The men always carry a small rubber-pouch containing a few drams of the poison; the pouch was worn strapped to the waist on the left side, when on their hunting excursions, and they were extremely careful in handling it and the arrows. The slightest scratch with the poison would cause a quick and sure death.
I was so far recuperated by this time that I thought of returning to civilisation, and I, accordingly, broached the subject to the Chief, who answered me very kindly, promising that he would send me by the next full-moon, with some of the wourahli men, down to the Branco River, and from there they would guide me within a safe distance of the rubber-estate, situated at the junction with the Itecoahy.
One day I was informed that a friendly call on a neighbouring tribe was being contemplated and that I could accompany the Chief and his men.
At last the time arrived and the expedition was organised. I was not absolutely sure how I would be treated by these up-stream Indians, and I am almost ashamed to confess that, in spite of all the faithful, unswerving friendship which the Mangeromas had shown me, I had it in my mind that these other Indians might harm me, so black was the name that people down at the settlements had given them.
Until this time, as related above, I had thought best not to exhibit the character of my automatic pistol, and I had never used it here, but before I started on this journey I decided to give them an example of its power, and possibly awe them. Inviting the Chief and all the tribe to witness my experiment, I explained to them that this little weapon would make a great noise and bore a hole through a thick tree. The Chief examined it gingerly after I had locked the trigger mechanism. He had heard of such arms, he said, but thought that they were much larger and heavier. This one, he thought, must be a baby and he was inclined to doubt its power.
Selecting an "assai" palm of about nine inches diameter, across the creek, I took steady aim and fired four bullets. Three of the bullets went through the same hole and the fourth pierced the trunk of the palm about two inches higher. The Chief and his men hurried across the creek and examined the holes which caused then to discuss the affair for more than an hour. The empty shells which had been ejected from the magazine were picked up by two young girls who fastened them in their ears with wire-like fibres, whereupon a dozen other women surrounded me, beseeching me to give them also cartridge-shells. I discharged more than a dozen bullets, to please these children of the forest, who were as completely the slaves of fashion as are their sisters of more civilised lands.
Early the next morning we started up the river. In one canoe the Chief and I sat on jaguar skins, while two men paddled. In another canoe were four men armed with bows and arrows and blow-guns, and a fifth who acted in the capacity of "Wireless Operator." The system of signalling which he employed was by far the most ingenious device I saw while in Brazil, and considering their resources and their low state of culture the affair was little short of marvellous.
Before the canoes were launched, a man fastened two upright forked sticks on each side of one, near the middle. About three and a half feet astern of these a cross-piece was laid on the bottom of the craft. To this was attached two shorter forked sticks. Between each pair of upright forked sticks was placed another cross-piece, thus forming two horizontal bars, parallel to each other, one only a few inches from the bottom of the boat and the other about a foot and a half above the gunwales. Next, four slabs of Caripari wood of varying thickness, about three feet long and eight inches wide, were suspended from these horizontal bars, so as to hang length-wise of the canoe and at an angle of forty-five degrees. Each pair of slabs was perforated by a longitudinal slit and they were joined firmly at their extremities by finely carved and richly painted end-pieces.
The operator strikes the slabs with a wooden mallet or hammer, the head of which is wrapped with an inch layer of caoutchouc and then with a cover of thick tapir-skin. Each section of the wooden slabs gives forth a different note when struck, a penetrating, xylophonic, tone but devoid of the disagreeably metallic, disharmonic bysounds of that instrument. The slabs of wood were suspended by means of thin fibre-cords from the crosspieces, and in this manner all absorption by the adjacent material was done away with.
By means of many different combinations of the four notes obtained which, as far as I could ascertain, were Do—Re—Mi—Fa, the operator was able to send any message to a person who understood this code. The operator seized one mallet with each hand and gave the thickest section, the Do slat, a blow, followed by a blow with the left hand mallet on the Re slat; a blow on the Mi slat and on the Fa slat followed in quick succession. These four notes, given rapidly and repeated several times, represented the tuning up of the "wireless," calculated to catch the attention of the operator at the maloca up-creek. The sound was very powerful, but rather pleasant, and made the still forest resound with a musical echo. He repeated this tuning process several times, but received no answer and we proceeded for a mile. Then we stopped and signalled again. Very faintly came a reply from some invisible source. I learned afterwards that at this time we were at least five miles from the answering station. As soon as communication was thus established the first message was sent through the air, and it was a moment of extreme suspense for me when the powerful notes vibrated through the depth of the forest. I shall never forget this message, not only because it was ethnographically interesting, but because so much of my happiness depended upon a favourable reply. I made the operator repeat it for my benefit when we later returned to our village, and I learned it by heart by whistling it. When printed it looks like this:
After each message the operator explained its meaning. The purport of this first message was so important to me that I awaited the translation with much the same feelings that a prisoner listens for the verdict of the jury when it files back into the court-room.