Chapter Five: The Final Push
In mid afternoon more excitement was created when Abibe Ferreira showed up in camp from Maraba with a federal inspector in tow who spoke essentially no English. The inspector was there because of alleged well boundary infringements that had not been clearly defined. Between the pumps being down and now the inspector trying to sort out claim issues, there was considerable confusion in the 120° afternoon. Instantly our environment went from bad to worse. After much hand gesturing and arm flailing it was settled, the federal inspector would look into the matter by writing letters, the typical bureaucratic solution to most government problems. In the meantime we had two of the three pumps down. Dick and I quickly understood we should have purchased the larger American made Briggs and Stratton 3 inch pump and not the Brazilian pumps. The strategy of buying Brazilian pumps for interchangeability turned out to be flawed.
Acquiring the Briggs and Stratton required a trip to Belem of several days, $550 to purchase the pump, and more money from El Norte (California) which was not coming through on a regular basis. Dick would return to Belem and update Larry by phone requesting funds to purchase the Briggs and Stratton. Dick quickly threw his gear together and departed with Abibe and the government bureaucrat along with Charoot and headed for Araguatins, Maraba and then onto Belem. Dick hoped to fly the pump from Araguatins to Belem and be back in camp inside of a week. In the meantime I limped along with one pump. Three days later Charoot returned from dropping Dick and Abibe off with 40 more 18-liter cans of gas and other items that we had to purchase on Abibe’s generously extended credit. The heavier weight motor oil was still not available.
On 30 September, with the well half empty, we found our second diamond (0.2 karats) and a small gem stone, again raising our hopes that there could be more diamonds nearer the bottom. We also found a fleck of gold, which was unusual because gold usually passes through all the screens when the gravel is washed. This find heightened more interest from the local Indians coming into our camp asking for work. For the next nine days the final pump and our group chugged along in the unabated heat and humidity, the water dropping at a snails pace. To stay ahead of the rainy season Duval and I discussed how we would increase our digging and washing efforts with 20 more local Indians working the gravel around the clock. More bugs now streamed into camp looking for their just rewards.
After several days Dick had not returned with the new pump and there was not much to do except limp along on one pump until he arrived. The workers seemed more sluggish due in part to the heat but mostly due to the lack of progress in the water dropping to expose more gravel. Dark clouds, high winds and rain cells then hit our locale for a couple of days, portending what would be in store for us when the rainy season returned in full force. The only saving grace was the temporary relief from the bugs blown away by the wind. I started and finished Bernard Fall’s book, Viet Nam Reader and then started Dag Hammarskjöld’s book, Markings.
Time dragged waiting for the water to go down so I endeavored to completely disassemble the inoperable engines to get one additional pump on line. After many hours of unsuccessful efforts, ripping skin from my knuckles and fingers, my efforts were futile. With only one pump on line, my mechanical prowess defeated, workers becoming disgruntled in the 120-degree heat and more bugs coming into camp, I became exceedingly discouraged. I felt stymied, stuck in the jungle and unable to make more progress while waiting for Dick. What was I doing here? Second thoughts about leaving the U.S. Navy and the offers I had received kept creeping back into my head. I believed more time; however, was needed to put this adventure and my short life into historical perspective.
On 5 October the last of our discharge hose split wide open so we could not operate through the night. We were shut down. We needed more hose and it was not on Dick’s list. Ah, if we only had had a cell phone. More pumping capacity would be useless without new hoses to move the water. As much as I was concerned about neither Dick nor myself being in camp to keep an eye on things, I decided to return to Belem and purchase a couple of hundred meters of new plastic hose, if possible, and hopefully run into Dick. There was a rumor that a plane was leaving from a local farm that was only three hours from our camp by boat. This turned out to be exactly that, a rumor, so Charoot and I continued on to Araguatines having to once again expertly negotiate the river’s white rapids littered with exposed jagged rocks. With only 68 NCr I was in a tight situation until I caught up with Dick or talked Abibe into a loan. In Araguatines while waiting for the plane to Belem via Maraba I squandered a few of the cruzeiros and drowned my sorrows in beer. Two was all it took in my current condition and weight.
