Backlands (8 page)

What is revealed—the bumpy ground, the crumbling almost naked hills, the twists in the dry beds of occasional streams, the narrowed-down defiles, and the spasmodic deciduous flora in a jumble of thickets—shows, in a manner of speaking, the martyrdom of the land, brutally lashed by all the different elements in all kinds of climatic modes. On the one hand there is the extreme dryness of the air in summer, which facilitates an easy loss of the heat absorbed by the rocks that have been exposed to the sun’s rays through nocturnal irradiation. This imposes an alternation of sudden highs and lows in heat, causing a play of contraction and expansion that disjoins the rocks, cracking them open along their levels of least resistance. On the other hand there are the rains that suddenly put an end to the scorching cycles of drought, hastening these delayed reactions.

The forces that work on the land attack it, in its deepest parts and on its surface, with no letup in their destructive action, each taking over in an invariable intercadence during the only two seasons the region has.

They break it down during the scorching summers and they break it down during the torrential winters. They go from a silently working molecular imbalance to the wonderful dynamic of storms. They are in league and they complement each other. With the preponderance of one or the other or the combined action of both, they change the natural aspect. The gneissic summits, casually split into almost geometrical planes, like pediments, rising up at several points give the illusion sometimes that one has suddenly come upon the majestic ruins of a castle in those empty barrens. In the front they are surrounded by rows of boulders, in disorder and poorly secured on narrow bases, tilting and unstable, teetering loggans or a great tumble of dolmens. Farther on they disappear under piles of blocks, the perfect image of those “seas of stone” so characteristic of places where the climate is excessive. Spreading out along the sides of the hills in disorder all around—the remains of ancient, eroded mountains— are lines that recall the paths of glaciers. Scattered at random, thick beds of pebbles and broken flat stones are evidence of the same violent forces. The edges of fragments with feldspar crystals still persist, cemented to the quartz. These give new evidence of the physical and mechanical effects that broke the rocks into pieces with no decomposition of their formative elements. These physical forces go beyond the functions of normal meteorological activities and their slow chemical agents.

In this way at every step and at all points one gets a sharp picture of extreme roughness. It is lessened partially where depressed flatlands appear, the beds of ancient lakes. They are extinct now and under marshy swamps that are resting places for cattle herders. The land is cut through, however, by twice-dead streambeds that fill up during the brief rainy season. Clogged in most cases by thick layers of rocks through which, except during sudden floods, the thin threads of water pour. They are a perfect replica of the wadis found on the rim of the Sahara. Standing out against their banks, most often perpendicularly, are strata of dark blue talc schist in polished plates that reflect the light with a metallic glow. Above them, covering extensive areas, are less-resistant layers of red clay, cut through irregularly by veins of quartz. These last formations, Silurian perhaps, cover all the rest as one heads northeast and they take on more-correct contours. They clearly show the origins of the flat tablelands that appear there, covered with a resistant vegetation of
mangabeira
trees, all the way to Jeremoabo.
¹⁰

To the north, however, the layers show more declivities. Bare hillocks succeed one another, with steep slopes broken by ravines that are flooded by periodic torrents that hollow them out. From the summits one can see in rows of sheets the same quartz infiltrations, exposed by the decomposition of the schists that had wrapped them.

In the raw light of the backlands these harsh hills glow dizzily with a blinding, burning radiation. . . .

The constant periods of erosion, however, have broken the continuity of these layers and at other points they disappear under limestone formations. The complex is little changed. This ruinous-looking makeup fits in well with other features, and in stretches where they stand out flat along the ground, completely unprotected from the corrosive acidity of the cyclonic downpours, they are pierced with round holes and deep grooves, small but innumerable, lying at a tangent and with sharp edges. In some places their sharp splinters make passage impossible.
¹¹

In this way, by whatever path one follows, not very high but rough spots follow one after the other, so that one must alter his path or even detour many leagues along empty, dry streambeds. And no matter how inexpert the observer might be, as he leaves the majestic perspectives that unfold to the south and exchanges them for the impressive scenery of this tormented nature, he gets the persistent impression that he is setting foot on the recently arisen bottom of an extinct sea, the agitation of waves and whirlpools still copied in those stark hillocks. . . .

