Talk:Black White
| Information about this edition | |
|---|---|
| Edition: | Extracted from Adventure magazine, vol 42, September 20, 1923, pp. 3-40. |
| Source: | https://archive.org/details/AdventureV042N0519230920 |
| Contributor(s): | ragpicker |
| Notes: | Accompanying illustrations may be omitted. The "Appendix" extracted from "The Camp-Fire" section of the issue. |
| Proofreaders: | ragcleaner |
Appendix: The story behind the story[edit]
The author's trip on the Orinoco and Ventuari
(From "The Camp-Fire" section of the issue.)
HERE is something from Arthur O. Friel in connection with his complete novel in this issue. Following it is a brief account of his trip up the Orinoco and Ventuari last year. You may recall I[1] promised to try to get him to tell us all some thing about that trip, but it wasn’t easy to persuade him and I’m just low enough to hand you first of all one of his letters on the subject.
Seriously, I sympathize with him and with the many others of our writers’ brigade who squirm and wriggle when it comes their turn to stand up and talk to you about themselves. Most of them make themselves do it, though, and do it for the sake of Camp-Fire. They’ve enjoyed listening to the other fellows and know it’s only fair to buck up and make their own contributions. Mr. Friel, for example, knew you knew he had made that trip and would want to hear something about it from him, just as he would want to hear about interesting trips made by the rest of you. So he comes across:
As for talking about my trip—gee, I dunno. Let me smoke a few cigarets over it before I say aye, yes or no.
In the meantime, take a look at “Black White” and the Camp-Fire dope appended thereto, which goes out to you today. The story itself gives a brief but accurate outline of the main difficulties encountered, and the Camp-Fire sketch gives a few more side-lights. I have left out an awful lot, of course, as I’m trying to tell a story and not write a descriptive article; and on the other hand, I’ve made reference to one big obstacle which I didn’t encounter because it was removed last year—the murder-maniac Tomás Funes, who was killing with both hands in 1916, the time of the story. He was very thoroughly shot on January 30, 1921, and his gang now is scattered to the four winds—though I had one of his ex-killers working for me as a crewman on the Ventuari. I’ve made Loco León mention him because a tale of that country at that time just has to have his name in it somewhere.
Maybe the yarn will give you what you’d like. If not, I’ll see what I can do toward uncorking some more dope without seeming to toot my horn too much. It’s sort of a hard job because, going alone as I did, I can’t say much about my trip without talking a lot about my sawed-off self.
Oh say, before I forget it again: I lost my “71” button down there—it went overboard while I was changing a rain-soaked shirt for a dry one—and I meant to get a new one when I was in the shop the other day, but forgot it. Will you ask the office-boy or somebody to send me one?—Friel.
Well up on the Rio Ventuari—just above the thundering cataract of Oso, in fact—in May of this year, 1922, I paused to catch my breath and take stock of my bones after a hair-raising shoot-the-chutes down through rain-swollen raudales from the Maquiritare paragua of Uaunana. And there I met three Maquiritares with sooty black skins.
Before leaving these three dusky gents the next day in order to buck the raving white-water hell between the falls of Oso and Quencua, I gave their unusual skins a searching once-over and asked how they got that way. The reply caused me forthwith to jot down sundry swift notes in a battered diary, with the added memo: “Adv—Black White.” Which, being expanded, meant: “If you live to get out of this, write for Adventure a story based on this dope, to be entitled ‘Black White.’” And I lived to get out of there, and I’ve just written the story, and here it is.
{[dhr]} THEY told me about the mixture of blood and yucut’ ’sehi, but would not say that anything else was used. I believe there is something else; what, I don’t know, but I doubt if the blood-mixture alone would do it. However, I’m not saying it wouldn’t, and I’m not testing it on myself, one way or the other. They also told me the women could, and would—if they took the notion—use it as it is used in this story of mine.
I entered into no argument with them over the possibility of the thing; I had my hands full of more pressing matters, as I had delayed too long in the hills, the rains had caught me, the river was up and growing worse, and I was getting out of there like the proverbial bat out of Gehenna. Neither will I argue about it now. I saw those men with my own two eyes, which are as good as the next man’s; I saw that the black was not paint or dirt or tattoo—the Maquiritares never tattoo anyway—but was in the skin; I heard their explanation, and know no reason why they should lie about it. And that’s that.