After buying a few supplies for Charoot to take back to camp I was now down to 15 NCr’s. The air taxi did not materialize so I spent the next three days languishing at Maria’s “hotel”, going to Mass, eating bananas, bread and water and reading Time magazine. My room was the same with all the animals including the pigs coming and going at will. One afternoon while lounging in my straw cot, I suddenly heard a piercing guttural shriek of the same pig that had just run through my room. In just moments when I went to find out the source of the squeal I found the pigs head and skeleton hanging upside down from a tree branch. Everything but the bones and the squeal had been butchered and would be used for dinner and subsequent meals. Hardly appetizing for a suburban gringo, but since I was feeling weak and dizzy I forced myself to eat.
I spent another awful night in Araguatins on the same straw mat with the squawking chickens and roaming four-footed animals making sure that I didn’t sleep too long. By mid-afternoon the next day I was on a very bumpy airplane ride from Araguatins to Maraba. Most onboard were sick but I was elated to be going onto the seemingly veritable metropolis of Maraba and did not mind in the least except for the pools of vomit-reeking smells. It felt great to be back in semi-civilization. Immediately I tried to find Abibe or Dick but was told that they were both in Belem. Since I had to wait until the next day to fly to Belem, I spent the evening wandering around intending to see a film. After enjoying a couple of beers, however, and listening to a Frank Sinatra record in a cafe bar, I slipped into a melancholy stupor, reveling in familiar music and language. Near 11:00 I stumbled back to Abibe’s place and fell into bed.
On 10 October I waited most of the day for the two-hour flight to Belem and arrived at 5:15 PM. By now I was very anxious to find out what was going on with Dick as we had not seen each other in over two weeks. I hastily grabbed a cab returning to our old hotel: no Dick. I hustled over to Abibe’s house, no Dick, no Abibe. I then went straight to Dirk’s house where he told me that Dick had left a half hour ago with the pump and was headed to Imperatriz, a village just west of Araguatins on the Rio Tocantins. He had hired a truck for the 370 mile journey. He then planned to fly the pump from Imperatriz to Araguatins where he could transport the pump back to camp with Charoot and our boat. Bottom line, I had traveled five days to miss him by 30 minutes. Dirk and I jumped into a cab attempting but failing to overtake the truck.
Now I was in Belem without a cent trying to purchase plastic hose. The only money I had was tied up in the bank and that money was owed to Abibe. Funds from El Norte were dribbling in very slowly. Both Dick and I were really pinching pennies, now staying in Belem’s dumpiest little flea-and lizard-infested hotel, the Aveneda, but Dirk unselfishly supported us with meals and a few Cruzeiros while Larry made transfers to our account. I managed to withdraw 700 NCr to buy the heavy plastic hose and a few supplies for camp by putting off the amounts we owed Abibe. Abibe was now in Belem to assist me with the purchase, happy to help out. We needed lots of help. All along Abibe was charging us a small percentage or cut for his assistance and all the services he was providing. This was not evident at the time and we were unjustifiably upset when we had to pay for services rendered, including arranging air tickets and 100 NCr interpreter fee. We were naive to assume that he was not going to charge for his involvement. Conducting business in a foreign country combined with limited business and language experience in a compressed time frame is a huge challenge. We were learning very quickly, the hard way.
After much scrambling around to find suitable plastic hoses I settled on buying two smaller diameter hoses that would be fed by a steel “Y” adaptor attached to the pump accommodating both hoses. I paid $400 cash for the hose and received a peculiar receipt from the vendor so he would not have to pay a 15% government tax. Dirk and Abibe were very helpful getting all this done quickly plus Dirk fed me and I started feeling better and even thought I might have gained some weight. I checked my weight at 145 pounds, twenty down from the start. At this point Abibe was staying close to me to ensure that he got the money we owed him, 500 NCr, which I withdrew from the bank. Abibe negotiated with Cruzeiro do Sul Air Lines that if we could roll up the 170 meters of hose into a one meter or less diameter they would take it on the airplane. This would keep me from riding all night with it in a truck to Imperatriz as Dick had to do with the new pump.
