In Far Bolivia Part 6

The tall trees were first and foremost cleared off the hill; not all though. Many of the most beautiful were left for effect, not to say shade, and it was pleasant indeed to hear the wind whispering through their foliage, and the bees murmuring in their branches, in this flowery land of eternal summer.

Nor was the undergrowth of splendid shrubs and bushes and fruit-trees cleared away. They were thinned, however, and beautiful broad winding walks led up through them towards the mansion.

The house was one of many gables; altogether English, built of quartz for the most part, and having a tower to it of great height.

From this tower one could catch glimpses of the most charming scenery, up and down the river, and far away on the other sh.o.r.e, where forests swam in the liquid air and giant hills raised their blue tops far into the sky.

So well had Tom St. Clair flourished since taking up his quarters here that his capital was returning him at least one hundred per cent, after allowing for wear and tear of plant.

I could not say for certain how many white men he had with him. The number must have been close on fifty, to say nothing of the scores and scores of Indians.

Jake Solomons and Burly Bill were his overseers, but they delighted in hard work themselves, as we have already seen. So, too, did Roland's father himself, and as visitors to the district were few, you may be certain he never wore a London hat nor evening dress.

Like those of Jake and Bill, his sleeves were always rolled up, and his muscular arms and brave square face showed that he was fit for anything.

No, a London hat would have been sadly out of place; but the broad-brimmed Buffalo Bill he wore became him admirably.

That big buzz-saw was a triumph. The clearing of the forest commenced from close under the hill where stood the mansion, and strong horses and bullocks were used to drag the gigantic trees towards the mill.

Splendid timber it was!

No one could have guessed the age of these trees until they were cut down and sawn into lengths, when their concentric rings might be counted.

The saw-mill itself was a long way from the mansion-house, with the villages for the whites and Indians between, but quite separate from each other.

The habitations of the whites were raised on piles well above the somewhat damp ground, and steps led up to them. Two-roomed most of them were, but that of Jake was of a more pretentious character. So, too, was Burly Bill's hut.

It would have been difficult to say what the Indians lived on. Cakes, fruit, fish, and meat of any kind might form the best answer to the question. They ate roasted snakes with great relish, and many of these were of the deadly-poisonous cla.s.s. The heads were cut off and buried first, however, and thus all danger was prevented. Young alligators were frequently caught, too, and made into a stew.

The huts these faithful creatures lived in were chiefly composed of bamboo, timber, and leaves. Sometimes they caught fire. That did not trouble the savages much, and certainly did not keep them awake at night. For, had the whole village been burned down, they could have built another in a surprisingly short time.

When our hero and heroine got lost in the great primeval forest, Burnley Hall was in the most perfect and beautiful order, and its walks, its flower-garden, and shrubberies were a most pleasing sight. All was under the superintendence of a Scotch gardener, whom St. Clair had imported for the purpose.

By this time, too, a very large portion of the adjoining forest had been cut down, and the land on which those lofty trees had grown was under cultivation.

If the country which St. Clair had made his home was not in reality a land flowing with milk and honey, it yielded many commodities equally valuable. Every now and then--especially when the river was more or less in flood--immense rafts were sent down stream to distant Para, where the valuable timber found ready market.

Several white men in boats always went in charge of these, and the boats served to a.s.sist in steering, and towing as well.

These rafts used often to be built close to the river before an expected rising of the stream, which, when it did come, floated them off and away.

But timber was not the only commodity that St. Clair sent down from his great estate. There were splendid quinine-trees. There was coca and cocoa, too.

There was a sugar plantation which yielded the best results, to say nothing of coffee and tobacco, Brazil-nuts and many other kinds of nuts, and last, but not least, there was gold.

This latter was invariably sent in charge of a reliable white man, and St. Clair lived in hope that he would yet manage to position a really paying gold-mine.

More than once St. Clair had permitted Roland and Peggy to journey down to Para on a great raft. But only at the season when no storms blew.

