The Captive in Patagonia

The old fellow righted himself, and leaned against one of the pillars of his palace; one of his partners pulled up the toasting-fork, and jerked the half-roasted and more than sufficiently smoked meat upon the ground, seized the knife which the boys had been playing with, and cut the mess into liberal pieces, which were thrown broadcast on either side. The chief’s appetite did not appear to be affected either by his indisposition or by the extraordinary remedy applied; his portion of the cárne disappeared behind his great white teeth with a haste that seemed to involve no waste.

Rheumatic affections, they told me, are very common among them; the chief showed me the arm of one of his wives, which was scarred from the wrist to the shoulder by the awl; and the operation was afterwards performed on other members of the family.

Again we took up the line of march, travelling, as near as I could judge, west-north-west, and killing a quantity of game, both guanaco and ostrich. But the hardship of my life, aggravated by a constant flesh diet, and that eaten half raw, and at irregular seasons, – often going two days without food, – had, by this time, brought on a dysentery. This was no more than I had expected; but I knew of no remedy, and had to endure it as I could. We encamped, on the second day, near the banks of the river Gallegos; a fine spring of water issued from the river-bank into a low marshy ground, skirting the margin of the stream. By this time my illness had increased, till I felt unfit to travel further, and began to think that death could not be distant. No change of diet was practicable, and there was nothing to counteract its effect on my system. The pain and weariness of travelling did their part to aggravate the disorder; and mental discouragement – the sickness of hope deferred – completed my prostration. No human being in that desolate land cared for my sufferings, more than they would for those of a dog. Worn out with the constant irritations of a state of existence odious to every sensibility, tired and disheartened, but for one thought I could have gladly laid myself down to die, to get at once and forever beyond the reach of my savage tormentors. The thought of home, of wife and child, of friends and country, and all the unutterable emotions that respond to these precious names, at once tortured and strengthened me. These, and the thought that perhaps, after patient endurance, Divine Providence would restore me to the objects of my famished affections, made life still dear. These strengthened me to suffer and to strive.

As I crawled out of the lodge, to look upon the sun, and breathe the pure air, and be refreshed by breezes untainted with the breath of cruel men, it came into my mind that some palatable or even tolerable species of plant or root would be wholesome for me. On looking about, there presented itself a specimen of large dock, such as is common in the United States; a weed of humble pretensions, but why not worthy of a trial? With what strength remained at command, I began a process of “extracting roots,” with good success. Taking a quantity into the hut, and roasting them in hot ashes, they were found to be not distasteful; I filled my pockets with them, and abandoned flesh-diet for a little time, to the sensible, though gradual, relief of my sufferings. Fortunately we had a season of bad weather, which prevented any advance movement for four or five days, and gave me time partially to recover strength. I could not sooner have kept my seat on a horse; and, if the alternative had been presented, the Indians, as I very well knew, would sooner have knocked me on the head than have allowed me to hinder their march for a day. A powwow was held over another horse, unserviceable alive, and therefore marked for diet; but this time I did not compete for any part of his carcass, my pocket-stores being quite sufficient, and more attractive. But in the fate of the poor beast I read a warning to myself, to make haste and get well enough to move at the first signal.

Away again, – this time facing about, and passing down the river. I needed rest; but, at whatever expense of suffering, needs must when a certain old gentleman drives. At the next stopping-place my services were called into requisition in a new department. One forenoon, as I sauntered towards our wigwam, after a stroll among the smutty huts, to kill time and divert painful thoughts, I was hailed from within by the chief, “Arke, Boney!” On entering, he appeared to be conversing, in low, gurgling sounds, with his lately-married daughter, who was running her hands through the shaggy hair of her young hope, as she talked. Something was plainly wrong in the youngster’s top-knot, and some unpleasant task in relation thereto was as plainly about to be imposed upon me. The chief resolved my doubts, by ordering me to cut off a portion of the shag; I objected a want of the proper implements, but the mother silenced me by producing an old pair of scissors, in no condition to cut anything. Calling for a file, the rusty edges were brought into a tolerable state, and I approached the task. Such a sight! If the hair now would have obeyed a mesmeric pass, without the need of manual contact, – if the job could be performed with closed eyes, and insensible nostrils, and absent mind! Faugh! I hurried through the penance, hiding disgust, and assuming the appearance of good will, and made good my escape into the fresh air. And so I must turn barber, and, in all likelihood, have the dirty heads of half the tribe put under my nose! What would come next?

