When the lonely wanderer on the river in a canoe, or sitting in his hammock, philosophises over the perplexing questions of life, he is assisted in his dreary analysis by the gloomy and hair-raising cry of the mother of the moon.  When the first four notes strike his ear, he will listen, thinking that some human being in dire distress is somewhere out in the swamps, pitifully calling for help, but in so painful a manner that it seems as if all hope were abandoned.  Still listening, he will hear the four succeeding melancholy notes, sounding as if the desolate sufferer were giving up the ghost in a last desperate effort.  The final two notes, following after a brief interval, tell him that he now hears the last despairing sobs of a condemned soul.  So harrowing and depressing is this song that, once heard, the memory of it alone will cause one’s hair to stand on end and he will be grateful when too far away to hear again this sob of the forest.

A surprise was in store for me one day when I visited the domicile of a rubber-worker living at the extreme end of the estate.  I expected to find a dwelling of the ordinary appearance, raised on poles above the ground, but instead this hut was built among the branches of a tree some twenty feet above the level of the earth.  I commenced climbing the rickety ladder leading to the door of the hut.  Half-way up a familiar sound reached my ear.  Yes, I had surely heard that sound before, but far away from this place.  When I finally entered the habitation and had exchanged greetings with the head of the family, I looked for the source of the sound.  Turning round I saw a woman sitting at a sewing-machine, working on a shirt evidently for her husband.  I examined this machine with great curiosity and found it to be a “New Home” sewing-machine from New York.  What journeys and transfers had not this apparatus undergone before it finally settled here in a tree-top in this far-off wilderness!

One afternoon while sitting in the office at headquarters discussing Amazonian politics with Coronel da Silva, Francisco, a rubber-worker, came up and talked for a while with the Coronel, who then turned to me and said:  “Do you want to get the skin of a black jaguar?  Francisco has just killed one on his estrada while collecting rubber-milk; he will take you down to his barracao, and from there he will lead you to the spot where the jaguar lies, and there you can skin him.”

I thanked Francisco for his information and went for my machete, having my pistol already in my belt.  I joined him at the foot of the river bank outside the main building, where he was waiting for me in his canoe, and we paddled down-stream to his hut.  On our way (he lived about two miles below Floresta) he told me that he was walking at a good rate on the narrow path of the estrada when he was attracted by a growling and snarling in the thicket.  He stopped and saw a black jaguar grappling with a full-grown