the iron bent to an S shape and the branch slipped off after tearing the post from its upper fastenings.  It was a narrow escape from a calamity, but the additional excitement aggravated my fever and I went from bad to worse.  Therefore it was found advisable, when we arrived, late the next day, at the mouth of the Branco, to put me ashore to stay in the hut of the manager of the rubber estate, so that I might not cause the crew and the passengers of the launch inconvenience through my sickness and perhaps ultimate death.  I was carried up to the hut and placed in a hammock where I was given a heavy dose of quinine.  I dimly remember hearing the farewell-toot of the launch as she left for the down-river trip, and there I was alone in a strange place among people of whose language I understood very little.  In the afternoon a young boy was placed in a hammock next to mine, and soon after they brought in a big, heavy Brazilian negro, whom they put on the other side.  Like me they were suffering from Javary fever and kept moaning all through the afternoon in their pain, but all three of us were too sick to pay any attention to each other.  That night my fever abated a trifle and I could hear the big fellow raving in delirium about snakes and lizards, which he imagined he saw.  When the sun rose at six the next morning he was dead.  The boy expired during the afternoon.

It was torture to lie under the mosquito-net with the fever pulsing through my veins and keeping my blood at a high temperature, but I dared not venture out, even if I had possessed the strength to do so, for fear of the mosquitoes and the sand-flies which buzzed outside in legions.  For several days I remained thus and then began to mend a little.  Whether it was because of the greater vitality of the white race or because I had not absorbed a fatal dose, I do not know, but I improved.  When I felt well enough, I got up and arranged with the rubber-estate manager to give me two Indians to paddle me and my baggage down to Floresta.  I wanted to get down there where I could have better accommodations before I should become sick again.

CHAPTER V

FLORESTA:  LIFE AMONG THE RUBBER-WORKERS

It was half past five in the morning when we arrived at the landing of the Floresta estate.  Since it was too early to go up to the house I placed my trunk on the bank and sat admiring the surrounding landscape, partly enveloped in the mist that always hangs over these damp forests until sunrise.  The sun was just beginning to colour the eastern sky with faint warm tints.  Before me was the placid surface of the Itecoahy, which seemed as though nothing but my Indian’s paddles had disturbed it for a century.  Just here the river made a wide turn and on the sand-bar that was formed a few large freshwater turtles could be seen moving slowly around.  The banks were high and steep, and it appeared incredible that the flood could rise so high that it would inundate the surrounding country and stand ten or twelve feet above the roots of the trees—­a rise that represented about sixty-seven feet in all.