Our next move took us across the river Gallegos, in shoal water, barely up to the horses’ knees. The current was rapid, and masses of floating ice were swept along with it. When half way across, my horse took fright, reared, and, in attempting a sudden turn, precipitated me into the water, and fell heavily upon me. The ducking and the bruise together were severe, and, among other disasters, the crystal of my watch was broken by the shock. This I had kept carefully secreted, as a last resort, to amuse the savages when other expedients should fail, – when memory and invention could yield no more tales, when promises should have become threadbare with repetition, and when pretensions of greatness at home should have lost their power by the every-day disclosure of present weakness and humiliation.

We – that is to say, myself and the old horse – kicked and floundered a while in the cold water, till at last the creature succeeded in rising, and I followed his example. We waded ashore, dripping, amidst the uproarious laughter of the whole troop. Once more mounted on my Rosinante, we resumed our line of march. The chill from my cold bath so benumbed me that I had to dismount and lead the horse, to recover, by brisk walking, some portion of animal warmth. Our course was down the river towards the Atlantic. Being unsuccessful in the chase, we pitched our tents at night, supperless, and without prospect of breakfasting the next morning. A small fire was lighted, which I hugged as closely as possible, to thaw my stiffened limbs; and then, cold, wet and hungry, fagged to extremity, cast myself on the ground, to repose as I might. The next morning was stormy. It cleared up in the afternoon, and the Indians sallied out to find some food. My only refreshment before their return was a little grease, which one of the squaws scooped out of an ostrich-skin with her dirty thumb and finger. It was so black that its pedigree – whether guanaco, ostrich or skunk, or a compound gathered at random from beast and bird – was a problem defying solution; but famine is not fastidious, and I swallowed greedily what, a few months before, I should hardly have thought fit to grease shoes with. The men came back with a few ostriches and skunks. The chief received as his portion one of the quadrupeds. The associations connected with its name, as related to one sense, were not adapted to prepossess the others in its favor; but I made shift to do justice rather to the Indian than to my habitual tastes.

During the three days we remained here, the long-concealed watch was brought to light. The filth of the natives, the condition in which their huts and their persons were always suffered to remain, the swarms of vermin they housed, had imposed upon me extraordinary care to prevent the natural results upon my own person; but no amount of precaution was sufficient to avert them. The reader will excuse me from speaking more particularly on this head. Enough to say that I found myself intolerably tormented. The chief ordered an examination of the case, and sent for an Indian to deal with it according to their art. While divesting myself of my garments, one by one, for this purpose, the old fellow caught sight of the hidden treasure. I knew that it was useless to attempt any longer to retain it, and handed it over. He was vastly pleased with it. I wound it up, and put it to his ear. He was as delighted at the unexpected sound as a child with its first rattle. I explained its use in keeping the hours of the day, but he cared for nothing but the ticking. The breaking of the crystal was explained, and he was informed that another should be procured as soon as we reached “Holland,” – another inducement, I hoped, to speed our passage there.

The inspection disclosed a state of the cuticle which would be thought dreadful in a civilized land. The chief, however, looked as calm as beseemed a surgical examiner, and in a good-natured guttural exchanged a few words with his assistant, who placed himself by my side, and fixing his eyes steadily upon me, begun swinging his hands and howling like a wild beast. The comparison was not far out of the way, for he gave a sudden spring, fastened his teeth on my neck, and commenced sucking the blood, growling all the while like a tiger! For a moment I thought my hour had come. I weaned the rascal as soon as possible, not knowing what his taste for blood might come to, if too freely indulged. It seemed like a refinement upon cannibalism, but was, in fact, as I soon ascertained, the regular treatment made and provided by Patagonian science for the relief of severe cutaneous affections.