On the evening of 13 October I planned to have an extra big evening, have a nice dinner, and see a Henry Fonda movie. I ended up having a sleepless night in the Aveneda Hotel where I unfortunately ate something that did not agree with me and spent the night in the bathroom. As the new day broke, 14 October, I found out that the airlines would not take the hoses, so with Dirk’s aid we found a truck going to Imperatriz and Dirk negotiated a fixed delivery price for me. I had to hustle to get the hoses to the truck stop by 4:00 PM. After I loaded the truck we were off and bounced most of the night down the Belem & Brasilia (B & B) Highway, a two-lane-dirt wash-board road, a master piece for Brazil, but absolutely the worst road I have ever been on. The driver told me that the road was built by the Brazilian military.
As we jostled along sleep was impossible but we finally pulled over at a trucker’s rest stop at 11:45 that looked very suspect if not unsavory. I walked along a row of small one room dingy cabins until I came to mine. I was so tired and grubby I did not bother removing my clothes and crashed immediately. I went into a deep sleep holding several hundred cruzeiros novo and my Rolex under my stomach just in case someone tried to relieve me of them. At 4:30 AM I heard a faint distant voice, “Miguel, Miguel!” I bolted upright sleepily translating Miguel into Mike and stumbled out of my assigned hooch with my watch and money, jumped back in the truck and off we went. Not far along we had to stop at some sort of border check station. Both the trucker and I were required to get out while a worker used a pressurized tank sprayer to sterilize the interior of the cab. When we climbed back in the seat was soaked in disinfectant but quickly we were back on the B & B Highway sloshing around on the wet chemicals until they dried.
At 2:00 PM we arrived at the airport in Imperatriz where I was able to make contact and arrange an air taxi without much hassle. When the truck driver realized that I was flying these hoses to Araguatins he decided to up his delivery price. He demanded more money than we had agreed on before leaving Belem. I became very angry and told him, in Portuguese, that I would not pay him a dime more. But he insisted and I ended up paying him 20 NCr more to get him out of my way. Try as I might I could not jam 170 meters of plastic hose in the back of his Cessna 172 for the short flight to Araguatins. The pilot now said that it would take two trips meaning that it would cost me another 100 NCR. Steamed up, dirty and sleepless I relented and we were soon in the air with the first load.
On the second load as we came in over the Araguatins airport I could see our boat beached on the edge of the river and I knew things had to get better. When the plane landed I found Charoot and Dick as well! We were a sight for sore eyes gabbing like two old ladies trying to catch up after a long absence. We talked so fast that neither of us could understand what the other was saying. We exchanged mail and settled down to rehash the events of the past weeks. It was like Christmas. Dick had many problems in Belem not the least of which was money. He was low on both morale and money. His telegram to Larry Graham was very blunt, “For Christ sake send money, urgent!” We laughed afterwards but we were in desperate need of cash. It turned out that during Dick’s trip down the B & B Highway he missed a double murder by two hours, an awful scene involving a jealous husband shooting and killing both his wife and her lover. Dick became ill when he approached both bodies lying on the floor soaked in puddles of blood. His description was right out of the old Wild West. What are we doing here?
We quickly gathered all our gear, the new Briggs and Stratton pump, plastic hose and supplies, loaded the boat and headed upstream to camp. We were anxious to get back to camp so we motored all night, my third night with no sleep. At 7:00 AM, 16 October, we arrived back at camp to a warm welcome from the workers who had been energetically keeping the operation moving forward. Great progress had been made. They had fixed and put on line one of the broken pumps and had ingeniously patched and extended the hoses with troughs fashioned out of the metal gas cans and strips of tree bark. Unbelievably, they had water running great distances away from the well. Trees had been cut down, cut and split open, hollowed out and used as troughs to carry the water even further from the well site. They had been pumping the entire time we had been gone and the water had been lowered dramatically. Duvall’s son-in-law, Jario, came on site and started tending to all the pumps and worked very hard keeping them going. He turned into our do-it-all man.
Our spirits were lifted and we were determined to empty the well and find the “promised” diamonds. At this point Dick and I had almost zero working capital so we decided to pay everyone for most of the work done so far and then put them on a percentage basis, a percentage of the diamonds that we found; 35% to the workers, 35% to the company and 30% for expenses. Keeping our expenses at a minimum also required us to. It did not take long to get the new big three-inch Briggs and Stratton workhorse and every foot of the 170 meters of new plastic hose working at the well; officially it was 11:00AM, 16 October, four hours after returning to camp. Three pumps were now pulling water out of the well, both 2½ inch pumps and the new three inch. Quick calculations showed that we could empty the well in one week with these pumps working continuously.
