For several days more we continued going up the seemingly endless river.  Human habitations were far apart, the last ones we had seen as much as eighty-five miles below.  We expected soon to be in the territory owned by Coronel da Silva, the richest rubber proprietor in the Javary region.  I found the level of this land we were passing through to be slightly higher than any I had traversed as yet, although even here we were passing through an entirely submerged stretch of forest.  There were high inland spaces that had already begun to dry up, as we could see, and this was the main indication of higher altitude than had been found lower down the river.  Another indication was that big game was more in evidence.  The animals find here a good feeding place without the necessity of migrating to distant locations when the water begins to come through the forest.

At a place, with the name of Nova Aurora, again consisting of one hut, we found a quantity of skins stretched in the sunlight to dry.  They were mostly the hides of yellow jaguars, or pumas, as we call them in the United States, and seven feet from the nose to the end of the tail was not an unusual length.  Although, as we learned, they had been taken from the animals only a few weeks previously, they had already been partly destroyed by the gnawing of rats.  A tapir, weighing nearly seven hundred and fifty pounds, had been shot the day before and was being cut up for food when we arrived.  We were invited to stay and take dinner here, and I had my first opportunity of tasting roast tapir.  I found that it resembled roast beef very much, only sweeter, and the enjoyment of this food belongs among the very few pleasant memories I preserve of this trip.

While they were getting dinner ready, I noticed what I took to be a stuffed parrot on a beam in the kitchen.  But when I touched its tail I found that it was enough alive to come near snapping my finger off.  It was a very large arara parrot with two tail feathers, each about thirty-six inches long, a magnificent specimen worthy of a place in a museum.  Parrots of this particular species are very difficult to handle, being as stupid and malicious as they are beautiful.  They often made me think of dandies who go resplendent in fine clothes but are less conspicuous for mental excellences.

After having indulged in black coffee, we were invited to give the house and the surroundings a general inspection.  Directly behind the structure was the smoking hut, or defumador, as it is called.  Inside this are a number of sticks inclined in pyramid form and covered with palm-leaves.  In the floor a hole was dug for the fire that serves for coagulating the rubber-milk.  Over this pit is hung a sort of frame for guiding the heavy stick employed in the smoking of the rubber.  At this time the process had not become for me the familiar story that it was destined to be.  Beneath the hut were several unfinished paddles and a canoe under construction.  The latter