The grave-mound lay within a rude stockade; and an uninscribed wooden cross, gray and weather-beaten, marked the last resting-place of the unknown and forgotten man beneath, the man who had paid with his humble life the cost of pushing the frontier of civilization into the wild savagery of the wilderness.  Farther west the conditions become less healthy.  At this station Colonel Rondon received news of sickness and of some deaths among the employees of the commission in the country to the westward, which we were soon to enter.  Beriberi and malignant malarial fever were the diseases which claimed the major number of the victims.

Surely these are “the men who do the work for which they draw the wage.”  Kermit had with him the same copy of Kipling’s poems which he had carried through Africa.  At these falls there was one sunset of angry splendor; and we contrasted this going down of the sun, through broken rain-clouds and over leagues of wet tropical forest, with the desert sunsets we had seen in Arizona and Sonora, and along the Guaso Nyiro north and west of Mount Kenia, when the barren mountains were changed into flaming “ramparts of slaughter and peril” standing above “the wine-dark flats below.”

It rained during most of the day after our arrival at Utiarity.  Whenever there was any let-up the men promptly came forth from their houses and played head-ball with the utmost vigor; and we would listen to their shrill undulating cries of applause and triumph until we also grew interested and strolled over to look on.  They are more infatuated with the game than an American boy is with baseball or football.  It is an extraordinary thing that this strange and exciting game should be played by, and only by, one little tribe of Indians in what is almost the very centre of South America.  If any traveller or ethnologist knows of a tribe elsewhere that plays a similar game, I wish he would let me know.  To play it demands great activity, vigor, skill, and endurance.  Looking at the strong, supple bodies of the players, and at the number of children roundabout, it seemed as if the tribe must be in vigorous health; yet the Parecis have decreased in numbers, for measles and smallpox have been fatal to them.

By the evening the rain was coming down more heavily than ever.  It was not possible to keep the moisture out of our belongings; everything became mouldy except what became rusty.  It rained all that night; and day-light saw the downpour continuing with no prospect of cessation.  The pack-mules could not have gone on with the march; they were already rather done up by their previous ten days’ labor through rain and mud, and it seemed advisable to wait until the weather became better before attempting to go forward.  Moreover, there had been no chance to take the desired astronomical observations.  There was very little grass for the mules; but there was abundance of a small-leaved plant eight or ten inches high—­unfortunately, not very nourishing—­on which they fed greedily.  In such weather and over such muddy trails oxen travel better than mules.