“That, of course, explains it.  Let me see; you have given me your promise that my confidence will be respected?  That confidence, I may say, will be far from complete.  But I am prepared to give you a few indications which will be of interest.  In the first place, you are probably aware that two years ago I made a journey to South America—­one which will be classical in the scientific history of the world?  The object of my journey was to verify some conclusions of Wallace and of Bates, which could only be done by observing their reported facts under the same conditions in which they had themselves noted them.  If my expedition had no other results it would still have been noteworthy, but a curious incident occurred to me while there which opened up an entirely fresh line of inquiry.

“You are aware—­or probably, in this half-educated age, you are not aware—­that the country round some parts of the Amazon is still only partially explored, and that a great number of tributaries, some of them entirely uncharted, run into the main river.  It was my business to visit this little-known back-country and to examine its fauna, which furnished me with the materials for several chapters for that great and monumental work upon zoology which will be my life’s justification.  I was returning, my work accomplished, when I had occasion to spend a night at a small Indian village at a point where a certain tributary—­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.