It is an enticing suggestion.

One goes along as did the somewhat romantic naturalist Em Liais, imagining that long, long ago swirling about there were the waves and currents of the Tertiary age.

In spite of a lack of data to permit that kind of retrospective prophecy, to use Huxley’s elegant words, by which we can sketch out the look of that region in remote ages, we can combine all its characteristics to support such a venturesome concept.

This is carried further by the strange denudation of the land; by the noteworthy alignment in which the fragments lie, bordering the flanks of the mountains in true level curves; by the cliffs off the tablelands as their perpendicular drops recall
falaises
; and, up to a certain point, by the remains of Pliocene fauna, making enormous mastodon boneyards of the enormous potholes, full of disjointed and broken vertebrae, as though they had been unexpectedly attacked and their lives ended by the swirling energies of a cataclysm.

Showing up in positive data is also the presumption derived from the previous situation. As a matter of fact, Frederick Hartt’s investigations have established the existence of undeniable Cretaceous basins in the lands around Paulo Afonso, and the fossils that define them are identical to those found in Mexico and Peru and contemporaneous with those discovered by Agassiz in Panama.
¹²
All these elements come together in the deduction that the waves of a vast Cretaceous ocean rolled over the early lands of both Americas, linking the Atlantic and the Pacific. In that way it covered a large part of Brazil’s northern states as its waves beat against the higher terraces of plateaus, where extensive sedimentary deposits reveal a more ancient age, the Middle Paleozoic.

Emerging from the great islands as they rose from the waters were the summits of our highest mountains, leaning slightly to the north in that great liquid solitude. . . .

The Andes did not exist; the Amazon was a broad channel between the high plains of the Guianas and those of the continent, as it separated them into islands. To the south: the massif of Goiás (the most ancient in the world according to Gerber’s beautiful deduction), the Minas massif, and a part of the São Paulo plateau where the Mount Caldas volcano glowed in full activity. This was the nucleus of the future continent. . . .

A general uprising was slowly at work: The granite masses rose up in the north, pulling along the general complex of the land in a slow rotation about an axis, as Liais imagined, between the ridges of Barbacena and Bolivia. Simultaneously, at the start of the Tertiary period, the prodigious rise of the Andes took place. New lands blossom out of the waters. The Amazon channel closes at one end, transforming itself into the largest of rivers. The scattered archipelagos grow broader and connect themselves with isthmuses. The contours of the coasts take on more shape and we have the slow formation of America.

After this the terrain in the extreme north of the state of Bahia, as represented by the quartzite cliffs of Monte Santo and the hillocks of Itiúba, scattered in the waters, begins to take on volume with a continuous rise. In that slow rising, however, while the recently uncovered higher regions were sprinkled with lakes, the whole middle section of that escarpment remained underwater. The strong current of this water, of which the current along our coast is a degenerate form, held it in its grip. It kept pounding on it for a long time while the rest of the country to the south was emerging already formed. It gnawed and shredded it as it swirled to the west, carrying material to shape that corner of Bahia as it came into full emergence, following the general movement of the land and forming it into a shapeless pile of eroded mountains.

A desert region had taken shape there in flagrant opposition to the geographic dispositions, on an escarpment where there is nothing to recall the lack of drainage found in depressions in classic deserts.

It could be surmised that this incipient region is still making itself ready for life. Lichens still attack stones, fertilizing the ground. And struggling tenaciously against the climate’s lash is a flora of rare resistance as it spreads the web of its roots out, resisting as best it can the torrents that dragged off all the earlier ones. The plants cling together in a gradual conquest of the desolate landscape, softening its contours. There is no surcease, however, of the long summers, the inclement sunshine, or the savage waters as they degrade the soil.

