to dry in the sun. Jerked beef was always to be relied
upon when other supplies ran low.

There must have been some terrible mystery connected with the
milk. There were twenty-one cows on the place, but never a drop of
milk from them was to be had. I was always afraid to ask any questions
about this deficiency for fear I might be treading on dangerous ground,
but with the lack of any other explanation I ascribe it to continual
sickness from which the cattle must probably suffer, in common with
every other living thing here.

During the month of September, the number of patients from fever,
pleurisy, and accidents, at Floresta headquarters, amounted to 82% of
the population. A fever resembling typhoid resulted in several cases
from drinking the river-water. The Coronel claimed that Mangeroma
Indians living in the interior about 150 miles from Floresta had
poisoned the creeks and affluents of the Itecoahy to take revenge upon
the traders who brought the much dreaded Peruvian rubber-workers up
to the Itecoahy River estates. These Peruvians are hated because they
abduct the women of the indigenous tribes, when on their expeditions
far into the forests where these tribes live, and consequently they
are hunted down and their entrance to the region as far as possible
prevented.

At this morning hour in New York (Floresta is on the same meridian
as New York), thousands of toilers are entering the hot subways and
legions of workers are filing into their offices and stuffy shops
to take their places at the huge machinery which keeps the world
in motion. At the very same hour a handful of rubber-workers are
passing my house, returning from their first trip in the _estradas_,
where they have been tapping the trees, and on their way to the huts
and a frugal breakfast. Here in the wilds of Brazil there are no
subways, no worry about the "market," nor indeed any thought for the
morrow. Nature supplies the rubber trees, and the "boss" the tools to
work them with; the philosophy of the rubber-worker goes no farther. A
shirt, trousers, and a hat are all the dress that fashion requires,
and often the worker even finds the shirt superfluous. He wears a
pair of overalls, and carries slung over his shoulder his rifle and
the little hatchet for tapping the trees, besides a small rubber bag
in which he keeps a supply of farinha and jerked beef, should he be
prevented from reaching his hut in regulation time.

The _seringueiro_ is free in