They had an old Indian servant to cook and "do" for them, and the centre of the raft was hollowed out into a kind of cabin roofed over with bamboo and leaves. Steps led up from this on to a railed platform, which was called the deck.

Burly Bill would be in charge of boats and all, and in the evenings he would enter the children's cabin to sing them songs and tell them strange, weird tales of forest life.

He had a banjo, and right sweetly could he play. Old Beeboo the Indian, would invariably light his meerschaum for him, smoking it herself for a good five minutes first and foremost, under pretence of getting it well alight.

Beeboo, indeed, was altogether a character. Both Mr. and Mrs. St. Clair liked her very much, however, for she had been in the family, and nursed both Peggy and Roland, from the day they had first come to the country.

As for her age, she might have been any age between five-and-twenty and one hundred and ten. She was dark in skin--oh, no! not black, but more of copper colour, and showed a few wrinkles at early morn. But when Beeboo was figged out in her nicest white frock and her deep-blue or crimson blouse, with her hair hanging down in two huge plaits, then, with the smile that always hovered around her lips and went dancing away up her face till it flickered about her eyes, she was very pleasant indeed. The wrinkles had all flown up to the moon or somewhere, and Beeboo was five-and-twenty once again.

I must tell you something, however, regarding her, and that is the worst. Beeboo came from a race of cannibals who inhabit one of the wildest and almost inaccessible regions of Bolivia, and her teeth had been filed by flints into a triangular shape, the form best adapted for tearing flesh. She had been brought thence, along with a couple of wonderful monkeys and several parrots, when only sixteen, by an English traveller who had intended to make her a present to his wife.

Beeboo never got as far as England, however. She had watched her chance, and one day escaped to the woods, taking with her one of the monkeys, who was an especial favourite with this strange, wild girl.

She was frequently seen for many years after this. It was supposed she had lived on roots and rats--I'm not joking--and slept at night in trees. She managed to clothe herself, too, with the inner rind of the bark of certain shrubs. But how she had escaped death from the talons of jaguars and other wild beasts no one could imagine.

Well, one day, shortly after the arrival of St. Clair, hunters found the jaguar queen, as they called her, lying in the jungle at the foot of a tree.

There was a jaguar not far off, and a huge piece of sodden flesh lay near Beeboo's cheek, undoubtedly placed there by this strange, wild pet, while close beside her stood a tapir.

Beeboo was carried to the nearest village, and the tapir followed as gently as a lamb. My informant does not know what became of the tapir, but Beeboo was tamed, turned a Christian too, and never evinced any inclination to return to the woods.

Yet, strangely enough, no puma nor jaguar would ever even growl or snarl at Beeboo.

These statements can all be verified.

CHAPTER IV--AWAY DOWN THE RIVER

Before we start on this adventurous cruise, let us take a peep at an upland region to the south of the Amazon. It was entirely surrounded by caoutchouc or india-rubber trees, and it was while wandering through this dense forest with Jake, and making arrangements for the tapping of those trees, the juice of which was bound to bring the St. Clairs much money, that they came upon the rocky table-land where they found the gold.

This was some months after the strange Indian had found the "babes in the wood", as Jake sometimes called Roland and Peggy.

"I say, sir, do you see the quartz showing white everywhere through the bloom of those beautiful flowers?"

"Ugh!" cried St. Clair, as a splendidly-coloured but hideous large snake hissed and glided away from between his feet. "Ugh! had I tramped on that fellow my prospecting would have been all ended."

"True, sir," said Jake; "but about the quartz?"

"Well, Jake."

"Well, Mr. St. Clair, there is gold here. I do not say that we've struck an El Dorado, but I am certain there is something worth digging for in this region."

"Shall we try? You've been in Australia. What say you to a shaft?"

"Good! But a horizontal shaft carried into the base of this hill or hummock will, I think, do for the present. It is only for samples, you know."

And these samples had turned out so well that St. Clair, after claiming the whole hill, determined to send Jake on a special message to Para to establish a company for working it.

He could take no more labour on his own head, for really he had more than enough to do with his estate.