Head Hunters of the Amazon | Page 5

greater part of the non-inundated land is under cacao, from which, as all the world knows, three-quarters of the world's supply of chocolate and cocoa is manufactured. Indeed, it may be said that this plant is produced in Ecuador almost to the exclusion of anything else. On the Western slopes of the Andes, however, grows a high-grade coffee, second only in importance to cacao. Sugar cane, too, is cultivated to a great extent on the same slopes, from which is made more aguardiente (rum) than sugar.
It was through the endless cacao plantations between Bodegas and La Delicia that C��rdovez took me by private trails on mule-back. He came to Bodegas ready supplied with the two best saddle-mules in the country, reared on his family's ranches, which were considered to be the foremost in Ecuador. They were gaited animals, with a fast jog-walk and a fine single-foot, small and well-proportioned, with tapering legs and small feet. They took to the water like ducks and swam with us in the saddle, they crossed rivers on single slippery logs without turning a hair, and they jumped ditches and fallen trees which lay across the trail. Unlike a horse, they would have gone for a day on a straw hat and a saddle blanket if hard-pressed for food. As saddle-animals they were even more comfortable to ride than horses, especially on a bad trail. In really rough country, the stamina of such beasts as these exceeds that of a horse many times. Indeed, when it is a question of more than two days' journey the latter cannot be used at all, unless a change of animal is possible. Moreover, the spirit of a mule is always inferior to that of a horse, which, for practical purposes, is an advantage, for while the mule will not go beyond its endurance, the latter will go till he drops and leaves his rider helpless. However, the outstanding feature of a mule is always stubbornness, however fine an animal he may be, and if he takes it into his head to stop he will, and the only way to get him past the spot at which he has shied, is to take a half-hitch with your rope round his tender upper lip, pass the end of the rope around a tree a few yards ahead, walk back with the end of the rope behind the mule, and prod him with a stick. Every time he jumps, take up the slack.
After one memorable night in a hotel in Bodegas under conditions compared with which those in Panama smacked of Heaven, our little cavalcade set out on the long journey for the C��rdovez plantations. The "Count," myself and one muleteer were all there were. I had left my kit in Bodegas, except what I could carry on the saddle, having made arrangements for it to be forwarded to Riobamba by the main and only road from the coast to Quito.
For the first three days we passed through nothing but cacao. Anybody who has seen the olive-bearing districts of Andalusia in the south of Spain will need no description of what those endless rows of bushy-topped trees are like, stretching away like a giant's quilt as far as the eye can see. As in the case of the olives, nothing is planted between the rows, and no limbs spring from the first few feet of trunk. Their tops almost join in one great roof. But the fruit of the cacao grows in a curious way. The seed-pods project straight from the trunk and the larger limbs, instead of from the small branches. Each pod (mazorca in Ecuadorian Spanish) contains eighty to a hundred seeds, or beans, as they are known commercially. Their appearance is too well known to require description.
At night we would stop at some overseer's cottage. Everywhere the name C��rdovez gave us an easy entry, and I began to be somewhat impressed by our importance. In point of fact the family did occupy a position of importance in the country. They owned large cattle and horse ranches, as well as eight hundred square miles of uncleared forest, suitable for the planting of any of the three principal crops of Ecuador. Many Indian villages were situated within the confines of their territory, from which they drew their supply of peons (workmen) for the plantations and ranches scattered throughout their property. Politically, as happens in all the Republics of Latin America, their power rose and fell with the certainty of a thermometer in strict accordance with the changes of administration. When I arrived in the country it happened that an administration favourable to their interests had just fallen, and, until the necessary "influence" could be brought to bear once more, their power would be on the wane. I went into Ecuador