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Updated: May 4, 2025
And he believed that it would be possible to get at them if the white lords would permit him and two or three of his comrades to go still further back to a point where, on the near side of the canal, he had noted a sufficient growth of reeds to construct a single balsa of a capacity which would enable him to float himself across the canal to the opposite side, where the reeds were growing in profusion.
Then she sprang from the prow of the balsa to the shore, followed by her two maidens, who dragged it further up the beach, and went forward to talk with certain white-robed men in the crowd. For a long while she talked, turning now and again to point at me. At length these men, accompanied by a number of others, ran forward.
The balsa, it may here be explained, was a very simple affair indeed, consisting merely of a flat bundle of reeds, firmly bound together in such a way as to form a sort of raft.
Here there is a balsa, or ferry, run by two Parecis Indians, as employees of the Telegraphic Commission, under the colonel. Each had a thatched house, and each had two wives all these Indians are pagans. All were dressed much like the poorer peasants of the Brazilian back country, and all were pleasant and well-behaved. The women ran the ferry about as well as the men.
If the carcass of an animal were deposited upon yonder rock," the Indian pointed to a rock showing slightly above the water's surface about a mile from the shore "and another were cast into the water quite near it, the monsters would doubtless be attracted to the place; and if my Lord were close at hand at the time, upon a large and safe balsa, he would see them when they crawl up on the rock to reach the carcass exposed there."
Now we could no longer steer or do anything except lie flat upon the bottom of the balsa, gripping the cords with which it was tied together, to save ourselves from being washed overboard, since often the foaming crests of the waves broke upon us.
An immense balsa was dashing out before the land-wind, and sending a snowy wreath of foam before her like that which curls up before the bow of a frigate in chase. As long as she was kept before the wind, we could understand this in some degree; but when she hauled up in order to round the point, and having made a stretch along-shore, proceeded to tack, we could scarcely believe our eyes.
The bay of Puno grows quantities of totoras, giant bulrushes sometimes twelve feet long. Ages ago the lake dwellers learned to dry the totoras, tie them securely in long bundles, fasten the bundles together, turn up the ends, fix smaller bundles along the sides as a free-board, and so construct a fishing-boat, or balsa.
Suppose, when the wind is on the beam, the foremost one drawn up; that end of the raft will instantly have a tendency to drift to leeward, from the absence of the lateral support it previously received from its guara or keel at the bow; or, in sea language, the balsa will immediately "fall off," and in time she will come right before the wind.
The darkness came down, but still the thunder roared and the lightning blazed, and by the flare of it I caught sight of snow-capped mountains far away upon the coast, also of Kari clinging to the reeds of the balsa at my side, and from time to time kissing the golden image of Pachacamac which hung about his neck. Presently he set his lips against my ear and shouted: "Be bold!
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