tary--the name and position of which I withhold--opens into the
main river. The natives were Cucama Indians, an amiable but degraded
race, with mental powers hardly superior to the average Londoner. I
had effected some cures among them upon my way up the river, and had
impressed them considerably with my personality, so that I was not
surprised to find myself eagerly awaited upon my return. I gathered
from their signs that someone had urgent need of my medical services,
and I followed the chief to one of his huts. When I entered I found
that the sufferer to whose aid I had been summoned had that instant
expired. He was, to my surprise, no Indian, but a white man; indeed, I
may say a very white man, for he was flaxen-haired and had some
characteristics of an albino. He was clad in rags, was very emaciated,
and bore every trace of prolonged hardship. So far as I could
understand the account of the natives, he was a complete stranger to
them, and had come upon their village through the woods alone and in
the last stage of exhaustion.

"The man's knapsack lay beside the couch, and I examined the contents.
His name was written upon a tab within it--Maple White, Lake Avenue,
Detroit, Michigan. It is a name to which I am prepared always to lift
my hat. It is not too much to say that it will rank level with my own
when the final credit of this business comes to be apportioned.

"From the contents of the knapsack it was evident that this man had
been an artist and poet in search of effects. There were scraps of
verse. I do not profess to be a judge of such things, but they
appeared to me to be singularly wanting in merit. There were also some
rather commonplace pictures of river scenery, a paint-box, a box of
colored chalks, some brushes, that curved bone which lies upon my
inkstand, a volume of Baxter's 'Moths and Butterflies,' a cheap
revolver, and a few cartridges. Of personal equipment he either had
none or he had lost it in his journey. Such were the total effects of
this strange American Bohemian.

"I was turning away from him when I observed that something projected
from the front of his ragged jacket. It was this sketch-book, which
was as dilapidated then as you see it now. Indeed, I can assure you
that a first folio of Shakespeare could not be treated with greater
reverence than this relic has been since it came into my possession. I
hand it to you now, and I ask you to take it page by page and to
ex