14 THE ANDES OF SOUTHERN PERU 



flows in a somewhat open valley of moderate relief, with, here and 

 there a sentinel-like peak next the river. 



A light shower fell at sunset, a typical late-afternoon down- 

 pour so characteristic of the tropics. We landed at a small en- 

 campment of Machigangas, built a fire against the scarred trunk 

 of a big palm, and made up our beds in the open, covering them 

 with our rubber ponchos. Our Indian neighbors gave us yuca and 

 corn, but their neighborliness went no further, for when our boat- 

 men attempted to sleep under their roofs they drove them out and 

 fastened as securely as possible the shaky door of their hut. 



All our efforts to obtain Indians, both here and elsewhere, 

 proved fruitless. One excuse after another Avas overcome; they 

 plainly coveted the trinkets, knives, machetes, muskets, and am- 

 munition that we offered them; and they appeared to be friendly 

 enough. Only after repeated assurances of our friendship could 

 we learn the real reason for their refusal. Some of them were 

 escaped rubber pickers that had been captured by white raiders 

 several years before, and for them a return to the rubber country 

 meant enslavement, heavy floggings, and separation from their 

 numerous wives. The hardships they had endured, their final 

 escape, the cruelty of the rubber men, and the difficult passage of 

 the rapids below were a set of circumstances that nothing in our 

 list of gifts could overcome. My first request a week before had so 

 sharpened their memory that one of them related the story of his 

 wrongs, a recital intensely dramatic to the whole circle of his 

 listeners, including myself. Though I did not understand the de- 

 tails of his story, his tones and gesticulations were so effective 

 that they held me as well as his kinsmen of the woods spellbound 

 for over an hour. 



It is appalling to what extent this great region has been de- 

 populated by the slave raiders and those arch enemies of the 

 savage, smallpox and malaria. At Eosalina, over sixty Indians 

 died of malaria in one year ; and only twenty years ago seventy of 

 them, the entire population of the Pongo, were swept away by 

 smallpox. For a week we passed former camps near small aban- 

 doned clearings, once the home of little groups of Machigangas. 



