So interested did I become in talking with Saavedra, seeing his plantation, and marveling that he should be worried about taxes and have to obey regulations in regard to firearms, I had almost forgotten about the wild Indians.  Suddenly our carriers ran toward the house in a great flurry of excitement, shouting that there was a “savage” in the bushes near by.  The “wild man” was very timid, but curiosity finally got the better of fear and he summoned up sufficient courage to accept Saavedra’s urgent invitation that he come out and meet us.  He proved to be a miserable specimen, suffering from a very bad cold in his head.  It has been my good fortune at one time or another to meet primitive folk in various parts of America and the Pacific, but this man was by far the dirtiest and most wretched savage that I have ever seen.

He was dressed in a long, filthy tunic which came nearly to his ankles.  It was made of a large square of coarsely woven cotton cloth, with a hole in the middle for his head.  The sides were stitched up, leaving holes for the arms.  His hair was long, unkempt, and matted.  He had small, deep-set eyes, cadaverous cheeks, thick lips, and a large mouth.  His big toes were unusually long and prehensile.  Slung over one shoulder he carried a small knapsack made of coarse fiber net.  Around his neck hung what at first sight seemed to be a necklace composed of a dozen stout cords securely knotted together.  Although I did not see it in use, I was given to understand that when climbing trees, he used this stout loop to fasten his ankles together and thus secure a tighter grip for his feet.

By evening two other savages had come in; a young married man and his little sister.  Both had bad colds.  Saavedra told us that these Indians were Pichanguerras, a subdivision of the Campa tribe.  Saavedra and his son spoke a little of their language, which sounded to our unaccustomed ears like a succession of low grunts, breathings, and gutturals.  It was pieced out by signs.  The long tunics worn by the men indicated that they had one or more wives.  Before marrying they wear very scanty attire—­nothing more than a few rags hanging over one shoulder and tied about the waist.  The long tunic, a comfortable enough garment to wear during the cold nights, and their only covering, must impede their progress in the jungle; yet they live partly by hunting, using bows and arrows.  We learned that these Pichanguerras had run away from the rubber country in the lower valleys; that they found it uncomfortably cold at this altitude, 4500 feet, but preferred freedom in the higher valleys to serfdom on a rubber estate.

Saavedra said that he had named his plantation Conservidayoc, because it was in truth “a spot where one may be preserved from harm.”  Such was the home of the potentate from whose abode “no one had been known to return alive.”

CHAPTER XV

The Pampa of Ghosts