I said I had. "Good gracious me!" he exclaimed. "I will not let
you go another yard in that dangerous conveyance. I will confiscate it,
as I need a trough for my pigs and it will just do for that purpose, and
not for navigating a dangerous river like this. If you want to go on by
river I will supply you with a good boat."

[Illustration: The Huge Canoe being taken through a Small
Artificial Canal made in the Rocks by the Author and his Men.]

That was the last time I put my foot inside my canoe. I removed for good
the British flag which had flown daily at her stern, and it gave me
quite a _serrement de coeur_ when I patted the poor canoe on her nose and
said good-bye to her for ever. Notwithstanding her miserable appearance
she had done really remarkable work.

CHAPTER XVII

A Fiscal Agency--Former Atrocities--The Apiacar
Indians--Plentiful Rubber--Unexploited Regions--Precious Fossils
thrown away by Author's Followers--A Terrific Storm--Author's
Canoe dashed to Pieces--The Mount S. Benedicto

THE State of Matto Grosso had recently established a fiscal agency at the
junction of the two rivers in order to collect the tax on the rubber
exported from that region. The Fiscal Agent, Mr. Jose Sotero Barretto,
and his assistant, Mr. Julio Vieira Nery, were intelligent and polished
gentlemen. Their predecessor was not like them. His barbarity, not only
to the Apiacar Indians but also to the Brazilians in his employ, was
almost incredible. For no reason whatever he killed men right and left,
until one day as he was getting out of his canoe one of his men shot him
in the back.

So much has been said of late of atrocities in the Putumayo Region that
perhaps one may be allowed to say that the Putumayo Region is not the
only place where atrocities have occurred. To any one not acquainted with
those regions it is difficult to understand why those atrocities take
place at all. Curiously enough, they are due to a large extent to
medicine. Those regions are all extremely malarial. The people who are
ordered there are afraid of being infected long before they start on
their journey. They begin taking preventive quinine and arsenic, which
renders them most irritable and ill-tempered; the solitude preys upon
them, and they add to the poisoning from medicine the evil effects of
excessive drinking. Add again to this that few men can manage to be brave
for a long period of time, and that the brain gradually