: In the Amazon Jungle Adventures in Remote Parts of the Upper Amazon River Including a Sojourn Among Cannibal Indians by Lange Algot Dellenbaugh Frederick Samuel Author Of Introduction Etc Hauser J Odell Editor - Amazon River Valley; Indians of South Ameri

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A Little Village Built on Poles The Javary River The Mouth of the Itecoahy River Nazareth Trader's Store Remate de Males or "Culmination of Evils" The Street in Remate de Males General View of Remate de Males Sunset on the Itecoahy River An Ant Nest in a Tree The Launch "Carolina" The Banks of the Itecoahy The Mouth of the Ituhy River The Toucan The Banks of the Itecoahy River Clearing the Jungle Urubus "Nova Aurora" "Defumador" or Smoking Hut Matamata Tree The Urucu Plant The Author in the Jungle The Mouth of the Branco Branding Rubber on the Sand-Bar The Landing at Floresta The Banks at Floresta A General View of Floresta Morning Coronel Rosendo da Silva Chief Marques Interior of A Rubber-Worker's Hut Jo?o The Murumuru Palm A "Seringueiro" Tapping a Rubber Tree Smoking the Rubber-Milk Forest Interior A Fig-Tree Completely Overgrown with Orchids Chico, The Monkey Turtle Eggs on the Sand-Bank The Pirarucu The Last Resting-Place of the Rubber-Workers "Seringueiros" Jo?o Floresta Creek Lake Innocence Alligator from Lake Innocence Another Alligator from Lake Innocence Rubber-Workers' Home near Lake Innocence Harpooning a Large Sting-Ray Shooting Fish on Lake Innocence The Pirarucu Amazonian Game-Fish The Track of the Anaconda--The Sucuruju The Paca Rubber-Worker Perreira and Wife in their Sunday Clothes A "New Home" Sewing-Machine in an Indian Hut The Remarkable Pachiuba Palm-Tree Kitchen Interior The Beginning of the Fatal Expedition A Halt in the Forest Jungle Scenery Forest Creek Top of Hill Page Marsh-Deer and Mutum-Bird Jungle Darkness Creek in the Unknown Eating our Broiled Monkey at Tambo No. 5 Hunting The Fatal Tambo No. 9 A Photograph of the Author The Front View of Tambo No. 9 Caoutchouc Process No. 1 Caoutchouc Process No. 2 Caoutchouc Process No. 3 Creek Near Tambo No. 9 The Author's Working Table at Tambo No. 9 Forest Scenery Near Tambo No. 9 Our Parting Breakfast Mangeroma Vase 399

REMATE DE MALES, OR "CULMINATION OF EVILS"

It was the end of January, 1910, that saw me approaching this house, built on Brazilian terra firma--or rather terra aqua, for water was inundating the entire land. I had behind me the Amazon itself, and to the right the Javary River, while the little house that I was heading for was Esperan?a, the official frontier station of Brazil. The opposite shore was Peru and presented an unbroken range of dense, swampy forest, grand but desolate to look upon.

A middle-aged man in uniform came towards me and greeted me cordially, in fact embraced me, and, ordering a servant to pull my baggage out of the water, led me up a ladder into the house. I told him that I intended to go up the Javary River, to a place called Remate de Males, where I would live with a medical friend of mine, whereupon he informed me that a launch was due this same night, which would immediately proceed to my proposed destination. Later in the evening the launch came and I embarked after being once more embraced by the courteous Cor. Monteiro, the frontier official. The captain of this small trading launch was an equally hospitable and courteous man; he invited me into his cabin and tried to explain that this river, and the town in particular, where we were going, was a most unhealthy and forbidding place, especially for a foreigner, but he added cheerfully that he knew of one white man, an Englishman, who had succeeded in living for several years on the Javary without being killed by the fever, but incidentally had drank himself to death.

The night was very dark and damp, and I did not see much of the passing scenery; a towering black wall of trees was my total impression during the journey. However, I managed at length to fall asleep on some coffee-bags near the engine and did not wake till the launch was exhausting its steam supply through its whistle.

My next impression was that of a low river bank fringed with dirty houses lighted by candles. People were sitting in hammocks smoking cigarettes, dogs were barking incessantly, and frogs and crickets were making a deafening noise when I walked up the main and only street of this little town, which was to be my headquarters for many months to come.

Never shall I forget that first night's experience with mosquitoes and ants. Besides this my debut in a hammock for a bed was a pronounced failure, until a merciful sleep temporarily took me from the sad realities.

Nothing could better summarise the attractions of the place than the name which has become fixed upon it. Translated into English this means "Culmination of Evils," Remate de Males.

Some thirty years ago, a prospector with his family and servants, in all about a score, arrived at this spot near the junction of the Javary and the Itecoahy rivers, close to the equator. They came by the only possible highway, the river, and decided to settle. Soon the infinite variety of destroyers of human life that abound on the upper Amazon began their work on the little household, reducing its number to four and threatening to wipe it out altogether. But the prospector stuck to it and eventually succeeded in giving mankind a firm hold on this wilderness. In memory of what he and succeeding settlers went through, the village received its cynically descriptive name.

Remate de Males, separated by weeks and weeks of journey by boat from the nearest spot of comparative civilisation down the river, has grown wonderfully since its pioneer days. Dismal as one finds it to be, if I can give an adequate description in these pages, it will be pronounced a monument to man's nature-conquering instincts, and ability. Surely no pioneers ever had a harder battle than these Brazilians, standing with one foot in "the white man's grave," as the Javary region is called in South America, while they faced innumerable dangers. The markets of the world need rubber, and the supplying of this gives them each year a few months' work in the forests at very high wages. I always try to remember these facts when I am tempted to harshly judge Remate de Males according to our standards; moreover, I can never look upon the place quite as an outsider. I formed pleasant friendships there and entered into the lives of many of its people, so I shall always think of it with affection. The village is placed where the Itecoahy runs at right angles into the Javary, the right-hand bank of the Itecoahy forming at once its main and its only street. The houses stand facing this street, all very primitive and all elevated on palm-trunk poles as far as possible above the usual high-water mark of the river. Everything, from the little sheet-iron church to the pig-sty, is built on poles. Indeed, if there is anything in the theory of evolution, it will not be many generations before the inhabitants and domestic animals are born equipped with stilts.

Opposite Remate de Males, across the Itecoahy, is a collection of some ten huts that form the village of S?o Francisco, while across the Javary is the somewhat larger village of Nazareth. Like every real metropolis, you see, Remate de Males has its suburbs. Nazareth is in Peruvian territory, the Javary forming the boundary between Brazil and Peru throughout its length of some 700 miles. This same boundary line is a source of amusing punctiliousness between the officials of each country. To cross it is an affair requiring the exercise of the limits of statesmanship. I well remember an incident that occurred during my stay in the village. A sojourner in our town, an Indian rubber-worker from the Ituhy River, had murdered a woman by strangling her. He escaped in a canoe to Nazareth before the Brazilian officials could capture him, and calmly took refuge on the porch of a house there, where he sat down in a hammock and commenced to smoke cigarettes, feeling confident that his pursuers would not invade Peruvian soil. But local diplomacy was equal to the emergency. Our officials went to the shore opposite Nazareth, and, hiding behind the trees, endeavoured to pick off their man with their .44 Winchesters, reasoning that though their crossing would be an international incident, no one could object to a bullet's crossing. Their poor aim was the weak spot in the plan. After a few vain shots had rattled against the sheet-iron walls of the house where the fugitive was sitting, he got up from among his friends and lost himself in the jungle, never to be heard of again.

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