The road was one constant succession of holes and traps and pies of mud, often above the mules’ knees, often worn by constant traffic into ridges like a ploughed field through which the tired quadrupeds had to wade, or drag their feet from furrow to furrow of the sticky, soft, clogging mud. The only real danger was on the broken bridges, which are made of round logs or branches laid side by side, and liable to roll apart out of their places, leaving holes through which the mule’s leg easily slips and breaks, or if the clever creature recovers it he may be thrown down and roll into the mud bath on either side. These corduroy bridges are constantly occurring, and when hidden up with mud are very dangerous traps indeed. Mueda was most careful and seemed herself to know every inch of the road and always to pick the safest places. When the difficulties began, my friends insisted on my taking the place of honour after our leader, the Baron, whose track Mueda followed exactly (except when she had some good reason of her own for diverging); she seemed to put her feet into the identical places our leader’s mule’s feet had been in, and I believe the others almost always followed her example.
Every traveller we met delighted in magnifying the horrors they had passed, and said that as the rain had continued it was utterly impossible for us to go on; and one party that had started the day before were actually coming back in despair. Our progress through all this was slow; we were obliged to stop after only three and a half leagues of it and put up for the night, while Mr. G. sent on a note to the chief engineer of the province to ask his help. An answer came the next morning, begging us not to start too early; he had set fifty men to work and hoped to make the road passable by noon, which gave us time to enjoy and examine our present quarters.
It was not a bad specimen of the ordinary roadside inn, or rancio, of the country—a small room with a table and two benches, and an earthenware water jar with cups to dip into it, standing on a piece of wood that served for lid, the roof hidden by a mat of plaited palm leaves, and the floor made of clay taken from the walls of the great termite ants’ nests and pounded down, a material that in its way is clean, though it does not look so. Besides this room, with its unglazed window and outer door, were two smaller rooms, also entered from the outside, and reached by stepping stones set in mud; two beds were in each—mere wooden frames with a mat stretched over them, and a sack of well-shaken corn leaves, cotton sheets with embroidered or lace edges, and a gay painted cover. We took our own pillows and coloured blankets or rugs, for the nights are often cold. Near our inn was the shed, under which the men pile all the luggage and saddles cleverly and tidily, so as to make a substantial shelter from the wind; here they sit and sleep round a good fire, cooking, gossiping, and mending their clothes or harness, the animals tethered round them, feeding, or being groomed or shod, till it is time to turn them out to grass for the night.
Inside the house we fed right well, and as we had much the same fare everywhere more or less, I will here give our average rations. For dinner, soup, roast or boiled chicken and pork, rice prepared somewhat greasily, and feijão, the staple food of the country—some English say, “very stable, for it is only fit for horses,” but I always liked it; it resembles the French haricot, only the bean is black instead of white; in Brazil it is always eaten with farinha sprinkled over it, a coarsely ground flour of either Indian corn (Zea mays; maize) or mandioca (Manihot esculenta; cassava). Then we had the country cheese, which was excellent, reminding me of the fromage carré of Normandy; this was always eaten with preserve of some sweet sort known by the general name of doce, and followed by the best of coffee—the poorer the house, the better the coffee. In the evening we had tea and biscuits, or bread and butter; but these biscuits, as well as wine and candles, we brought with us; and after tea a roast chicken was cut up, rubbed with farinha, and packed in a tin box for the next day’s breakfast or luncheon, though we never started without a cup of hot coffee and a biscuit— a great security against the bad effects of a cold, damp morning ride. The second morning of our journey it rained again, and we sat at the window watching, with great interest, the different passersby as they floundered about in the mud; our turn was coming next.
There was a particularly bad place opposite our door; it probably had been particularly bad for years and would be the same for years to come, it having apparently never having come into the head of the landlord to mend it. Perhaps he thought it stopped people and brought custom to his house, as they were literally unable to pass his door. One by one, we saw the poor mules go flop into the liquid mudhole, have their loads transferred to men’s heads, and themselves lifted out by tail and head, the lifters often replacing them in the hole during the process. We, however, all got safely over and were soon met by “Beesmark himself,” as our Baron called the great Prussian engineer, a large man with a magnificent white beard and tall horse, which I believe was once of the same pure colour. After many compliments and hearty greetings he took the lead, and we rode round the valley by the steep hillsides, so as to avoid the muddy road and marsh, now powdered with lovely masses of the Franciscea, with its blue and white blooms. At last we were forced to descend again and came to the worst place from which the travellers had been turned back the day before. Here men were now at work throwing on turf and trying to make a causeway.
The Graf and Mary passed over safely, then flop! In went a young engineer’s mule in front of me, only his neck to be seen above the water while his master tumbled cleverly on his feet beyond the danger, and everyone shouted to me to stop, which Mueda had no objection to do. A big black man was called up and ordered to carry me, and I submitted under protest. He had no sooner got the extra weight (no light one) on his back than he sank steadily in the spongy ground like a telescope, and would doubtless have disappeared entirely if I had not scrambled to my seat again on dear old Mueda, who stood steady as a rock and seemed to grin to herself at the idea of anyone but herself having the strength to carry me.
After we had done laughing at this scene I was allowed to walk over on my own feet from sod to sod, and Mr. G. followed my example. We afterwards rode on tolerably well till we got to the small town where we were to breakfast, the high street of which was a torrent of mud. All the people had their heads and elbows out of the windows to see us pass, for many of them had not had a walk in the street for a month; they would only have tumbled into the pea soup if they had attempted it. Our engineer and his party were lodging here, and after accompanying us a few leagues farther, they turned back to give a few more despairing looks at the mud and to tell the people nothing could be done till the wet season was over—a fact they already knew too well.
Our next night’s quarters were worse than the first, for the landlord had not been out of his house for a month and had not even a sack of corn for our poor tired beasts; but the night after that we passed in a fazenda, or farmhouse, with a beautiful green grassy hill behind it, on which the animals did enjoy themselves, rolling over and over, cleaning their coats, and eating any quantity of delicious capim grass. This is almost as good as corn for them, growing in tufts like the tussock or guinea grass of India, with a whitish downy leaf, which is extremely sweet, and in the springtime is covered with feathery lilac flowers that give a glowing tint to all the hillsides. We also enjoyed ourselves, and ceased, for the first time since we started, to feel damp, as the dwelling rooms were built on the second storey, the lower one being used as stables and servants’ quarters. The family, too, were more civilised than any of the people we had been with before. The young daughter of the house delighted