And now a few words about the people who lived under the conditions I have described, and who keep up the struggle even though, as they themselves have put it, “each ton of rubber costs a human life.”

In the first place I must correct any erroneous impression as to neatness that may have been formed by my remarks about the animals being kept in the dwellings during the rainy season.  The Brazilians are scrupulous about their personal cleanliness, and in fact, go through difficulties to secure a bath which might well discourage more civilised folk.

No one would dream, for an instant, of immersing himself in the rivers.  In nine cases out of ten it would amount to suicide to do so, and the natives have bathhouses along the shores; more literally bathhouses than ours, for their baths are actually taken in them.  They are just as careful about clothing being aired and clean.  Indeed, the main item of the Brazilian woman’s housekeeping is the washing.  The cooking is rather happy-go-lucky; and there is no use cleaning and polishing iron walls; they get rusty anyhow.

The people are all occupied with the rubber industry and the town owes its existence to the economic necessity of having here a shipping and trading point for the product.  The rubber is gathered farther up along the shores of the Javary and the Itecoahy and is transported by launch and canoe to Remate de Males.  Here it is shipped directly or sold to travelling dealers who send it down to Manaos or Para via the boat of the Amazon Steam Navigation Co., which comes up during the rainy season.  Thence it goes to the ports of the world.

The rubber-worker is a well paid labourer even though he belongs to the unskilled class.  The tapping of the rubber trees and the smoking of the milk pays from eight to ten dollars a day in American gold.  This, to him, of course, is riches and the men labour here in order that they may go back to their own province as wealthy men.  Nothing else will yield this return; the land is not used for other products.  It is hard to see how agriculture or cattle-raising could be carried on in this region, and, if they could, they would certainly not return more than one fourth or one fifth of what the rubber industry does.  The owners of the great rubber estates, or seringales, are enormously wealthy men.

There are fewer women than men in Remate de Males, and none of the former is beautiful.  They are for the most part Indians or Brazilians from the province of Ceara, with very dark skin, hair, and eyes, and teeth filed like shark’s teeth.  They go barefooted, as a rule.  Here you will find all the incongruities typical of a race taking the first step in civilisation.  The women show in their dress how the well-paid men lavish on them the extravagances that appeal to the lingering savage left in their simple natures.