The chief, all this while, recurred with undiminished pleasure to the ticking of his new toy. When his curiosity had at length abated, he returned it to me. I wrapped it carefully in a rag, and enveloped it afterwards in a young colt’s skin provided for its reception, when, by direction of its present august proprietor, it was suspended among other valuables from one of the stakes of the hut, near the spot where his highness customarily reposed. It was not, however, allowed long to remain quiet. I was ordered to take it down and hold it to the ears of all the visitors to the lodge. Forty times a day it had to come down for this purpose, till I got so tired of my showman’s duty that I wished the watch in the bottom of the sea. The Indians, as they listened to its vibrations, would stand in every attitude of silent amazement, their eyes dilated, their countenances lighted up in every feature with delighted wonder, and then break out in a roar of hoarse laughter, the tone of which strangely contrasted with the infantile simplicity of their demeanor. The business was dreadfully annoying, and yet it was plain that a new and almost unbounded power affecting my destiny was hidden in that little machine. It had captivated the chief, and struck an awe over the tribe like the rod of an enchanter. Whether it boded good or evil, was another question.

Our next move took us in a west-north-west direction, and in our progress we not only secured abundant game of the ordinary varieties, but encountered and killed a young lion, – to use the popular term, – the first living specimen I had seen in the country. I had seen their skins in possession of the Indians, and heard stories of their chase. This was a youthful creature, about the size of a well-grown calf of six weeks. I was riding side by side with the chief across a piece of low bushy land, when the dogs gave token that they scented something uncommon. We halted, and the chief cried out to the dogs, “Chew! Chew!” They were off in a jiffey, rushing hither and thither through the bushes, barking furiously, and soon drove the beast from his covert. Other Indians, a little distance off, ascertaining what was in the wind, made after the game with a reinforcement of dogs. The chase began in good earnest. Horses, riders and dogs, from all points of the compass, were scampering to the scene of action, hallooing, barking, howling, enough to frighten any unsophisticated lion out of his senses. Some were running full tilt, to cut off his retreat; while the hunters, bareheaded, leaning forward in their saddles and urging their horses to their utmost speed, whirled the bolas about their heads and let fly with a vengeance, with no other effect than to arrest the furious animal, and cause him to turn in desperation on the dogs, and drive them back yelping with pain. Others of the pack, watching their opportunity, would spring upon his back and fasten their teeth in his flesh. He brushed them off with a single stroke of his paw, as if they had been flies, and was again in motion, halting occasionally to give fight to his nearest assailant. Now and then the bolas is hurled at him, but his lithe limbs, though sometimes entangled, are not fettered by it, and his prowess is hardly diminished. The Indians press around him; the battle waxes fiercer; his whole strength is taxed. “Chew! Chew!” roar the savages; the flagging dogs return fresh to the onslaught, and, after a hard and unequal contest, the animal is fairly overborne by numbers, and despatched by the blows of the Indians. I had kept in the vicinity, but yet at a respectful distance, and now rode up to view the slain, amidst the howlings of the wounded dogs and the boisterous laughter of the hunters. It was a beautiful animal, with soft, sleek, silvery fur, tipped with black; the head having a general resemblance to that of a cat, the eye large and full, and sparkling with ferocity.

After the Indians had eyed their game sufficiently, and talked and laughed and grunted their satisfaction, and congratulated themselves generally on their victory, and severally on the part each had taken, the body was driven off on the back of a horse, and the hunters again spread themselves over the country. Some ostriches were soon started up. The chief drew out his bolas, put spurs to his horse, and darted away. His mantle fell from his shoulders: his long, straight black hair, so coarse that each particular hair stood independently on end, streamed in the wind; his hideously painted face and body loomed up with grotesque stateliness, and the deadly missile whirled frantically over his head. The whizzing weapon is suddenly hurled at his victim, the chief still sitting erect in his saddle to watch its effect. His horse suddenly stops, – he dismounts nimbly, seizes the entangled bird by the throat, and swings it violently around till its neck is broken. As I rode up he deposited the great bird on my horse, remounted, and rushed in pursuit of another. That was killed and also placed in my keeping, making me a kind of store-ship. Others pursue the guanaco with equal success, till they are satisfied with their booty. We ride up to a convenient thicket, a fire is lighted, a portion of the prey is cooked and eaten, the remnants of the feast and the residue of the game are duly packed up, and the whole troop is under march for the camp.

