418 Walter Goodfellow—Some Reminiscences of a Collector


have to blame the ladies who coveted their fairy-like plumes for hats.

Still in all the stores and wayside places, the announcement in Spanish,

“ Egret plumes bought here,” may be seen. Numerous were the stories

of the money men made out of the trade in former days. May the

fashion never come in again, and so leave us the few that remain.


Corumba, the terminus for all river steamers, is the farthest western

outpost of Brazil, and quite a nice little garrison town for such distant

wilds. From here launches can go still farther up where it is called

the San Lorenzo. In fact, during the wet season it would be possible

to connect by canoe with other rivers flowing north and finally reach

the Amazon via the Rio Madeira at Manaos. To those who would like

to make a journey through Paraguay such as I have described, I would

suggest going in at Buenos Aires, up to Porto Esperan 9 a, which is a

day south of Corumba. From here there is a railway right across Brazil

to Sao Paulo. There are two or three trains a week, and the journey

takes several days, travelling only by day. Accommodation with

baths, etc., is provided at the stations. Or, one could go in by Sao

Paulo via Rio or Santos, but coming down the river, of course, takes

much less time than going up and does not allow so much time for

enjoying the river scenes.


From Puerto Suarez, 7 miles beyond Corumba, we started on

our long ride of some hundreds of miles to Santa Cruz de la Sierra

at the foot of the great range of the Andes. It was then towards the

end of the dry season and we suffered much from thirst, sometimes

going two days without meeting any water except of such a quality

undrinkable for human beings. Two water bags had been stolen on

the river boat, so we could only carry a little with us. During the

wet season much of this country is impassable. It is almost uninhabited

except by wild Indians, whose fresh tracks we sometimes came across.

Birds we seldom saw except Rheas, the large crimson Macaws (A.

macao), and ground birds consisting of several species of Tinamous,

Cariamas, Courlans, and an. occasional odd pair of Screamers ( Chauna

cristata). Most of the country is pampa with more or less scrub and

scattered trees, while other parts reminded one of Northern India,

with untold thousands of very tall slender fan palms. Several times

we saw pumas, and once a jaguar, and a black one at that. One of



