In Far Bolivia: A Story of a Strange Wild Land. Stables Gordon
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of the queen of waters, and in a far morelovely place than dreams of elfinland. Labour wasvery cheap here, and the Indians soon learned fromthe white men how to work.
Tom St. Clair had imported carpenters and artificersof many sorts from the old country, to say nothingof steam plant and machinery, and that greatresounding steel buzz-saw.
Now, although not really extravagant, he had aneye for the beautiful, and determined to build himselfa house and home that, although not costing a deal, would be in reality a miniature Burnley Hall. Andwhat a truly joyous time Peggy and her cousin, oradopted brother, had of it while the house wasgradually being built by the busy hands of the trainedIndians and their white brethren!
Not they alone, but also a boy called Dick Temple, whose uncle was Tom St. Clair's nearest neighbour,That is, he lived a trifle over seven miles higher upthe river. Dick was about the same age and build asRoland.
There was a good road between Temple's ranch andTom St. Clair's place, and when, after a time, Tomand Peggy had a tutor imported for their own especialbenefit, the two families became very friendly indeed.
Dick Temple was a well-set-up and really braveand good-looking lad. Little Peggy averred thatthere never had been, or never could be, another boyhalf so nice as Dick.
But I may as well state here at once and be donewith it-Dick was simply a reckless, wild dare-devil.Nothing else would suffice to describe young Dick'scharacter even at this early age. And he soon taughtRoland to be as reckless as himself.
Time rolled on, and the new Burnley Hall wasa fait accompli.
The site chosen by Tom for his home by the riverwas a rounded and wooded hill about a quarter ofa mile back from the immediate bank of the stream.But all the land between the hill and the Amazonwas cultivated, and not only this, but up and downthe river as well for over a mile, for St. Clair wantedto avoid too close contact with unfriendly alligators, and these scaly reptiles avoid land on which crops aregrowing.
The tall trees were first and foremost cleared offthe hill; not all though. Many of the most beautifulwere left for effect, not to say shade, and it waspleasant indeed to hear the wind whispering through theirfoliage, and the bees murmuring in their branches,in this flowery land of eternal summer.
Nor was the undergrowth of splendid shrubs andbushes and fruit-trees cleared away. They werethinned, however, and beautiful broad winding walksled up through them towards the mansion.
The house was one of many gables; altogetherEnglish, built of quartz for the most part, andhaving a tower to it of great height.
From this tower one could catch glimpses of themost charming scenery, up and down the river, andfar away on the other shore, where forests swam inthe liquid air and giant hills raised their blue topsfar into the sky.
So well had Tom St. Clair flourished since takingup his quarters here that his capital was returninghim at least one hundred per cent, after allowing forwear and tear of plant.
I could not say for certain how many white men hehad with him. The number must have been close onfifty, to say nothing of the scores and scores ofIndians.
Jake Solomons and Burly Bill were his overseers, but they delighted in hard work themselves, as wehave already seen. So, too, did Roland's fatherhimself, and as visitors to the district were few, you maybe certain he never wore a London hat nor eveningdress.
Like those of Jake and Bill, his sleeves were alwaysrolled up, and his muscular arms and brave square faceshowed that he was fit for anything. No, a Londonhat would have been sadly out of place; but thebroad-brimmed Buffalo Bill he wore became himadmirably.
That big buzz-saw was a triumph. The clearing ofthe forest commenced from close under the hill wherestood the mansion, and strong horses and bullockswere used to drag the gigantic trees towards the mill.
Splendid timber it was!
No one could have guessed the age of these treesuntil 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 Indiansbetween, but quite separate from each other.
The habitations of the whites were raised on pileswell above the somewhat damp ground, and steps ledup to them. Two-roomed most of them were, but thatof Jake was of a more pretentious character. So, too, was Burly Bill's hut.
It would have been difficult to say what the Indianslived on. Cakes, fruit, fish, and meat of any kindmight form the best answer to the question. Theyate roasted snakes with great relish, and many of thesewere of the deadly-poisonous class. The heads werecut off and buried first, however, and thus all dangerwas prevented. Young alligators were frequentlycaught, too, and made into a stew.
The huts these faithful creatures lived in were chieflycomposed of bamboo, timber, and leaves. Sometimesthey caught fire. That did not trouble the savagesmuch, and certainly did not keep them awake atnight. For, had the whole village been burned down, they could have built another in a surprisingly shorttime.
When our hero and heroine got lost in the greatprimeval forest, Burnley Hall was in the most perfectand beautiful order, and its walks, its flower-garden, and shrubberies were a most pleasing sight. All wasunder the superintendence of a Scotch gardener, whomSt. Clair had imported for the purpose.
By this time, too, a very large portion of theadjoining forest had been cut down, and the land onwhich those lofty trees had grown was undercultivation.
If the country which St. Clair had made his homewas not in reality a land flowing with milk andhoney, it yielded many commodities equally valuable.Every now and then-especially when the river wasmore or less in flood-immense rafts were sent downstream to distant Pará, where the valuable timberfound ready market.
Several white men in boats always went in chargeof these, and the boats served to assist in steering, andtowing as well.
These rafts used often to be built close to the riverbefore an expected rising of the stream, which, whenit did come, floated them off and away.
But timber was not the only commodity that St. Clairsent down from his great estate. There weresplendid quinine-trees. There was coca and cocoa, too.
There was a sugar plantation which yielded the bestresults, to say nothing of coffee and tobacco, Brazil-nutsand many other kinds of nuts, and last, but notleast, there was gold.
This latter was invariably sent in charge of areliable white man, and St. Clair lived in hope that hewould yet manage to position a really paying gold-mine.
More than once St. Clair had permitted Roland andPeggy to journey down to Pará on a great raft. Butonly at the season when no storms blew. They hadan old Indian servant to cook and "do" for them, andthe centre of the raft was hollowed out into a kindof cabin roofed over with bamboo and leaves. Stepsled up from this on to a railed platform, which wascalled the deck.
Burly Bill would be in charge of boats and all, andin the evenings he would enter the children's cabin tosing them songs and tell them strange, weird tales offorest life.
He had a banjo, and right sweetly could he play.Old Beeboo the Indian, would invariably light hismeerschaum for him, smoking it herself for a goodfive minutes first and foremost, under pretence ofgetting it well alight.
Beeboo, indeed, was altogether a character. BothMr. and Mrs. St. Clair liked her very much, however, for she had been in the family, and nursed both Peggyand Roland, from the day they had first come to thecountry. As for her age, she might have been anyage between five-and-twenty and one hundred and ten.She was dark in skin-oh, no! not black, but moreof copper colour, and showed a few wrinkles at earlymorn. But when Beeboo was figged out in her nicestwhite frock and her deep-blue or crimson blouse, with her hair hanging down in two huge plaits, then, with the smile that always hovered aroundher lips and went dancing away up her face till itflickered about her eyes, she was very pleasantindeed. The wrinkles had all flown up to the moonor 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 ofcannibals who inhabit one of the wildest and almostinaccessible regions of Bolivia,