becomes
unbalanced, and you have the reason why murders are committed wholesale
in a stupid effort chiefly to preserve oneself.

The Apiacar Indians, I was told, were formerly much more numerous in that
region than at present. Most of them had been killed off, and their women
stolen. When Mr. Barretto arrived at the _collectoria_ he had great
trouble in persuading the Indians to come near him; but he has been so
extremely kind to them that now the entire tribe--some twenty
people--have established themselves at the _collectoria_ itself, where
they are given work to do as police, rubber collectors, and
agriculturists combined. Mr. Barretto and his assistant were much
respected and loved by the natives. Unlike his predecessor, he treated
them with the greatest consideration and generosity.

Mr. Barretto furnished me with an interesting table showing the amount of
production and export of rubber from that district for the year 1910.
From this table it appears that from May 3rd to December 31st 30,356 kil.
of the finest quality rubber, 10,153 kil. of _sernamby_ (or scrap
rubber), 4,858 kil. of _caoutchouc_, and 30,655 kil. of _sernamby
caoutchouc_--altogether a total of 76,022 kil.--passed through the
_collectoria_ on the Matto Grosso side, which does not include the
opposite side of the river, belonging to the Province of Para, where
another _collectoria_ has been established. That quantity of rubber had
been collected by some eighty people, all told, including the local
Indians.

[Illustration: Mundurucu Indians.]

[Illustration: Mundurucu Indians.]

It was impossible to get labour up that river. The few _seringueiros_,
chiefly negroes who were there in absolute slavery, had been led and
established by their masters up the river, with no chance of getting
away. Their masters came, of course, every year to bring down the rubber
that had been collected. Twenty times the quantity could easily be
brought down to the coast if labour were obtainable. Not only was the
Juruena River itself almost absolutely untouched commercially--as we have
seen, we did not meet a soul during the fifty days we navigated it--but
even important tributaries close to S. Manoel, such as the Euphrasia, the
Sao Thome, the Sao Florencio, the Misericordia, and others, were
absolutely desert regions, although the quantity of rubber to be found
along those streams must be immense. The difficulty of transport, even on
the Tapajoz--from the junction of