The Brazilian Anaconda

1895

An Immense and Formidable Reptile That Lives to a Great Age.

The late Mr. Bates in his 11 years spent in the Brazilian forests saw and heard more of the habits of the anaconda than most travelers, though, like other great serpents, the individuals of this species are so little common that their appearance in any one district is too infrequent to make a special study of their habits part of the day's work of a busy naturalist. Bates' first personal experience of the creature shows how impossible it is to avoid the python by the ordinary means of isolation sufficient to keep other dangerous creatures at a distance. He was at anchor, in a large boat, in deep water, in the port of Antonio Malagueita.

An anaconda swam out to the boat, lifted its head from the water, broke in the side of a fowlhouse on deck and carried off a couple of fowls. It was found that this snake had been stealing ducks and fowls from this part of the river for months, so a hunt was organized, miles of river bank were searched and the serpent at last found sunning itself in a muddy creek and killed. It was "not a large specimen, only 18 feet 9 inches long." But Mr. Bates measured skins of anacondas which were 21 feet in length and 2 feet in girth, and he adds: "There can be no doubt that this formidable serpent grows to an enormous bulk and lives to a great age, for I have heard of specimens having been killed which measured 42 feet in length, or double the size of the largest which I had the opportunity of examining." We must add a correction here. They were double the length, but the size of these great reptiles, like that of fish, increases enormously with every addition in longitudinal growth.

A snake of 20 feet in length would be probably four times the weight of one 10 feet long, and the bulk of a 40 foot anaconda would approach that of the largest crocodile. Since the publication of "The Naturalist's Voyage on the Amazons" an anaconda of 29 feet has been brought to the Natural History museum at South Kensington. A neighbor of Bates, in Brazil, nearly lost his 10-year-old son by the attack of an anaconda. He had left the boy in his boat while he went to gather fruit, and on his return found him encircled by the snake, whose jaws the father seized and actually tore them asunder. — Spectator.

All Over The State

1916

A most successful as well as profitable round trip from New York to Buenos Ayres was completed by the five-masted schooner, Harwood Palmer. She went out from Norfolk with coal and back to New York with linseed, four months and 27 days being occupied on the double voyage. The vessel stocked the comfortable sum of $145,000, which goes to show that there is still some money in the shipping business.

—The Fryeburg Post, Fryeburg, Maine, Sept. 26, 1916, p. 1.

Aztec's Sacred Mushroom

1916

Mushrooms are dangerous enough in the United States, where those who gather and eat them prize their flavor, and sometimes perish by reason of wrong diagnosis, for the deadly kind that are called toadstools look much like some of the edible mushrooms. In Mexico it would seem that the mushroom situation is worse than here, for while Americans hunt mushrooms for food, the Mexicans have reason to regard them as both meat and drink. Read the following statement of what happens after consuming the sacred mushroom of the Aztecs:

It is a powerful narcotic, producing the most fantastic visions, and is regarded by the Indians as a key which, in their ceremonial, opens to them all the glories of another and better world. A tincture made by simply chopping up the plant and allowing it to soak in diluted alcohol for a couple of weeks is a most serviceable remedy for nervousness, headaches and insomnia. When chewed (the Indians say) it stops the painful coughing of consumptives.

Botanists assert that the "sacred mushroom" is not a mushroom at all, but a cactus. That, however, is merely a matter of bald detail. What is important is the action of the plant on the system, This is attributed to an alkaloid principle it contains known as anhalonin, which chemists say is separable in the form of white, needlelike crystals.

The plant resembles a radish in shape. It has a button-like top, which is all of it that appears above the ground, and this is why it has been taken for a mushroom. The top is covered with prickles.

The early missionaries disapproved of the "sacred mushrooms." Because its use was part of the religious ceremonial of the native priests, the good missionaries called it "devil root." Another name of it is "dream plant," because of the visions it produces. Besides the dream inducing alkaloid, it yields a deadly poison; so it would not do for people unfamiliar with the plant to experiment with its effects on their own persons. People who have had it administered to them by physicians declare it is a remedy for the headachy condition that follows the drinking of alcohol.

—The Saturday Blade, Chicago, Sept. 16, 1916, p. 6.

As to Conversational Parrots

1902

Do parrots understand what they say? A correspondent writes that a friend with a fine Brazilian parrot has been staying with her. The parrot a fluent and accomplished speaker. A gray parrot was introduced one day, but the Brazilian haughtily declined to have anything to say to the gray. Then another friend, who had just been given a newly imported green Brazilian, brought the newcomer to call.