In light of all this, we are held in sway by a mournful impression as we cross this unknown stretch of the backlands, almost a desert as it either opens up between naked hills or stretches out into monotonous, great barrens. . . .

From the top of Monte Santo, looking out over the region in a radius of about thirty miles, one can see, as on a relief map, the orographic conformation, and one can see that the string of mountains, instead of extending out eastward on the lines of Vaza-Barris and Itapicurú, the watersheds, they follow northward.

The Grande and Atanásio ranges can be seen, and distinct at first, one in the northwest and the other in the north, they come together in the Acarú Range where the intermittent springs of the Bendegó River and its intermittent tributaries rise. Together they join with the Caraíbas and Lopes ranges and are absorbed in these to form the mass of the Cambaio range, and there the small Coxomongó and Calumbi chains irradiate, and to the northwest the towering pinnacles of the Caipã range. Continuing in the same direction, that of the Aracati range, toward the northwest at the edge of the Jeremoabo tablelands, it progresses along discontinuously in that direction and after being cut by the Vaza-Barris River at Cocorobó, it curves toward the west, splitting into the Canabrava and Poço de Cima ranges, which prolong it. What they have all traced out in the end is an elliptical curve, closed to the south by a hill, Favela, over a broad, undulating plain, where the hamlet of Canudos rises up. From there to the north they are dispersed once again and they decay until they end up as tall hillocks along the São Francisco.

Heading north, then, to the uplands where the bed of the Paraíba has been carved out, the incline of the plateau seems to curve back upon itself. In this way it upsets the whole drainage area of the São Francisco at a point below where it is joined by the Patamoté. Here there are traces of small and nameless streams that do not appear on even the most accurate scale maps. They cause the Vaza-Barris to follow a course from which it breaks loose at Jeremoabo and pursues a curving path down to the coast.

The river Vaza-Barris is connected to no other large stream and it does not follow the slope of the land. Its small tributaries, the Bendegó and the Caraíbas, flowing intermittently over roughly hewn beds, do not match the low points of the land. Theirs is a fugitive existence, one dependent on rainy seasons. What they really are is a kind of drainage canal, as they are haphazardly formed by the swift torrential currents that follow the topographical relief of the region and are most often in harmony with the general lay of the land as set out by the mountains. These are rivers with no purpose. They suddenly fill up and overflow, dredging their beds again and overcoming the obstacle of the general declivity. They flow along toward the main stream for a short time and then go dry, back to their original look of winding trenches strewn with stones and rubble.

The Vaza-Barris, a river without sources, in whose bed grasses flourish and herds graze, would not have had the course it has today had there been a perennial flow to assure it a balanced delineation from a sustained force. Its function as a geological agent is revolutionary; most of the time it is cut into segments, broken into stagnant clusters of water, or dry, like some long, twisting, dusty road. When it does grow, bellying out into floods, as it were, it picks up the wild waters that come crashing down from the cliffs. For a few weeks it becomes a surge of muddy, swirling waters, soon to disappear with a complete drainage, emptying out as its name in Portuguese implies, replacing the indigenous one of Irapiranga, meaning “red honey.” It is a wave dropping down across the slopes of Itiúba as the force of its current is increased by the narrow space between its banks, running swiftly along its course to Jeremoabo.

We have seen how all around nature mimics the brutal environment. It grinds down onto a grim terrain without any opulent scenery of mountains and plateaus or endless rolling plains. It is made up, rather, of a hodgepodge where natural features are shuffled about in a frightful confusion: Flatlands when seen close by are but a series of hillocks marked by pits and caves. Other hills, in contrast to the fields around, look to be rather high but are really but some few dozen yards above the flats. When one crosses them, the tablelands have an ugly and chaotic aspect of filled-in pits. Because of the denuding and gradual reshaping of the hillsides, there is an end to the lovely effect one gets from the ranges of the Gerais. Gone is the enticing grandeur of panoramas where earth and sky seem to blend in an amazing, distant mix of colors.