AS FOR the Orinoco, the Ventuari and the Indians, they are just as described. Uaunana (pronounced Wah-oo-nah-nah) is at the top of the river, and its chief, Juancito, is a good little skate; when I left there he quietly got into his own curial and, with several paddlers, escorted me down to the raudal of Monoblanco just to see how I made out. Loco León is, like our old friends Lourenço and Pedro (who now are on a vacation) a composite character; he is made up of two friends of mine down there) one of whom is a blend Spaniard. The man Funes, briefly referred to, was a very real and terrible chief cutthroat of an army of cutthroats, who ruled the Orinoco above Atures until last year, when he was shot. Of him, more anon.
A few notes about words:
Piragua and paragua look almost the same, but mean widely different things; a piragua is a small river-boat, a paragua a round Indian tribe-house. Likewise, the Guahibos and the Guaharibos are not at all the same people; the Guahibos are in Colombia south of the river Meta, and a pretty good bunch on the whole, though they have a bad reputation in Venezuela because they kill folks once in a while; the Guaharibos hold the region in which the Orinoco rises, and are absolutely hostile to everybody. The “Rio Negro” of Venezuela is not the big Rio Negro just south, in Brazil, hut the black river Atabapo, entering the Orinoco at San Fernando de Atabapo, the only town in the Territorio de Amazonas; because of the fact that the territory is governed—or, rather misgoverned—from this town, the whole Orinoco county above the raudal of Atures is loosely called “Rio Negro.” San Fernando itself is a “dark and bloody ground,” without a doctor or a priest; the last doctor was murdered by Funes’ order, and the town has twice been cursed by priests, who predicted that it would end in flames. I got along first-rate with its men during the week I was there—in fact, I hoisted several snorts of caballo blanco with a brother of Funes—but I slept with a large six-gun in the hammock every night, just by way of insurance. Yes, it’s a sweet little burg. But to get back to my words:
THE correct name of a dugout canoe in Venezuela is curiara, but hardly anybody pronounces it that way: folk say “curial,” so I’ve used that spelling. Finally, an Indian chief down there is always a capitán, not a jefe or anything of that sort. The Indians, who were friendly to the first whites until they found themselves being horribly abused, are said to have noticed that the commander of the invaders was called “captain” or capitán, so they appropriated the title for their own chiefs.
That’s all for this time, except that Maquiritare is pronounced Mah-kee-ri-táh-re.—A. O. F.
P. S.—Brother Hoffman opines that I ought to come across with some more dope about my recent little pasear up the Orinoco and Ventuari. All right. Here comes an earful:
IN THE first place, I usually travel without partners. In that way I don’t have to argue with any side-kick about what shall be done next. Also, if I get into a jam I don’t have to feel that I dragged a buddy into it. I can hop into any danged thing I like, get out of it any way I can, and not give a raing-tailed whoop about anybody else. Which comes pretty close to being freedom.
To show how this works out—I started for British Guiana; changed my mind and flopped over into Venezuela; decided to go up the Orinoco to the Padamo; learned that the Ventuari was a tougher proposition, and went bustling up the Ventuari and got into the “unknown land.” Now if I’d been hooked up with one of those schedule-hounds who pride themselves on having “single-track minds,” where would I have wound up? I dunno. There’d have been a row, anyway.
RIGHT here I ought to say that I played in great luck all through this trip. Otherwise my bones probably would now be somewhere along the Orinoco, which is one wicked river to go skating on. Luck began at Port-of-Spain, Trinidad, where I wandered into the American consulate to get an official O.K. on a certain document and found in Captain Alberto Demorest (the vice-consul) a loyal Camp-Fire comrade and a royal good scout. Through him I soon met the Venezuelan and Colombian consuls-general, Señores Quintero and Molano, who are good sports; and when I departed up the Orinoco I carried notes of introduction from both Demorest and Quintero which went far to make me welcome in Venezuela. You fellows who have knocked around in the tropics know how valuable such things are. Venezuela likes Americans, if they’re of the right sort; but in view of the fact that she’s a hair-trigger country and that certain misguided outsiders have kicked up considerable trouble there at times, she naturally wants to know who her visitors are.