The moment the parrots caught sight of each other they broke into a torrent of apparently articulate language, consisting, as it seemed, of questions and answers, but what the language was no one present could tell. The owner of the first parrot had never during the years it had lived with her heard it speak this strange tongue. The two parrots talked to each other without ceasing all the time they were together, and a few days later, when they met again, exactly the same thing happened. Was the first parrot — long exiled from its native forests — asking eagerly for news of its people? — London Chronicle.

England's Boundarymaker

1903

Sir Thomas Holdich leaves England on his mission to lay down the new frontier between Chile and the Argentine Republic. It is not a light task, but Sir Thomas already knows something of the Andes, and he has probably had more experience in mapping out boundaries than any man living.

Much of his work has been on the frontiers of India, which he knows as intimately as we know our London streets. He has written a book called the "Indian Borderland," and if ever he gives us his reminiscences they should be full of agreeable accounts of travel. He was serving in India nearly forty years ago as a young officer of the Royal Engineers.

The Abyssinian campaign took him to another continent, but the Afghan war took him back to the regions which he has done so much to make plain on maps. Sir Thomas is within sight of sixty, but a grand tour of mountainous South America has no terrors for him. He and his staff of engineers expect to be away several months. — London Chronicle.

Catching Monkeys in South America

1900

The fondness of monkeys for mischief makes them the ready dupes of a shrewder intelligence. The manner of entrapping them is explained by a South American writer, who is familiar with life in town and in forest throughout the equatorial belt.

One of the simplest methods consists in cutting a number of holes in a gourd, making them barely large enough to admit the monkey's head. The gourd, thus prepared, is filled with corn and secured to the trunk of a tree. Then it is shaken violently, so as to attract the attention of the monkeys. A few grains of corn are scattered in the neighborhood of the trap.

The gourd is the dinner-bell of the monkeys. They no sooner hear the well-known sound than they descend from their aerial homes, and each in turn, seizing the gourd, grasps through one of the holes a handful of corn. Then they struggle in vain to withdraw their hands without relinquishing the prize. At this critical moment the concealed author of their mishap suddenly makes his appearance, and tying their hands, carries them off to his cabin in the woods. — Youth's Companion.

An "All-American" Conference

1900

Arrangements are in progress for the assembly at the City of Mexico next year of a general congress of all the independent governments on the American continent. The gathering will be similar to the "Pan-American Conference" which met at Washington in 1889. One result of that conference was the formation of an International Union of American Republics, with a "bureau" of general information. The bureau, which includes in its membership all of the republics, is taking up the preliminary work of the proposed congress. The replies which Secretary Hay has received to his letter suggesting the new conference indicate that all the American republics will be represented.

The conference will have no political aims. It will consider questions of trade, facilities for transportation by rail and sea, banking systems and customs methods, and perhaps it will discuss the feasibility of a permanent tribunal of arbitration to settle disputes among the republics without recourse to war.

There were apprehensions, when the first Pan-American Conference was called, that its usefulness would be impaired by the suspicions and jealousies of some of the governments represented. This did not occur. The new conference should strengthen the ties of common interest among the American republics. If, as is hoped, similar conferences can be held in the future once in two years, or even oftener, at the different capitals, these results may be made permanent. — Youth's Companion.

A Glimpse of Caracas

1896

What Correspondent Saw in Venezuela's Capital

Comparatively few of the men here ever venture into the street unarmed, writes a Caracas correspondent of the New York Herald. There are laws prohibiting the carrying of concealed weapons, but they are never observed. One of the professors in the university here assures me that he is convinced that every one of the students who attends his lectures has a revolver in his hip pocket. Weapons are often worn as much for ornaments as for protection or aggression. The caballero with silver spurs and gay trappings who prances about on a frisky mule or Peruvian horse is not fully equipped without a brace of revolvers. The humbler fellows who trudge the country lanes afoot or on burros' backs take special pride in the knives they carry in fancy sheaths at their waists, and which are equally available for cutting food or enemies. The far-famed machete is so long that the most convenient way to carry it is in the hand. It is the most terrible weapon in war and is used for every possible purpose in times of peace, opening virgin forests, cutting down trees, digging and building.

Human life is held very cheap in Venezuela, except by the law of the land in dealing with murderers. There is no capital punishment here, and a man who is caught red-handed in crime knows that the heaviest sentence that could be imposed on him is ten years' imprisonment. The worst cases, I am told, are sent to a prison in the marshy districts near the western frontier, where the man who survives his term is a phenomenon, and where two years is as much as most men can endure. Stabbing and shooting affrays are very common and rarely receive more attention than half a dozen lines in the local papers, in which sympathy is expressed for the relatives of the deceased.

