I had begun my vigil before sunrise, when there are two or three hours very cool and humid.  In the dry season the dew which collects is of the greatest importance to animal and plant life.  For the tired and thirsty wanderer, the calyx of the beautiful scarlet orchid, which grows abundantly in this region, contains the refreshment of two or three ounces of clear, cool water.  But you must look carefully into this cup of nature to see that no insects lurk in its depths to spoil the draught.

I have previously described the breakfast table of the millionaire Coronel R. da Silva, with its black beans, the dreadful farinha, the black coffee, and the handful of mutilated bolachas or biscuits.  The only variable factor was the meat, sometimes wild hog, occasionally tapir, and very often the common green parrot or the howling monkey.  At most meals the pirarucu fish appears, especially on Mondays when the rubber-workers have had the whole of Sunday in which to indulge in the sport of shooting this gamy two-hundred-pound fish.  They carry their pirarucu to headquarters and courteously offer the best cuts to the Coronel, afterwards cutting the rest into long strips and leaving them to dry in the sun.  Jerked beef was always to be relied upon when other supplies ran low.

There must have been some terrible mystery connected with the milk.  There were twenty-one cows on the place, but never a drop of milk from them was to be had.  I was always afraid to ask any questions about this deficiency for fear I might be treading on dangerous ground, but with the lack of any other explanation I ascribe it to continual sickness from which the cattle must probably suffer, in common with every other living thing here.

During the month of September, the number of patients from fever, pleurisy, and accidents, at Floresta headquarters, amounted to 82% of the population.  A fever resembling typhoid resulted in several cases from drinking the river-water.  The Coronel claimed that Mangeroma Indians living in the interior about 150 miles from Floresta had poisoned the creeks and affluents of the Itecoahy to take revenge upon the traders who brought the much dreaded Peruvian rubber-workers up to the Itecoahy River estates.  These Peruvians are hated because they abduct the women of the indigenous tribes, when on their expeditions far into the forests where these tribes live, and consequently they are hunted down and their entrance to the region as far as possible prevented.

At this morning hour in New York (Floresta is on the same meridian as New York), thousands of toilers are entering the hot subways and legions of workers are filing into their offices and stuffy shops to take their places at the huge machinery which keeps the world in motion.  At the very same hour a handful of rubber-workers are passing my house, returning from their first trip in the estradas, where they have been tapping the trees, and on their way