TROPICAL THRILLS

Greymouth Evening Star, 15 February 1930, Page 12

TROPICAL THRILLS

A DOCTOR’S CASE BOOK. Novelists and romantic naturalists have described the glowing colours and astonishing conditions of South America, with all its pretty republics and earthquakes, until our imagination has cried out. The cheerful, matter-of-fact tone in which Dr Herbert Spencer Dickey has described his wanderings is a decided relief, and there is fact, tragedy, and entertainment in his fine book, “The Misadventures of a Tropical Medico.” Dr Dickey spent a dismal Christmas at sea; he ate a few sandwiches, drank cold sarsaparilla, and studied a lew essential sentences in Spanish, such as “Where do you feel the pain? ’ or “Let me isee your tongue.” He landed at Columbia, as a young doctor, in the middle of a revolution. “Just where the current notion of South American revolutions originated I cannot imagine. Why is it that so many people imagine that the opposing armies just squib off their muskets and then call the battles over, is too much for’me.’ Of course, there is probably no worse shot than the average revolutionary South American. But have other means of killing their enemies. Every man in Columbia, tor instance, carries a machete. lh ® se heavy, , swqrd-liße.”. knives haye,uNqd,e& from eighteen-inches-’to- two feet in length. They are heavy and sharp, and except for the fact that they are usually single-edged, they are not greatly different from the short swords that were used by the Roman Legions.” n 2 . , But the real horror of revolution and machete fighting, in towns swarming with spies, and shaken by political counter-changes, has its ridiculous side. At a banquet in Baranquilla, revolutionaries with red emblems jnade speeches “agin the government” of the day. Suddenly a mild-mannered little policeman poked his nose in at the door, just as an orator was exclaiming “Down with the Tyrant.” the banqueters, with such startling unanimity as to suggest almost that it had been rehearsed, tore their red emblems from their buttonholes and threw them under the table, while the orator, with remarkable presence of mind, ’suddenly changed his expression and his discourse. He cast his eyes benignly at the ceiling, folded his hands, said in soft voice, “Let us pray,” and launched forth into the Lord’s Prayer. And the banqueters,, assuming a demeanour of sanctity which must have been a very trying job for the most of them—repeated it. “Crazy gringoes,” muttered /he innocent policeman and hastily withdrew.

SPANISH BEAUTY AND RAGS. Beauty and squalor were found in Baranquilla. Romance was in accord with parental supervision. ‘ There were serenades before barred windows behind which sat such creatures as only materialise from Spanish blood.” The buildings were built of sundried bricks and were one or two stories high. They were painted brightly salmon-pink, yellow, blue, and all had barred windows. Lovers serenaded their “enamoradas” from the sidewalks outside these cruel bars, while the ladies peeked coyly through. It was even said that many of these serenaded ladies were clad richly only from the waist up. The part which showed behind the bars was decked in silks and satins, while the rest of the costume—it did not show, of course—was made up of rags and rope sandals —a matter of economy. Beautiful black hair (adorned with a rose), chiselled features and olive complexions, great limpid fawn-like eyes, gorgeous figures : such are these'Spanish ladies at twenty. Alas ! they begin then to put on weight and there, is nc stopping them. “When they are thirty, they are, generally, great, greasy lumps. Most of them, by that time, have moustaches, and the wearing of sheer stockings would be a crime.” A doctor’s plight in the interior was sometimes difficult. On one occasion Dr Dickey was called to attend the wife of “Straw Boss,” who was suffering from confluent small-pox, a complaint which attacks the throat. “’What are you going to do?’ the husband asked huskily. ‘I explained that there was only one thing to do. I must perform a tracheotomy at once or his wife would die.’ ‘You. are going to cut into her throat?’ he demanded. ‘Yes.’ ‘All right,\ he replied as he reached up to the rack on the wall and brought down a thirty-six inch machete. ‘You. cut into her throat. But if she dies, so do you’-”

AN ARMY OE LEPERS. The amazing conditions of South America and its mixed races is shown by the plan of a general who had decided to save Bogota from the Revolutionaries. Near Taocalma there was situated a leper colony called Agua de Dios, where were interned about ■ a thousand of the forty thousand lepers that were supposed to exist' in Columbia. The general argued that a leper had nothing whatever to live for. Furthermore, their appearance under arms would cause horror among the ranks of the Rebels. He, therefore, armed nine hundred lepers with rifles, and formed them into an army. It is not uncommon for writers to refer to the jungles &s ‘“silent,” but, throughout Dr Dickey’s three-hundred-mile trail through the jungles of Ecuador from Macas to the Napo River, there was an almost constant racket. The Indian cargo-bearers kept up a continual chatter. Myriads of insects added their innumerable calls. Parrots and macaws cried shrilly. Little grey monkeys jabbered, incessantly, and the red howler monkeys boomed their extraordinary conversations in the distance. Occasionally some giant tree, undermined by a caving stream bank, fell with a crash, and other sounds that could not be traced to their sources were “for ever ringing in our ears.” The Ecuador Indians are head-hunters; and as a fee for healing a Jivero chieftain who was suffering from snake bite, Dr Dickey was presented with the head, properly dried and cured, of his rival chieftain. Anguashi. Twenty years ago, the increasing demand for rubber, and the coming of Ihe motor-car caused two of . the most terrible of commercial crimes in the modern world, the Congo and Putumayo atrocities. Dr Dickey tells of his association with the one man in all the world who had set himself the task of aiding the unfortunate Weetoto Indians to escape from the abominable overlordship of the Peruvian employees of a-British rubber-collecting company. “Sir Roger Casement was

the man. It seems strange that that generous, honest, high-principled person should have died the death of a traitor during the Great War. That he was slightly unbalanced I fully believe, but I am certain that he was as sincere and as honest as any man that ever breathed. There is no doubt, of course, as to his atttempts to aid the Germans, but all that came later. On the river steamer for Manaos, Dr Dickey accompanied Casement on his jorney of investigation. “We stopped at a river bank where some cattle and mules were taken aboard. The mules proved refractory, and they resisted being loaded. A twitch, therefore, was put about each animal’s, nose and they were thus led up the gang plank. That there was some unnecessary roughness used, I quite agree, but it was anything but extreme. Nevertheless, Casement, who bad been watching, made for his stateroom with tears running down his cheeks, saying he could not stand seeing .the animals tortured. That was Casement’s mental attitude. He could not stand cruelty or oppression. His Congo and Putumayo experiences had, Ithi nk, shown him so much of these that he was a monomaniac on the subject.” The strange anomaly of South American civilisation is vividly expressed in these pages of a, wandering doctor.