Cheroot’s daughter came to see me with a huge gash in her leg. She had been stung by a large stingray, a huge chunk taken out of her lower calf, a wound almost down to the bone with most of her flesh missing. I gently cleaned it, applied some antibiotic ointment and then wrapped it in gauze bandages. I told her to be sure to keep it clean and come back for another visit in two days. If it didn’t improve, she would need to go see a real doctor. Fortunately she kept her wound clean and it was healing nicely from the inside. Ten days later she was doing well.
Since Araguatins only had 14 cans of gas and we needed more to finish pumping I left with Cheroot to continue upstream to Xambioa, a tiny village, to buy more. The river narrowed considerably and we had to fight much stronger currents and white water rapids including several small water falls. Numerous times we had to get out of the boat and haul it up over the rocks using a long rope to pull and guide it through many doglegs. Making these passages was very tricky and dangerous but Cheroot proved himself again to be a great boat handler. Darkness fell forcing us to stop for the night at a small farm. After a rice dinner I tried to sleep in the hammock but the mosquitoes had other ideas. Between them and the cool air I slept very little. The following day we continued up the river but it was getting narrower, rockier and faster. We barely made headway and had to pole the boat forward as the motor ran flat out, the current exceeding eight knots.
By mid afternoon the following day we returned with the gas and supplies to find the other Brazilian pump had blown a rod, but a 1½-inch pump had been borrowed from some local guy, so we still had three on line. With some changes in the adaptors and positioning of the pumps we were dropping the remaining water quickly. Cheroot was fed up making boast runs and now wanted 100 NCr more for each boat trip. Money was nonexistent and even if we wanted to we could not pay him more. He quit and we had to find another boatman for the tricky waters. The next day we found a candidate and took him out on the river to see if he could do the job. He demonstrated that he could handle the river so we hired him for 5 NCr per day to replace Cheroot who had now decided to hang around camp with the opportunity to dig for the diamonds when the time came. The well had more water than we anticipated and we again started to worry about our gas supply; to date having used just under 1000 gallons (at a fairly costly 50 cents per gallon).
The word was out that our Isle de Cocoa Well was almost empty and it might contain significant diamonds. More men had already moved into the area and awaited the call for their services. It was not unlikely that we would have required up to 200 more men to dig and process the gravel before the rains washed us down river. The incentive remained the same, 35% to those who worked.
Bugs and creatures of all shapes and size had now dramatically enveloped our camp as described in my journal, “The bugs are starting to take over the whole camp. There is the standard mosquito as we know it as well as two or three types of bees. These creatures in great abundance have a tremendous harassing effect during the daylight hours. For the early evening there is a modified extra small mosquito which passes in and out of our bed netting at will. The night seems to be a free-for-all for creatures to attack people and food. They will consume more of the food than the person eating it so Dick and I have resorted to eating under the netting which helps. I have never seen so many flying, crawling, hopping varmints. Sometimes they are so thick it is difficult to see.
“Like ants to honey these creatures had a feeding frenzy on us. We had to use one hand to eat and the other to bat bugs. They are very bold and you have to literally pick them off your food and toss them to the ground. I got to the point that I did not bother to swat the mosquitoes unless there were a half dozen on me. I felt like a local walking blood bank. Even some type of the no-see-ums could get through our head nets. The bugs and mosquitoes were a getting to be a serious matter. You could actually tell approximately what time of day it was by the type of bugs that appeared in camp.”
A local hunter, Pedro, provided pineapple and bananas, a pure extravagance for us now and we treasured every bite. Pedro told us about two Americans and a Brazilian who just a month ago came to this area and hauled out some gold illegally using an airplane. Pedro said he saw the map where most of the gold was and he now had it “in” his head located not more than 18 kilometers up the Gamalara River. I thought one might be able to make a movie out of this kind of stuff. Pedro’s fresh fruit was a wonderful supplement to the tin cans of pineapple Dick and I had been hoarding since we arrived in camp. We held off opening our first can for five weeks and then slowly metered out the rest of the cans, one per week giving us something to look forward to; enjoyment beyond description: a tin of pineapple on Saturday night!
