Remate De Males, with Nazareth and Sao Francisco, is set down in the midst of absolute wilderness.  Directly behind the village is the almost impenetrable maze of tropical jungle.  If with the aid of a machete one gets a minute’s walk into it, he cannot find his way out except by the cackling of the hens around the houses.  A dense wall of vegetation shuts in the settlement on every side.  Tall palms stand above the rest of the trees; lower down is a mass of smaller but more luxuriant plants, while everywhere is the twining, tangled lianas, making the forest a dark labyrinth of devious ways.  Here and there are patches of tropical blossoms, towering ferns, fungoid growths, or some rare and beautiful orchid whose parasitical roots have attached themselves to a tree trunk.  And there is always the subdued confusion that betokens the teeming animal life.

Looking up the Itecoahy River, one can see nothing but endless forest and jungle.  And the same scene continues for a distance of some eight or nine hundred miles until reaching the headwaters of the river somewhere far up in Bolivian territory.  No settlements are to be found up there; a few seringales from seventy-five to a hundred miles apart constitute the only human habitations in this large area.  So wild and desolate is this river that its length and course are only vaguely indicated even on the best Brazilian maps.  It is popularly supposed that the Itecoahy takes its actual rise about two weeks’ journey from its nominal head in an absolutely unexplored region.

I found the life very monotonous in Remate de Males, especially when the river began to go down.  This meant the almost complete ending of communication with the outer world; news from home reached me seldom and there was no relief from the isolation.  In addition, the various torments of the region are worse at this season.  Sitting beside the muddy banks of the Itecoahy at sunset, when the vapours arose from the immense swamps and the sky was coloured in fantastical designs across the western horizon, was the only relief from the sweltering heat of the day, for a brief time before the night and its tortures began.  Soon the chorus of a million frogs would start.  At first is heard only the croaking of a few; then gradually more and more add their music until a loud penetrating throb makes the still, vapour-laden atmosphere vibrate.  The sound reminded me strikingly of that which is heard when pneumatic hammers are driving home rivets through steel beams.  There were other frogs whose louder and deeper-pitched tones could be distinguished through the main nocturnal song.  These seemed always to be grumbling something about “Rubberboots—­Rubberboots.”