Reaching Ciudad Bolívar is easy enough; nothing to it but traveling a couple of hundred miles upriver on the old stern-wheeler Delta, which steams from Trinidad every now and then. Ciudad Bolívar is the metropolis of the Orinoco—in fact, the only place of any importance on the whole river—and is the capital of Bolívar state, governed at present by General Vincencio Perez-Soto. The general is a regular fellow, a good sport, and a man of his word, and he sure treated me right. The law of Venezuela has recently been made very tight, however, about bringing in arms, and nobody south of Caracas could release my guns from the clutches of the aduana; so I had to hang up in Bolívar until President Gomez wired the necessary order.
IN THE dry season, Ciudad Bolívar is the end of steamer navigation. The rocks up above have smashed several steamers which took a chance in other years, and now the only way to travel farther in low-water time is by an infrequent piragua. After some dickering I got transportation for myself and a Trinidad nigger (no, not “negro”—he was a nigger, and the last of his breed who will ever draw pay from me) on a 45-foot piragua bound for the raudal of Atures, some 400 miles farther up-river, where the Territorio de Amazonas begins. On this patch-sailed, ramshackle craft, in company with nineteen natives who were going after tonca-beans, we bumped along over the sandbars for a couple of weeks; got through the smaller raudales mostly by fool luck; and ended our sailing at Zamuro, a mosquito-swarming rock-hole hotter than the hinges of Hades—a “port” with a name but no houses. The name means “vulture.”
HERE I took four of the boat’s crew as my own men, said adios to the rest of the gang, and tackled the overland trip around the raudal. I’d been sizing up my men ever since leaving Ciudad Bolívar, because one of the biggest dangers confronting the lone white wanderer down South is that of being done in by his own crew. More than one gringo has cashed in by that route. By the way, does anybody know of a chap named Crystal, who was either American or English, and who disappeared in Colombia about 1915? A Venezuelan with whom I talked at the Rio Catañapo (a little above Atures) told me Crystal was robbed and deserted by his crew on the river Meta; was later picked up by a down-bound bunch of Colombians; but died from the effects of his privations and lies buried on the Isla de Muerte, in the Meta, not far from the Orinoco. If any of our crowd knew him and has been wondering what became of him, that’s where he is.
Anyway, I got four mighty good men: faithful, honest, hard-working, good-natured Venezuelan rivermen who carried on with never a whine, though tortured from dawn to dark by millions of those damnable little Orinoco mosquitoes which bite like red-hot needles. I’d like to see certain loud-mouthed “white men” whom I’ve heard sneering at South American “spiggoties” stand up under the gaff those fellows took. Their skins were yellow, but there was no yellow in their blood. On general principles, I kept an eye peeled and the old Colt handy (without letting them know it), but I never needed a gun for those four fellows.
WELL, after some delay at Atures I fell in with an armed gang from San Fernando de Atabapo who had come down to ship out some balata and were going back, and on their piragua we poled up through more raudales to Maipures. The San Fernando bunch were good skates, and we got along fine together. This part of the river (from the Meta south nearly to San Fernando) is Guahibo Indian ground and, since the Guahibos have a bad name for killing travelers, we used to sleep on our guns on big rocks where nothing could sneak up on us unseen in the night. Met some Guahibos at Maipures, but they were feeling good-natured and we were heavily gunned, so all went well. The Guahibos never had seen a Norte Americano, and they surrounded me and pawed me over and took stuff out of my pockets—and put back every danged thing after they looked at it, too. I gave their medicine-man a little box of smoker’s matches, and he thought I was a prince. Me, I liked the Guahibos fine, and—although I now own a couple of the bloodstained hardwood clubs with which they killed a Venezuelan trader awhile ago—I hope to see more of them sometime.