The proportion of men that one sees in the streets of Caracas who are minus an arm or a leg is greater by far than it was in the United States at the close of the Civil War. Comparatively few of the cripples here were maimed in battle during the revolutions, most of them having been hurt in private brawls.

The Vargas Hospital, in Caracas, is a large institution, admirably located on a hillside and excellently managed. No public building in Venezuela is complete without a statue, and as one enters the main door of the hospital one sees in the central patio a statue of Vargas, who was, I believe, President of the Republic at the time the hospital was founded. There are ten wards for women, all opening on a long courtyard to the left of the entrance, and as many for men on the other side.

The tiny hack horses of Caracas are mainly skin and bones, and the drivers, like their prototypes all over the world, show them very little consideration. Besides the little native horses one sees in the streets many Peruvian horses, which are one size larger and are excellent for riding, and big American horses in swell carriages. Burros far outnumber the horses, and mules are very common.

Teams of oxen are used to haul the heavy wagons, and cows are driven by milkmen from door to door with their calves by their sides. Most of the calves have their muzzles tied in rags to prevent them from getting any milk before all the customers have been supplied. It is also a common thing to see a boy driving a flock of turkeys through the main streets, usually in the direction of the markets. In the corrals are usually many live animals that have been brought in from the country and left for sale — deer and wild pigs, with bristles like porcupines, predominating.

About the market place are kept the skins of huge snakes and wild animals, for which fancy prices are asked if they are in reasonably good condition. The prettiest fur is that of the leopard-tigre they call it here. The tigre is very ferocious and is dreaded by all who have occasion to travel. The puma, which is dignified by the name of lion, is far less common, and about equally dangerous to meet.

I fancy that the supply of dogs has always been large in Caracas, as the Cathedral here has an odd functionary called a perero, or dog boy. The office dogs bark to the colonial dogs, and the present occupant is an urchin with a black face, very bright eyes and a beautiful set of teeth. In the street he looks like any other little fellow who does not keep his face particularly clean, but in the Cathedral he is quite imposing in his long gown of dark purplish blue and his big white collar. He carries in his hand a stout whip, with a long, knotted lash, and he walks about with all the pride of a recruit in the army carrying a gun for the first time. He is quite expert, and loud yelps occasionally prove that his whip hurts.

Eating Parrots, Albatross, Weeds, Acorns

1896

Food Can Be Almost Anything

Few of us, or, indeed, of any people, would think of eating parrots, especially if anything else could be gotten, yet the Romans esteemed them for the table, the Boston Traveller writes.

Cranes are sometimes used for food.

The American ostrich, of South America, is eaten, both flesh and eggs. The eggs of the African ostrich are used, and the flesh, when the bird is young.

The albatross, largest and strongest of birds, produces eggs that are edible.

There is a weed in this country, much cursed by all who have to do with the soil and its products, called a vulgar phrase "pussly." No one in this country would think of eating it, yet this foe of farmers and gardeners is used as a salad in Europe and Egypt.

Acorns in this country are put to no use, unless it be for swine; but in Saxon times "mast" was valued not only for herds, but for man. In times of dearth acorns were boiled and eaten by the poor in England and in France, as one species is still in Southern Europe.

Whales are no longer eaten by civilized men, but in the thirteenth century their tongues were held in great esteem in parts of Europe. Whales are now, with seals and walruses, the chief food of many inhabitants of the Arctic regions. Of the narwhal the Greenlanders eat flesh, fat and skin.

Isinglass is a strange food; it is a gelatin prepared from the air bladders of different kinds of fish from large rivers that flow into the North and Caspian Seas.

Chinese Fond of Swallow's Nests

1896

Crocodile Steaks and Rats

Of all strange foods that men have ever used, the one that seems most singular to us is the bird's nest used by the Chinese. The edible nests are those of the Nicobar swallows, found in the cluster of islands of that name in the Bay of Bengal. These nests form one of the principal exports of the islands. They are held in the highest estimation by the Chinese, as an article of food, says the Boston Traveller.

In Siam the flesh of crocodiles is sold regularly in the markets as human food. They are eaten by the natives of Africa also. Herodotus says they are eaten by the Egyptians near Elephantine, though worshiped and their lives sacredly preserved by the inhabitants of other parts of Egypt. The alligators of North and South America were eaten by the aborigines, as they are still in some parts of these countries.

The general rule is that beasts of prey are not good for food, but there are striking exceptions to the rule, and, among others, the tiger is sometimes eaten in India.

There seems to be no really good reason why rats should not be eaten, and in the country where they originally belonged, China, they are commonly used for that purpose; as, indeed, in Paris, during the siege, people were often glad to sit down to a feast of this kind.

