m to
any one he chose.

[Illustration: The Upper Arinos River.]

[Illustration: The Arinos River above the Rapids.]

I was terribly upset to see a European in such a position, and, what was
worse, I was not in a position to help. Nor indeed was help asked for or
wanted. The old fellow bore the burden bravely, and said he had never
been happier in his life. Supposing he were made to return to his own
country--from which he had been absent so many years--he philosophically
argued, what could he be, with no money and no friends, but a most
unhappy man? All his relatives and friends must have died; the habits he
had acquired in the wilds were not suitable for European cities; he was
too old to change them. The German was an extraordinarily fine type of
a man, honest, straightforward, brave. He spoke in the kindest and
fairest way of his master. He had sold himself because of necessity. It
was now a matter of honour, and he would remain a slave until it was
possible to repay the purchase money--some four hundred pounds sterling,
if I remember rightly--which he never expected to be able to repay at
all.

The German told me some interesting things about the immediate
neighbourhood of the camp. The Indians of the Cayapo tribe, who lived
close by, did not interfere with the seringueiros. He had been there
several years in succession, and he had never seen an Indian. The
seringueiros only went to collect rubber during some three or four months
each year, after which time they returned to the distant towns south as
far as Cuyaba and Corumba. At the beginning of the rainy season, when the
time came for them to retire, the Indians generally began to remind the
seringueiros that it was time to go, by placing obstacles on the estrada,
by removing cups or even the collars from the rubber trees. But so far in
that region, although footmarks of Indians and other signs of them had
been noticed, not one individual had been actually seen. Their voices
were frequently heard in the distance singing war songs.

"Hark!" said the German to me, "do you hear them?"

I listened attentively. Far, far down the river a faint chorus of voices
could just be heard--intermittent sounds of "hua ... hua ... hua ...
hua." In the stillness of the night the sound could be distinguished
clearly. It went on until sunrise, when it gradually died out.

There was a big lagoon to the west of Porto Velho, formed by the river at
high water. The lagoon dried up