CHAPTER VI

The chief’s oratory – A case of sickness novelly treated – The captive commissioned as physician to the chief – Dr. Bourne’s first and last patient – Murder – Cannibalism – Another assassination, showing the perils of medical practice among savages – Sports of the children – Patagonian farriery – Slender success in the chase – A second struggle for life.

The chief occasionally made a speech to his subjects from the door of his lodge, wherein he invariably inculcated the duty of hunting industriously to procure meat, and a due supply of grease, for their families. He never had an auditor in sight, for his faithful lieges considered the speech from the throne a decided bore, and, if one happened to be passing, he was sure to dodge into the nearest hut till the infliction was over; but the leathern lungs of the orator could not fail to make him audible in many of the wigwams. In length his performances more resembled the official addresses of our republican rulers than those of his royal cousins of Europe, seldom falling short of a full hour. In style, they came nearer the proclamations of a crier. He would proceed in a monotonous rumble to the end of a sentence, and then defy contradiction by repeating several times, “Comole! comole! comole!” after which he paused, as for a reply. No one having the audacity to take up his challenge, he would go on croaking the same things with tedious iteration. After listening very patiently to one of his harangues, I inwardly applauded the taste of his subjects in getting as far as possible out of the reach of his voice.

One forenoon, as I was beginning to feel impatient to move, – for every movement seemed to fan the flickering hope that we would soon reach a place affording some avenue of escape, and this restlessness always made camp-life doubly dismal, – the chief informed me that we should decamp that day. Preparations had commenced, when one of his daughters came in with a child crying at a tempestuous rate. The version which she gave of his complaints arrested the marching orders. A messenger was forthwith despatched for one skilled in the healing art. The physician soon arrived, armed with two small packages rolled up in pieces of skin, about a foot long and three or four inches in diameter, which I took to be his medicine-chest. He walked gravely in, laid down the packages, and squatted beside the mother, who held the little patient in her arms. Whatever his ailment might have been, his lungs could not have been impaired, for he was roaring like a young buffalo. Not a word was spoken for some time, the doctor all the while looking him very steadily in the eye. Then came a sudden calm, importing that the little fellow experienced some relief, or, more probably, that he was exhausted. The doctor ordered an application, – not of hot water, according to the prescription of Sangrado, but of a mortar made of clay. The clay was brought, the anxious mother worked it over with her two hands, spitting upon it to give it the requisite moisture, and having reduced it to the consistency of thick paint, bedaubed the little fellow from head to foot, giving him a decidedly original appearance. He evidently took umbrage at this unction, and discoursed in his shrillest tones till he was fairly out of breath. The medicine-chests were opened, but, instead of medicinal herbs, disclosed only a bunch of ostrich’s sinews and a rattle eight or ten inches long. The physician commenced fingering the strings, and muttering almost inaudibly. This lasted four or five minutes, at the expiration of which he seized his rattle, and clattered away furiously for a minute or two, and resumed his place by his patient, eying him intently as before. He then turned with an air of importance to the chief, who had been crouching cross-legged on his couch, leaning forward, with his arms tightly folded on his breast, and watching anxiously the progress of the treatment. The man of skill broke silence: “I think he is better; don’t you?” The chief nodded, and grunted assent. The same appeal was made to the mother, and received a like response. Another plastering was ordered, another burst of melody followed the application, the mysterious strings were again fingered, duly followed by the rattle. The parent and grandparent once more assented to the leech that the child was better. The chief took out a piece of tobacco, and cut off enough for about two pipefuls, which was tendered and gratefully accepted as a professional fee. The strings were tied up and replaced in their proper receptacle, and the rattle was shaken with hearty good will, whether by way of finale to the cure, or as a note of gratitude for the fee, or of triumph for success, could not easily be guessed. But the practitioner had scarcely evacuated the lodge, before his patient broke out more vociferously than ever; which I thought would somewhat shake the faith of his guardians in the treatment he had received. But no; their confidence in their medical adviser was not to be blown away by a breath, or even a tempest. They evidently regarded him as nearly infallible. His remedies were obviously aimed more at the imaginations of his spectators than at the body of his patient, but it was no concern of mine. Patients among us have to endure more disagreeable applications than wet clay. The noisy brat became quiet, to our great relief. He shortly appeared to be quite well, and continued to thrive for some time, as I had opportunity to witness.

