Mancha Leads the Way

They came to “the roughest and most broken country imaginable.”

Tiny trails led through winding valleys, across high passes and over little bridges spanning deep canyons.  Some of the inclines they had to climb were almost heartbreaking, and he had to be very cautious not to overstrain Mancha and Gato.  Lying below in the canyon were the bleached bones of burros and horses who had died trying to scale these mountains.  Then landslides and swollen rivers made it impossible to follow ever this poor excuse for a road.  He was forced to turn west into the Andes mountains again and hire an Indian guide to steer him through a country seldom seen by white men.

Though Tschiffely rode, the coca-chewing Indian had no problem keeping up and in fact often out-distanced the horses.  After some time he brought them to the most frightening bridge Tschiffely had ever encountered.

“We had crossed some giddy and wobbly hanging bridges before, but here we came to the worst I had ever seen or ever wish to see again.  Even without horses the crossing of such bridges is apt to make anybody feel cold ripples running down the back, and, in fact, many people have to be blindfolded and strapped on stretchers to be carried across,” he recalled.

Spanning a wild river hundreds of feet below was a bridge that looked like a long hammock swung high up from one rock to another.  Bits of rope, wire and fiber held the rickety structure together.  The floor was made of sticks laid crosswise and covered with some coarse fiber matting to give a foothold and to prevent slipping which would inevitably prove fatal.  The width was no more than four feet and its length was more than one hundred and fifty yards.  In the middle the thing sagged down like a slack rope.  It was a horseman’s nightmare.

Upon examining it closely, Tschiffely said he felt as if he had swallowed a block of ice.  He thought about turning back.  But his only other option was to wait many long months in some nameless Indian village for the dry season.  He had no choice.  They had to cross.  He instructed the Indian to take Mancha’s lead line and go ahead.  He caught the horse by the tail and followed behind.

“When we stepped on the bridge Mancha hesitated for a moment, then he sniffed the matting with suspicion, and after examining the strange surroundings he listened to me and cautiously advanced.  As we approached the deep sag in the middle, the bridge began to sway horribly, and for a moment I was afraid the horse would try to turn back, which would have been the end of him; but now, he had merely stopped to wait until the swinging motion was less, and then he moved on again.

I was nearly choking with excitement but kept on talking to him and patting his haunches, an attention of which he was very fond.  Once we started upwards after having crossed the middle, even Mancha seemed to realize that we had passed the worst part, for now he began to hurry towards safety.  His weight shook the bridge so much that I had to catch hold of the wires on the sides to keep my balance.  Gato, when his time came, seeing his companion on the other side, gave less trouble and crossed over as steadily as if he were walking along a trail,” Tschiffely wrote.

Through Deserts Extreme

The next few days were a terror of torrential rains, slick trails and land­slides.  Following their guide, the trio continued upwards.  The sun disappeared, leaving them chilled to the bone.  When the rains finally subsided, they pushed on, arriving at a small village at the top of the world.  Here the guide left them, and Tschiffely, Mancha and Gato started their long, weary descent towards the Peruvian capital of Lima.

It was an arduous task to reach the city.  On the way he was careful not to contract “verruga”, a mysterious malady that brought on frightful boils, swellings and death.  Finally, looking down from the top of a mountain, far below he saw a train running through the canyon.  A sight, he recalled, that he had not seen for a long time.

On the next leg of their journey water became scarce.  From the freezing mountains they had plunged down into the fiery hell known as the Matacaballo (“Horse-killer”) Desert.  The horses struggled and sank in merciless sand dunes which rose one after another like huge ocean billows.  Outside the town of Ancon they passed through a battlefield where soldiers from Chile and Peru had fought long ago.  Once buried where they fell in the sand, the retreating desert had now exposed its corrupt secret.  Bleached bones lay strewn about like old toys.

Leaving the town behind, he still rode north, forsaking the trail and following the coast.

Due to the terrific heat, Tschiffely would start before sunrise, pushing Mancha and Gato hard until the heat became unbearable, at which time they would seek shelter.

“Journeys through such deserts are trying in the extreme.  At first the body suffers, then everything physical becomes abstract.  Later on the brain becomes dull and the thoughts mixed;  one becomes indifferent about things, and then everything seems like a moving picture or a strange dream, and only the will to arrive and to keep awake is left,” he said.

Gato the Goat

Peru finally lay conquered and behind them.  In Ecuador they entered the mountains and froze once again.  At one point a landslide had washed the trail away.  To turn back meant a detour of two or three long days.  But before them lay an eight-foot gap between both sides of the trail.  Mancha was the saddle horse that day and was going in front.  As the pack saddle needed readjusting, Aimé walked back to Gato to do this before retracing his march.  He had been working for a while, when he glanced up and saw Mancha making his way towards the spot where the trail was missing.  Before he could stop him, Mancha had jumped across to the other side.

“There was no time for much thinking.  I tied Gato to a rock and then jumped across to do the same to Mancha, lest he continue his dangerous wanderings.  Now the question was whether it would be safer to bring the one back or cross the other.  I unsaddled Gato, who jumped across like a goat.  I brought across the pack and saddle by means of a rope, having to cross from side to side several times to accomplish this primitive and ticklish piece of engineering.  Another fright, a good lesson and many miles saved,” Tschiffely wrote.