Got, a piragua of my own above Maipures and poled along to San Fernando de Atabapo. Had an interesting week there—made more interesting by a secret warning to eat no food not prepared by my own men, as the idea had spread around that I was packing a trunkful of gold coin—and then, having obtained a thirty-foot curial, went on. The curial, by the way, was Funes’ former disptach-boat, in which many a murder-message had gone to his cutthroat gangs, and was black as the Jolly Roger. All kinds of boats are scarce as hens’ teeth on the upper river just now, as the revolutionists who bumped off Funes carried downstream with them everything that would float. It was just by luck and by being a good fellow with the gang that I got hold of the Funes death-boat. It was by far the best curial I saw anywhere on the Venezuelan rivers.
AND so I reached the Ventuari. Went up to see what I might see, and saw quite a lot. Among other things, I met the Ventuar half of Loco León—the other half of this fiction character lives on another tributary of the Orinoco, and neither of the two men is named León or anything like it. A couple of days below Quencua I had shot a tapir for meat (tough brutes to kill, by the way) and made camp for the rest of the day in order to barbecue the critter in Indian style—only way to keep the meat without salt. At dark, in came a curial from up-river, carrying a couple of Indians and Loco, who was down-bound and had seen my fire. He had a little roasting of his own to do, as he had shot three peccaries. So, while his Indians and my Venezuelans tended their respective fires, Loco and I smoked my cigarrillos, punished a quart of ron anciado which I dug up for the occasion, and talked late. The upshot of the talk was that the next day he turned back upstream, went ahead of me (he was riding light, while I was loaded with six men’s supplies and necessary equipment) and, at his sitio below Quencua, organized the few men he had on hand to help me along up the river. Without them I never should have made it. And I defy any other stranger to go up that river and come back alive without such aid. My nigger man spoke one true sentence on that stream—he called the river above Quencua “hell and damnation.” It is exactly that.
LOCO LEÓN, as I call him here, works the balata on the Ventuari and is the only man who can—the only man for whom the Ventuari Indians will do such work. In the dry time he scouts for new districts. He has made a couple of tidy little fortunes, lost them through the curse of Venezuela (revolutions), and now is once more on the up-grade. He is as square as a brick and as game as they make ’em, and I’m proud to call him compañero.
Loco himself went with me to the cataract of Oso—which means “ant-bear” down here, and is so named because, like the ant-bear which drives its huge hooks into the heart of the tigre and never lets go, this waterfall never gives up its dead. Must be a subterranean hole of some sort below it; anyway, a man who goes in there never comes up. Farther than this Loco could net go, as he was all in from fever at the time. But he gave me two daredevil men of his who knew the river up to the first Maquiritare house, and, after firing three of my Orinoco boys who had gone about as far as they wanted to, I rambled on in a new curial.
The two new men were both Venezuelans, one being a handsome dog who had been one of the executioners in Funes’ “army.” He spoke in the most casual way of having beheaded men with a machete, and was equally unconcerned about his own life as we bucked the dangers of the river. We fought our way up through one mean raudal after another, and eventually reached the Maquiritares. I got four husky young bucks to go along with us, and after a lot more rough stuff we arrived at Uaunana.
THERE the rains hit us. I wasn’t satisfied yet—wanted to go on over the divide and down the Caura. But by now my men were at the end of their rope, I was about done up myself, and the Maquiritares said the overland traverse could be made only in the dry season, which now was past. When it rains in the Parimas it rains buckets, and it keeps on raining. So, when I had visited the Uaunanans a while, I had to go back down the Ventuari. Ought to have started the return trip sooner than I did. When I finally got under way the river was the finest death-trap I ever clapped an eye on, and I don’t know yet just how we got out alive, except that it was by marvels of paddle-work and miracles of luck. Old Man Death snatched at us a hundred times, but somehow we always dodged. Below Quencua it wasn’t so bad, and from there on it was “three men in a boat”—one Venezuelan, as popero (steersman); one Trinidad nigger, as boga (paddler) and cook; one Yank, as proero (bowman) and capitán—all the way to Bolívar.
