one had a comical encounter with a young dog, a jovial near-puppy, of Colonel Rondon’s, named Cartucho.  He had been christened the jolly-cum-pup, from a character in one of Frank Stockton’s stories, which I suppose are now remembered only by elderly people, and by them only if they are natives of the United States.  Cartucho was lying with his head on the ox-hide that served as table, waiting with poorly dissembled impatience for his share of the banquet.  The mantis flew down on the ox-hide and proceeded to crawl over it, taking little flights from one corner to another; and whenever it thought itself menaced it assumed an attitude of seeming devotion and real defiance.  Soon it lit in front of Cartucho’s nose.  Cartucho cocked his big ears forward, stretched his neck, and cautiously sniffed at the new arrival, not with any hostile design, but merely to find out whether it would prove to be a playmate.  The mantis promptly assumed an attitude of prayer.  This struck Cartucho as both novel and interesting, and he thrust his sniffing black nose still nearer.  The mantis dexterously thrust forward first one and then the other armed fore leg, touching the intrusive nose, which was instantly jerked back and again slowly and inquiringly brought forward.  Then the mantis suddenly flew in Cartucho’s face, whereupon Cartucho, with a smothered yelp of dismay, almost turned a back somersault; and the triumphant mantis flew back to the middle of the ox-hide, among the plates, where it reared erect and defied the laughing and applauding company.

On the morning of the 29th we were rather late in starting, because the rain had continued through the night into the morning, drenching everything.  After nightfall there had been some mosquitoes, and the piums were a pest during daylight; where one bites it leaves a tiny black spot on the skin which lasts for several weeks.  In the slippery mud one of the pack-mules fell and injured itself so that it had to be abandoned.  Soon after starting we came on the telegraph-line, which runs from Cuyaba.  This was the first time we had seen it.  Two Parecis Indians joined us, leading a pack-bullock.  They were dressed in hat, shirt, trousers, and sandals, precisely like the ordinary Brazilian caboclos, as the poor backwoods peasants, usually with little white blood in them, are colloquially and half-derisively styled—­caboclo being originally a Guarany word meaning “naked savage.”  These two Indians were in the employ of the Telegraphic Commission, and had been patrolling the telegraph-line.  The bullock carried their personal belongings and the tools with which they could repair a break.  The commission pays the ordinary Indian worker 66 cents a day; a very good worker gets $1, and the chief $1.66.  No man gets anything unless he works.  Colonel Rondon, by just, kindly, and understanding treatment of these Indians, who previously had often been exploited and maltreated by rubber-gatherers, has made them the loyal friends of the government.  He has gathered them at the telegraph stations, where they cultivate fields of mandioc, beans, potatoes, maize, and other vegetables, and where he is introducing them to stock-raising; and the entire work of guarding and patrolling the line is theirs.