The fox, though an object of sport, is seldom thought of in connection with the table, yet it is sometimes eaten by Indians.

An Asphalt Lake In Venezuela

1901

Huge Deposit of Pitch — Foreigners Not Welcome

To the people of Venezuela this great deposit of asphalt is known as Largo la Brea, or the Lake of Pitch, says the Chicago News.

The aborigines used its output for pitching the seams of their canoes and a variety of other purposes, but it was comparatively unknown to the outside world until about 20 years ago, and no attempt was ever made to develop its resources until some 13 years ago, when the New York and Bermudez company purchased a concession covering a part of this valuable deposit from Horatio R. Hamilton, an American citizen then residing in Venezuela, and by marriage related to the late President Guzman Blanco.

After years of toil this American company succeeded in establishing a small plant at a place now called Guanoco, where a little pile wharf was built and subsequently an insignificant industrial railway was constructed which connected it with the pitch lake. The settlement of Guanoco, the headquarters of the New York and Bermudez company, is a little over 100 miles to the westward of Port of Spain, on the Island of Trinidad.

A narrow-gauge railroad, with 22-pound rails, connects the settlement of Guanoco with the asphalt lake, a scant six miles north. This railway, dignified by the name of the Guanoco & La Brea railway, passes through a virgin forest which has grown up on top of an unfathomable morass of swamp, and is constantly being reballasted to keep the rails in sight above the mud.

There are a few native huts at the lake, and the ordinary plant for asphalt mining. The lake stretches out for a distance of about five miles, and, say, three miles in width; but is divided by a narrow ridge of dry land with a few stunted trees on it.

The asphalt from the wonderful lake is the finest and purest in the world. The refining of this class of asphalt is simply heating it until the water is evaporated, for there is no scum, dirt or foreign matter in it. The supply is practically inexhaustible, and should last until the end of the world or the bottom drops out of it.

At certain seasons of the year this vast deposit is covered with a tall grass often six or eight feet high, and when it takes fire, as it often does, owing to the Indians being careless with their camp-fires, the grass will burn for days at a time, and when burned over leaves no mark save crusting the asphalt for perhaps an inch in thickness.

Very few white men have ever visited this wonderful lake, as it has always been the policy of the resident manager to keep his treasure-trove a sealed book. It is doubtful if one hundred foreigners, outside of the employes of the company and the poor Indians who trail across the great deposit, have ever set foot upon it.

It is impossible to estimate its actual value as a merchantable commodity, and to say at hazard that it is worth hundreds of billions of dollars is not putting the figures too high. It is a huge black sea of wealth, stretching out as far as the eye can reach, and dig and dig all the year around, the excavations fill up as rapidly as the workmen leave them. No amount of reasonable work in taking out asphalt can produce a visible diminution of the supply. It is a well of wealth that never overflows and is always filled to the brim. Never, under the broiling sun of the dry season or the teeming torrents of the rainy season, is its character or chemical properties changed or its commercial value altered. Its upcoming is wrapped in mystery, its birth time is unknown, nor can any man in the present time tell what its future will be for the use of mankind.

Although located in a swamp and only some four or five feet above sea level, it has proved to have been a very healthy locality. Death is practically unknown among the workmen at these mines. In 12 years only two graves are in the burying ground of the company. With the amateur doctors at headquarters the "sick list" seldom exceeds 4 per cent, and comprises for the most part mild intermittent fevers, easily cared for with mild cathartics and quinine.

The natives are gentle, kind hearted and most hospitable, are quick to learn, especially fond of mechanical work and are good, faithful workers. They are not inclined to be fractious or quarrelsome, and with a kindly disposed superintendent no trouble is ever experienced in working them in large gangs.

River in Paraguay Leads Only To Mystery

1903

A GREAT MYSTERY

A Land From Which No Traveler Has Returned

One of the great mysteries of the world that is left for explorers to solve is the course of a river in South America and the land through which it runs.

The river is the Pilcomayo, and the land is the territory known as the Chaco in Paraguay. Explorer after explorer has entered this unknown country and none has returned. Last year the famous explorer, Erland Nordenskiold, one of the great Nordenskiold family of explorers and naturalists, tried to follow the Pilcomayo to its source, but, although he penetrated further than any other man ever managed to go and return, he did not succeed.

Enemies who could not be seen surrounded him day and night, and at last the mysterious terrors of the region forced even him to return. He has announced that Chaco still waits for the traveler who can conquer its secrets. So constant and unchangeable has been the doom of the explorers who tried it that the natives have named the Pilcomayo the River of Death and they speak of the Chaco as the Unknown Land.