We had many a stiff fight with the Orinoco waves, which are big and nasty for a little curial to buck against, and sundry disagreements with crocs which plunged off the bank at us, under the impression that we were eatable. We also paddled through a new revolution which had busted loose since we passed up the river—they looted several towns and at one of them there was a scrap in which 82 men were killed and 107 wounded; and they shot up boats and had a perfectly lovely time. We also heard that a broken-down outlaw leader with whom I had been a bit short on my way upstream (he traveled on the Zamuro-bound piragua a few days) had now collected a gang and would be pleased to shoot the guts out of a certain roving Yank. But we rambled right along with paddles thumping out the same old curial tune, dodging nobody and turning out for nothing; and the revolutionists happened to be revoluting up north at the moment, and the gent thirsting for my gore was probably playing jackal and hanging around the real fighters looking for pickings—he was of that type—and so there was nothing for me to fight with but the river, which sure gave me a bellyful.
BY THE time I reached Bolívar I was an official dispatch-bearer for the Venezuelan Government, having taken aboard certain messages at the little town of Las Bonitas, where a federal garrison hung out; which may have made me unneutral, but since the federals had shown me every courtesy and their messages were directed to friend General Perez-Soto, neutrality could go hang.
The Ciudad Bolívar folks seemed surprized by my return. They told me I wasn’t expected back, because of every five men to go to the upper Orinoco only two live to make the round trip. As for the Ventuari, there are no figures—folks don’t go there. So far as I could learn, I was the first foreigner ever to go up to Uaunana, at least since the days of the Conquistadores. There is said to have been a chain of Spanish blockhouses from the Caura to the Padamo some hundreds of years ago, the entire works finally disappearing one fine night when the Maquiritares, who had tired of Spaniards, annihilated the garrisons and burned their forts. Mebbe so. The Maquiritares could do it, all right.
IN MODERN times the only white traveler known to have been on the Ventuari was a European (not English) explorer who came down the lower part of it a few years back—shortly before Germany started to try to lick the world. Since my return I have seen a book written by this gent, purporting to show his explorations; and though I don’t happen to read his language, I note that his map credits him with traveling down the entire Ventuari, from source to mouth. Which is great stuff, except that Loco León says he did nothing of the kind. According to Loco (who knows from his Indian friends just what this bird did) the explorer came into Venezuela via the Amazon, Negro Branco and Uraricoera (also called Parima); tried to go down the Padamo, but got chased toward the Ventuari by the Guaharibos; entered the Ventuari by way of the Rio Hacha (a side river about halfway down) and scooted down to Loco’s sitio; arrived there almost naked, but bringing army trunks full of soils, seeds, etc., to be shipped to and studied by the scientists of his fatherland; stayed a month eating Loco’s grub and getting new clothes made—and then left in a towering rage because Loco declined to take money for his hospitality. I give you gentlemen one guess as to the nationality of this traveler.
Me, I make no claims to being an explorer; I’m only a wandering jassack who goes around to look at things. So it’s nothing to me whether this fellow saw all the Ventuari or not. He had a tough trip anyway, and I danged well know it; so we’ll let it go at that.
{[dhr]} LITTLE old Venezuela is a wonderland for the adventurer who goes out to see what he may see. Unclimbed mountains, unexplored rivers, unknown tribes—they’re all there, and then some. The sources of the Orinoco itself never have been discovered yet, thanks to the savage Guaharibos. But the back bush of Venezuela is no pleasure resort, and the chap who bucks it can expect to be up against the real thing, and up against it good and plenty. As soon as he gets away from the cities it’s mostly luck, and if the luck turns bad—may God have mercy on his soul!
Well, this was to be only a postscript, and now it’s so much bigger than the first note that the tail is wagging the dog. However, I’ll let ’er wag. And before I shut up I want to add this: that though I kept my letters of introduction and my Colt out of sight after leaving Ciudad Bolívar (I don’t believe in flashing either of them unless they’ve got to be used) I met courtesy and real goodfellowship all along the line. Men heard I was a Norte Americano, looked me in the eye, and were friendly. I didn’t hear the word gringo once; it was always el señor; and I was a tough-looking bird much of the time, especially on the way back. I believe there is a very real and strong friendship for the United States of America in the Estados Unidos de Venezuela, and that the Yank who knows how to meet and treat the Venezolanos will always find a welcome among them. The other kind of “American”—the loud-mouthed, sneering, domineering ass—had better stay here in the States. He won’t get along well down there, and he’s a rotten poor advertisement for the U. S. A. in any part of the world.—A. O. F.
- ↑ Arthur Sullivant Hoffman, the editor