The tribe went ahead with alacrity, to make up for the loss of time this sickness occasioned. We moved off another day’s journey towards nowhere in particular, and settled there at night. Then ensued another season of camp life, feasting and fasting, gambling and quarrelling, and venting superfluous wrath in an abundance of “Cashuran cashaly’s.” The chief was slightly indisposed, and I amused him with a description of the manner in which our physicians count the pulse of their patients. He listened with considerable interest, and sat thoughtfully ruminating on the matter. He came to an unexpected and alarming conclusion; putting this and my story of the opodeldoc together, he made up his mind that I was a physician myself! I protested against this inference, fearing that no good would come of the responsibilities he was inclined to impose on me. But the disclaimer was useless, – he stuck to the opinion; and in no long time it was understood through all the tribe that I was a distinguished doctor.

Now, it came to pass, at this critical turn of affairs, that a certain widow, of pretty ripe years for a Patagonian, was taken suddenly ill. Her husband had been murdered many years before by one of the tribe. She was possessed of several horses, and, in virtue of this wealth, held an aristocratic position in society. A messenger brought the tidings to the chief, who ordered me forthwith to set the watch, and go with him to her residence. I again assured him I knew nothing of sickness or medicine. He told me he knew better, and bade me come along without delay. There was no resisting his will, and I armed myself accordingly with the “ticking machine,” and followed my master on my first professional visit. On approaching the widow’s lodge, our ears were greeted with a hideous clamor, which momentarily increased as we neared the spot. A great crowd of Indians, of both sexes, surrounded the wigwam, severally and collectively making the most villanous noise ever heard. The crowd was dense, both within and without, but gave way for the chief and the great foreign physician to enter. The first order I gave was to stop their singing, whereat there was a silence so blank that the fall of a pin would have been audible, – that is, if there had been a floor for it to fall upon. With what dignity I could command, I walked up to my patient. There she lay, crouched on a bit of horse’s skin, so withered, shrivelled and contracted, that it seemed as if a bushel-basket might have covered her, bed and all. I knelt by her side, drew forth the watch, grasped her by the wrist, and felt for her pulse. But, to my surprise, I could not feel it. I fussed and fumbled a long time, and finally arrived at the mortifying conclusion that I was so ignorant as not to know the position of the artery! The patient was frightened at so unprecedented a proceeding; but I succeeded in quieting her fears, though not, alas! in counting her pulse. However, it occurred to me that it was all one whether I did or not; so, keeping up an imperturbable gravity becoming my office, I continued for some time to look wisely at the watch, holding her wrist in profound silence. When I judged that a due impression had been produced on the awe-stricken spectators, I ventured to prescribe, not a clay plaster, for the patient was dirty enough, in all conscience; nor yet any compound of drugs, for I had none to administer; and as to roots and herbs, I durst not inflict upon her stomach substances of unknown properties; but, after a little thought, I ordered some water heated blood-warm, and the patient to be washed, and thoroughly scrubbed, from head to foot. This, I thought, met the most obvious indications of her case, as I doubt not a whole college of physicians, upon a superficial view, would have unanimously agreed. There could not have been a doubt as to the novelty of the prescription; the respectable relict, it is safe to say, had never been washed so thoroughly from infancy to that hour. Minute directions were given for the bath, that the scrubbing should be particularly smart and thorough. She was furthermore put upon a strict diet, excluding grease and all such luxuries, and we slowly retired from the sick room.