During the last week of October, the Briggs & Stratton pump and motor thrummed on while the Brazilian pumps staggered listlessly on and the water level dropped. We continued digging gravel on the edges of the well working our way downward. Because the well is ten feet deeper at one end we had to lower the pumps closer to the water to get rid of it. Again great ingenuity, along with the new hoses, was used by the workers to transport the water away from the well. Cut up gas cans, stripped tree bark and pieces of the old canvas hose lashed together with bits of string and wire extended our aqueducts now even further away from the well.
The Isle de Cocoa Well had been emptied previously; partially in 1951 evidenced when the descending water uncovered a small man-made rock ledge near the far end. Apparently their pump had broken down just before the well was drained. A 1961 attempt failed due to a lack of hose and hefty pumps to move the water far enough away from the area. The men told us diamonds had been found so there should be more in the deeper untouched areas where the gravel has not been disturbed.
With the water almost gone, the lack of oxygen combined with the surface oil from the pumps left schools of fish stranded and dying. They wriggled to the surface, mouths wide open, gasping for air. Worn out, they washed up on the bank where we gathered them up for our main source of protein. They were cleaned, splayed out, salted and dried for eating later. The stench of the trapped fish and now turtles in the well became almost unbearable. On 27 October the well was finally emptied, 40 days after we first started pumping. Now the heavy muck in the bottom had to be carried out by hand. For the past several days it started to rain hard several hours a day requiring our smaller pump to keep up with the rain water beginning to refill the well. It was clear it was going to be a close race between digging for the diamonds at the very bottom of our well and the rains reclaiming it.
While the pump kept the water at bay the men were having a grand time grabbing turtles, the larger ones putting up a good fight. We pulled thirty of them out of the well over a foot in diameter, the only well production so far. Holes were drilled into the back edge of their shells and then two turtles were tied together back-to-back with wire. Drawing a line in the sand between them we entertained ourselves while the turtles performed a tug-of-war. I must say this little caper seems a bit cruel and out of context given forty years of reflection and I can only attribute it to being in the jungle a little too long. Afterwards they were killed and eaten. I remember them being gritty which I attributed to our cook not removing all the sand before being prepared. Dick thought they were very tasty and they were nutritious. The ones we kept would later come in very handy.
By the end of October we attacked the bottom of the well where the gravel was purported to be rich in diamonds. The men dug eagerly but found no diamond-forming gravel even after burrowing 12 feet below the muck in the bottom of the well. The situation looked grim, the men started to get discouraged and became demoralized. The host of men who had moved into the area hoping for work was all but gone. Late one afternoon three of the men turned up sick with a fever and talk of quitting was prevalent. Several men wanted to draw their back pay and head off. This left Dick and me in a real jam because we had no cash. Our second boat pilot then wanted to quit but we convinced him we needed two more trips into Araguatines. Then our mechanic injured himself badly on one of the pumps when the starting pulley caught his finger, leaving behind a chunk of flesh hanging off the end of his pinky. I stopped the bleeding with gauze and pressure, repositioned his torn tissue and used makeshift butterfly bandages to close the gash. I then applied some iodine and wrapped his finger. The mood in camp was markedly gloomy.
Late one afternoon at the end of October we hit good gravel and our spirits picked up; some of the sick workers suddenly became healthy again. The good gravel was deep under the huge rocks and shale that proved to be very difficult to remove, particularly in this large hole we had just emptied. The work proved very arduous and back breaking, requiring picks, shovels, crowbars, sledge hammers and buckets to uncover and load the gravel into our washing screens. The men dug feverishly all day, filling over 100 five- gallon cans of gravel, not a lot but enough to ascertain if the well would produce diamonds. After washing all of the gravel no diamonds were found. Our dispirited mood now matched the distant gray rain clouds looming on the horizon.
Managing the pumps as the well gets lower
Duval inspects our Brazilian pumps
Wood & metal troughs move water away
Workers digging for gravel
Worker washing gravel in screens
Diamond forming gravel- cascalho
Catching turtles near the bottom of the well
Turtle captured for dinner