Life in the hotel during the rainy season is variegated.  I have spoken of having eaten a meal with water up to my knees.  That happened often during the weeks when the river was at its highest level.  Once when we were having our noon-day meal during the extreme high-water period a man came paddling his canoe in at the open door, sailed past us, splashing a little water on the table as he did so, and navigated through to the back room where he delivered some supplies.

During this feat everybody displayed the cheerful and courteous disposition usual to the Brazilians.  At this season you must wear wading boots to eat a meal or do anything else about the house.  Sleeping is somewhat easier as the hammocks are suspended about three feet above the level of the water, but an involuntary plunge is a thing not entirely unknown to an amateur sleeping in a hammock; I know this from personal experience.

Every morning the butcher comes to the village between five and six o’clock and sharpens his knife while he awaits calls for his ministrations.  He is an undersized man with very broad shoulders and a face remarkable for its cunning, cruel expression.  His olive-brown complexion, slanting eyes, high cheek-bones, and sharp-filed teeth are all signs of his coming from the great unknown interior.  His business here is to slaughter the cattle of the town.  He does this deftly by thrusting a long-bladed knife into the neck of the animal at the base of the brain, until it severs the medulla, whereupon the animal collapses without any visible sign of suffering.  It is then skinned and the intestines thrown into the water where they are immediately devoured by a small but voracious fish called the candiroo-escrivao.  This whole operation is carried on inside the house, in the back-room, as long as the land is flooded.

It must be remembered that during the rainy season an area equal in size to about a third of the United States is entirely submerged.  There is a network of rivers that eventually find their way into the Amazon and the land between is completely inundated.  In all this immense territory there are only a few spots of sufficient elevation to be left high and dry.  Remate de Males, as I have explained, is at the junction of the Itecoahy and the Javary rivers, the latter 700 miles in length, and thirty miles or so below the village the Javary joins the Amazon proper, or Solimoes as it is called here.  Thus we are in the heart of the submerged region.  When I first arrived in February, 1910, I found the river still confined to its channel, with the water about ten feet below the level of the street.  A few weeks later it was impossible to take a single step on dry land anywhere.

The water that drives the rubber-workers out of the forests also drives all animal life to safety.  Some of the creatures seek refuge in the village.  I remember that we once had a huge alligator take temporary lodgings in the backyard of the hotel after he had travelled no one knows how many miles through the inundated forest.  At all hours we could hear him making excursions under the house to snatch refuse thrown from the kitchen, but we always knew he would have welcomed more eagerly a member of the household who might drop his way.