result was foreshadowed when a porter, loaded with my effects, clambering down the sixty-foot incline extreme low water made at Remate de Males, lost his balance in the last few feet of the descent and dropped into the water, completely ruining a whole pack of photographic supplies whose arrival from New York I had been awaiting for months.  Luckily this was at the beginning of this trip and I could replace them from my general stock.

A hypodermic outfit, quinine, and a few bistouries completed my primitive medical department.  Later on these proved of the greatest value.  I would never think of omitting such supplies even in a case where a few pounds of extra weight are not rashly to be considered.  It turned out that in the regions I penetrated, medical assistance was a thing unheard of within a radius of several hundred miles.

A Luger automatic pistol of a calibre of nine millimetres, and several hundred cartridges, were my armament, and for weeks this pistol became my only means of providing a scant food supply.

Thus equipped I was on hand early in the morning of the day of starting, anxious to see what sort of shipmates I was to have.  They proved all to be seringueiros, bound for the upper river.  Our craft was a forty-foot launch called the Carolina.  There was a large crowd of the passengers assembled when I arrived, and they kept coming.  To my amazement, it developed that one hundred and twenty souls were expected to find room on board, together with several tons of merchandise.  The mystery of how the load was to be accommodated was somewhat solved, when I saw them attach a lighter to each side of the launch, and again, when some of the helpers brought up a fleet of dugouts which they proceeded to make fast by a stern hawser.  But the mystery was again increased, when I was told that none of the passengers intended to occupy permanent quarters on the auxiliary fleet.  As I was already taken care of, I resolved that if the problem was to worry anybody, it would be the seringueiros, though I realised that I would be travelling by “slow steamer” when the little old-fashioned Carolina should at length begin the task of fighting the five-mile current with this tagging fleet to challenge its claim to a twelve-horse-power engine.

The seringueiros and their families occupied every foot of space that was not reserved for merchandise.  Hammocks were strung over and under each other in every direction, secured to the posts which supported the roof.  Between them the rubber-coated knapsacks were suspended.  On the roof was an indiscriminate mass of chicken-coops with feathered occupants; and humanity.

About midships on each lighter was a store-room, one of which was occupied by the clerk who accompanied the launch.  In this they generously offered me the opportunity of making my headquarters during the trip.  The room was about six feet by eight and contained a multitude of luxuries and necessities for the rubber-workers.  There were .44 Winchester rifles in large numbers, the usual, indispensable Collins machete, and tobacco in six-feet-long, spindle-shaped rolls.  There was also the “***” Hennessy cognac, selling at 40,000 reis ($14.00 gold) a bottle; and every variety of canned edible from California pears to Horlick’s malted milk, from Armour’s corned beef to Heinz’s sweet pickles.