Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1903-09-19
LARGELY UNEMPLOYED
The Worlds Last "Terra In
cognita"
Is IN SOUTH AMERICA
EXPEDITIONS TELL HOW MUCH
REMAINS UNDISCOVERED.
Romantic and Thrilling Tales Heard
Recently From Don Rafael
Reyes.
Copyright. 1903. by william Thorp)

Copyright. 1908, by William Thorp)
Written for The Evening Star by william Thorp.
When Sir Henry II. Stanley, the famous
African explorer last visited America, an
ardent Harvard undergraduate is said to
have asked him at a reception:
How can 1 become a great traveller, like
you? 1 want to be one, but don't know
where to begin
TRY the moon.' said Stanley with a
laugh. That's about the only place left
to explore nowadays"
But Stanley exaggerated. 1t is true that
such regulations as those of Humboldt.
Livingstone and Stanley himself can no
longer be made; but several tracts of the
worlds surface are still UNEMPLOYED. OF
all the continents. South America undoubt-
eddy offers the most virgin ground to the
adventurous traveller. Explorers have gone
up the rivers and come down again. a
writer on the subject correctly observes,
but they have not penetrated any dis
lance overland across the jupgle-covered
watersheds
Ignorant of Their Own Countries.
1t is strange how little the inhabitants of
South America know about their own coun-
tries. If you ask Venezuelan at La
Guayra. a Brazilian at Rio, Colombian
at Panama, or an Ecuadorian at Guayaquil
to tell you about the interior he will shrug
his shoulders and answer
"Quien sabe, senor?"
Certainly he does not know. If you told
him that the jewellers in the unsettled, I'M
explored parts of his own country were
''anthropophagi and men whose heads do
grow beneath their shoulders" he could
not contradict you.
They are reported to have their eyes in
their shoulders and their mouths in the
middle of their breasts, and that a long
train of hair groweth back between their
shoulders" That is the account Sir Walter
Raleigh gave, in the seventeenth century,
of tribe of Indians living on the banks of
the River Caura in Venezuela. OF course
people do not believe such travellers tales
nowadays they did in the days of Queen
Elizabeth: but. as matter of fact, moth
ing more definite is known today of this
very tribe. The region in which they live
remains in this twentieth century the ter
ia incognitd' that it was in the days IF
Raleigh.
A Stream Of Expeditions.
Never a month passes without an expedi-
ton leaving the confines of civilization and
plunging into the heart of some UNEMPLOYED
region in South America. Little or nothing
is heard of these expeditions except in So
cial and commercial circles in cities like
Caracas, Bogota, Sucre and Port-of-Spain
Trinidad but each of them would furnish
material for a thrilling book if the adven-
turers cared to write about their expert
enceS Usually they do not. They have
other fish to fry. They are orchid hunters
gold prospectorS diamond seekers or gov
eminent officials engaged in delimiting
boundaries between the various republics
and colonies of South America.
Three months, six months. year, per-
haps three years. after they left the last
settlement on the fringe Of the unknown
half of them return, tanned, haggard. half
starved, fever stricken. The rest have been
lost in the jungle, to perish miserably Of
hunger and thirst; or drowned in the rap
ids Of some mighty river, or killed by hos
tile Indians, jaguars or sting rays. The
South American explorer lives in the midst
of alarms. and there are a thousand ways
in which he may meet sudden and violent
death.
The survivors always tell the same story:
I'VE have seen some wonderful things
but they were not even the thousandth