Geographers know where the Pilcomayo river begins. It is in the high plateau of Bolivia. Near Asuncion in Paraguay, a broad and beautiful river empties into the Paraguay river. It is called the Pilcomayo, and it is supposed that it is that river. But no man knows for no man has followed the great stream from its source to its mouth.

Men have tried to follow the Pilcomayo in canoes that were hung with hides to serve as protection against Indians who occupy the Chaco. But after days of fighting they were beaten back and accounted themselves lucky to escape alive. Some of the best men of South America have lost their lives there, and of their parties not one man escaped to tell what fate had befallen them.

Fiercest of the several tribes of Indians who hold Chaco against exploration are the Tobias and Chorotes Indians. They are utterly uncivilized, subsisting entirely on game, fish, wild honey and roots. Their few garments and shelters are made from jaguar skins. They rub pieces of wood together to make fire.

Most of them are gorgeously painted and tattooed and they ornament themselves still further with feathers and flowers.

They do not know anything about metal working and do not even use flints for their weapons, but make them entirely out of hard wood, even their arrows being made simply out of pointed wood.

They bore holes through their lips and ears and thrust a piece of polished wood through them. They are splendidly formed, immensely strong and agile, but hideous in countenance; and they will not have anything to do with strangers, but seek to kill them as soon as they find them. They fight fiercely among themselves, also, and it is believed that they are cannibals — at least part of them.

This is the county that has lured explorer after explorer in the last twenty years without letting one return. It appears probably that it will continue to defy the world for many years to come. — Ex.

Easter in Buenos Aires, A Feast of Flowers

1915--

Easter in Buenos Aires, the capital of the Argentine Republic, is literally a feast of flowers. Nowhere else in the entire world, perhaps, are they seen in such rich and fragrant profusion as there on that greatest of church feasts. The entire city, it seems, sends gifts of flowers to friends and loved ones on Easter morning -- dainty, sweet-smelling violets, both white and purple, lilies of the purest white and gold, camillas, white roses and pomegranate blossoms.

The houses are decorated with wondrous floral displays and the altars in the churches are fairly loaded down with the beautiful blooms. Everyone wears a flower of some sort on Easter day, the women seeming to prefer white violets and the men a rosebud or a boutonniere of choice blooms. Flowers are indeed appropriate reminders of Easter and its message, and in Buenos Aires they are particularly effective.

--The Edwardsville Intelligencer, Edwardsville, Illinois, April 3, 1915, page 3.

Wireless Music Entertains Men on Ships at Sea

Like all well-regulated ships, the transport "George Washington" has a phonograph. It also has wireless-telephone equipment of the latest design. On a recent occasion the phonograph horn and the telephone transmitter were brought face to face, and the music started. A hundred miles away, soldiers and sailors on the transport "President Grant" gathered eagerly around a loud-speaking receiver, from which issued the merry strains of song and fox trot, as the concert ship threw its melodious vibrations into space. Within the hundred-mile radius were several other radio-equipped ships, and when the concert was over the "George Washington's" operator was kept busy receiving encores.

After more than four years' service as an important military wireless station, during which no civilians were allowed to visit it, the Eiffel Tower in Paris, France, has been reopened to the public.

Iceland's traditional isolation has vanished with the erection of a wireless station which now receives daily press bulletins from Scandinavia, England, France, and Germany.

Airplane to Unite Isolated Towns of Interior Peru
The Peruvian government has decided to bind more closely together the scattered communities on the eastern slopes of the Andes by means of regular airplane service, handling mail, passengers, and freight. It is possible that the first route will extend from the city of Huanuco, high in the Andes, northward along a branch of the upper Amazon, then eastward over passes in the high mountain ranges, to Iquitos, 500 miles away. Iquitos is 2,653 miles from the mouth of the Amazon River, yet is touched by many foreign ocean-going vessels, making it the center of the Peruvian river-transportation system.

--Popular Mechanics, August 1919

It Comes Easy

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Comes Easy
It never requires any practice to be dissatisfied.
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Births and Deaths at Sea
For every birth occurring at sea there are about 16 deaths.
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Still a Task
When life ceases to be a promise it does not cease to be a task. -- Amiel.
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The Ballot in Bolivia
Only citizens who are able to read and write have the power to vote in Bolivia.
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All in the Man
It is not the oath that makes us believe the man, but the man the oath. -- Aeschylus.
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Good Reason
"Cupid should be a girl." "Why?" "Because he has a string on his beau."
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Justice in London.
The administration of police and justice for a year costs London $10,000,000.

--The Ellis Review-Headlight, Ellis, Kansas, 1911.