head!"
No comments:
Post a Comment