He rode through Ecuador and on into Columbia.  The balance of the trip to Cartagena was a nightmare of water, lightning, washed-out trails and dense jungle.  He had been in the saddle for almost two years and his initial boyish enthusiasm was now tempered by the hardships he had weathered.  There were few silvery moons, balmy tropical breezes or wavy palms out here.  He was more likely to encounter mosquitoes, sand-flies, suffocating heat, poisonous plants and tropical diseases.  He had long ago learned that the need for constant vigilance frayed his nerves and doubled the natural weariness of travel.  Most importantly he had discovered that a long horseback ride, which sounds so thrilling in prospect, was in fact immensely wearisome and monotonous.

Yet he never considered turning back.

The Young Pancho Villa

            The Darian Gap of Columbia was a trackless jungle, so along with Mancha and Gato, he took ship to Panama. Here he was welcomed as a hero by the Americans in charge of the Panama Canal.

During the course of his journey, Tschiffely had been sending letters back to friends in Buenos Aires, never suspecting that some of his hastily-scribbled messages were being printed in newspapers, or that they might appeal to a wide reading public in both North and South America!  His fame was growing, though he was still totally unaware of any of these developments.  Instead, with more than 5,000 miles of horrific travel already behind him, he was beginning to believe he would see the trip through to the end.  The hearty American response in Panama helped justify that belief.

He now made his way through the jungles of Central America, avoiding bandits, poisonous snakes and hostile revolutionaries.  However, after crossing into Mexico, Gato went suddenly lame, and Tschiffely, taking pity, shipped him to Mexico City to await his arrival.  Tschiffely and Mancha now marched north alone, past Tehuantepec, Oaxaca and finally into Mexico City, where they retrieved their comrade.

In northern Mexico, awash in revolutionary fervor, lawlessness and banditry, he was forced to travel with a military escort provided by the Mexican government.  One night he was approached by a secretive man who asked him in a hushed voice if he wished to purchase the skull of the infamous and recently assassinated Pancho Villa.  Before Tschiffely had a chance to say “no,” the man produced what was obviously the skull of a child.  When Tschiffely pointed this out, the black-marketeer informed him, “Quite right, Señor, this is the skull of Pancho Villa when he was a baby.”

Victory in Sight

At last the trail became easier.  They crossed into the United States at Laredo, Texas and during their travels in that state were the guests of the Texas Rangers.  They continued northward, past Oklahoma, the Ozarks, and on to St. Louis.  From there the trio crossed the Mississippi and journeyed to Indianapolis, Columbus, across the Blue Ridge Mountains.  Just short of their final goal an American motorist took deliberate aim at them, hit Mancha and sped away.  Luckily the tough Criollo was unhurt.

“But if I had still been armed,” writes Tschiffely, “which was never the case after I crossed the US border, there is no telling what I would have done to that man.”

At long last, after more than three years in the saddle, the amateur horse­man and his two “old” horses arrived in Washington D.C.  Word of his remarkable travels had been sent to the National Geographic Magazine, via the Argentine press, who now contacted Tschiffely about writing an article regarding his trip.  The Ambassador from Argentina and other dignitaries took him under their wing.  His greatest coup was when President Calvin Coolidge threw open the doors of the White House for him.

After making a speech at the headquarters of the National Geographic Society, he decided to ship Mancha and Gato to New York, rather than ride there.  There was too much traffic on the roads and he considered riding that short a distance as “only a vulgar publicity stunt.”

In New York, Major James Walker received him at City Hall and presented him with the New York City medal in honour of his ride.  During the course of his stay there he booked passage for Tschiffely and the horses back to Argentina on board the “Vestris” but they missed the departure.  The ship sank a few days into her voyage with a loss of one hundred and ten lives.  Three weeks later he and the horses escaped the whirlwind of New York society and boarded the “Pan-American”, sailing for twenty-eight days, before finally docking in Buenos Aires, almost three years since their rainy departure.

The Heroes of the Pampas Return

            He returned to a hero’s welcome, this novice who the Buenos Aires hidalgos had predicted would die on the trail and embarrass their Criollo horses before international eyes.  Now no praises were grand enough for the three heroes of the pampas.  The Argentines, who had initially failed to support him, now took him into their hearts.  They saw a reflection of themselves in Mancha and Gato.  Like the tough Criollos, what they lacked in refinement and elegance, they made up for in vigor and independence.

Mancha and Gato were pensioned off to an estancia in the south of Argentina.  Tschiffely’s book, “Southern Cross to Pole Star,” is considered the most important equestrian travel book of the 20^th century.  Since its publication in 1933, it has inspired countless equestrian travelers to saddle up and explore the world from China to Canada.  In the mid-1930s Tschiffely rode across England and wrote about this trip as well.  Then in the 1940s he returned one last time to Argentina to visit “my old pals.”  Though they had been running wild on the pampas since his departure, Mancha and Gato remembered him and came when they were called.

As he stroked Mancha’s mane he recalled their long ride, the climb to the top of the Andes and the many challenges they had all three conquered together.

“I remembered sitting out there on a mountain all alone, my thoughts began to wander, as they had often done before when I was on some lonely Andean peak.  The soft, cold, silvery light of the moon gave the mists below a ghostly appearance.  I felt lonely but happy and did not envy any king, potentate or ruler.  Here was I between two continents and two mighty oceans, with my faithful friends of thousands of miles both making the best of a bad meal beside me.  But I knew they were satisfied, for the experience had taught the three of us to be contented, even with the worst."

To go to Tschiffely's official website, please click here.  For more information about Aimé Tschiffely's books, please click here.

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