Cecile Hulse Matschat
Seven Grass Huts; Armchair travel through Cáceres, Mato Grosso in 1939
In SEVEN GRASS HUTS the author Cecile Hulse Matschat describes her life as an engineer’s wife in South and Central America; “encountering adventures in regions no white woman had been before her; ...” Their first assignment together is in Brazil’s interior, southwest Mato Grosso, surveying for a ‘fazendeiro’ with large land holdings, Dom João Barros.. The trip there was normal for the times. First, travel by steamer to Bahia, Rio de Janeiro, and Santos and then by rail through São Paulo and Campo Grande to Corumbá. Next by river steamer up the Rio Paraguai to São Luis de Cáceres and then further up the Sepotuba to General Rondon’s old telegraph supply depot at Tapirapuã. Finally a one day mule ride to the northwest brought up their camp near present day Tangará da Serra on or near the ‘Chapada dos Parecis’.
After encountering snakes, piranha (cannibal fish), Indians, and an unbelievable episode with Victoria regias in the Pantanal, it was time for a short stop and a little rest.
“I welcomed the few days stay in Cáceres. I wanted to see the country and learn its history. Dragging the unwilling Matéo along as interpreter, I tried to talk with the girls and women – white or brown – who walked beneath the trees in the praca, or sat in laughing, chattering groups in doorways and peeked shyly from latticed windows. Certainly the women of Cáceres have more liberty than their country cousins, but of opinions regarding matters outside the home they have none.
“When they learned my destination was inner-most Mato Grosso, the staid folk of Cáceres looked at me pityingly, indulgently, sorrowfully – but all agreed I was a little mad. ‘[Muito longe] – off the earth,’ they said, tapping their foreheads significantly. But they treated me most respectfully – from a safe distance – for the people of the hinterlands revere those who are a little touched. After listening to a few tales of Indian proficiency with poisoned arrows, outlaws, dead bodies floating down the flooded river, and danger from tigers, man-eating snakes, and the women-crazed crocodiles (the meat is more tender, Senhora), I agreed with them.
Here we have a good example of the picture of the South American interior received by the armchair traveler in the English speaking world during this period.
“Matto Grosso, the great wilderness, is the most romantic, and in theory, the most lawless of the Brazilian provinces. Gossip claims it is a land of stinking swamps, of sun-baked cattle plains, of wooded hills, and countless streams. Gossip says it is peopled with hot-tempered, dark-skinned Brazilians, who are proud of their Portuguese ancestry; some of them, like the Paulistas, are of mixed Indian and Portuguese blood; there are a few Negroes whose ancestors were brought in chains from Africa – today they are gaily clad, silver spurred gauchos; Serbians, who trek from ranch to ranch, their mules laden packs of dry goods and household appliances; Japanese coffee growers, who keep to themselves and save their hard-earned money that they may return with fortunes to their native land. It is rumored that these people are unduly suspicious of strangers and bow to no law but that of the Smith & Wesson.
The book is not without good humor. Our narrator traveled with three chickens and a rooster, named respectively, Mae West, Lydia Pinkham, Emily Post and Brigham Young, her grandmother’s silver, and apparently sat a good table.
Seven Grass Huts; An Engineer’s Wife in Central-and-South America; New York, The Literary Guild of America, Inc., 1939
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