A crowd of about fifty Indians from the Curuca River had been brought to Remate de Males by launch.  They belonged to the territory owned by Mons. Danon and slept outside the store-rooms of this plutocrat.  Men, women, and children arranged their quarters in the soft mud until they could be taken to his rubber estate some hundred miles up the Javary River.  They were still waiting to be equipped with rubber-workers’ outfits when the malaria began its work among them.  The poor mistreated Indians seemed to have been literally saturated with the germs, as they always slept without any protection whatever; consequently their systems offered less resistance to the disease than the ordinary Brazilian’s.  In four days there were only twelve persons left out of fifty-two.

During the last weeks of my stay in Remate de Males, I received an invitation to take lunch with the local Department Secretary, Professor Silveiro, an extremely hospitable and well educated Brazilian.  The importance of such an invitation meant for me a radical change in appearance—­an extensive alteration that could not be wrought without considerable pains.  I had to have a five-months’ beard shaved off, and then get into my best New York shirt, not to forget a high collar.  I also considered that the occasion necessitated the impressiveness of a frock-coat, which I produced at the end of a long search among my baggage and proceeded to don after extracting a tarantula and some stray scolopendra from the sleeves and pockets.  The sensation of wearing a stiff collar was novel, and not altogether welcome, since the temperature was near the 100 deg. mark.  The reward for my discomfort came, however, in the shape of the best meal I ever had in the Amazon region.

During these dull days I was made happy by finding a copy of Mark Twain’s A Tramp Abroad in a store over in Nazareth on the Peruvian side of the Javary River.  I took it with me to my hammock, hailing with joy the opportunity of receiving in the wilderness something that promised a word from “God’s Own Country.”  But before I could begin the book I had an attack of swamp-fever that laid me up four days.  During one of the intermissions, when I was barely able to move around, I commenced reading Mark Twain.  It did not take more than two pages of the book to make me forget all about my fever.  When I got to the ninth page, I laughed as I had not laughed for months, and page 14 made me roar so athletically that I lost my balance and fell out of my hammock on the floor.  I soon recovered and crept back into the hammock, but out I went when I reached page 16, and repeated the performance at pages 19, 21, and 24 until the supplementary excitement became monotonous.  Whereupon I procured some rags and excelsior, made a bed underneath the hammock, and proceeded to enjoy our eminent humourist’s experience in peace.

CHAPTER IV

THE JOURNEY UP THE ITECOAHY RIVER