656 TRANSACTIONS OF SECTION E. 



stock. ' Mansos ' or peaceable tribes, and ' bravos ' or wild ones. Cubbeos, 

 Quenanas, Tarianos, and Tucanos, the four tribes of the main river. Some 

 anthropological and ethnological considerations of the respective tribes. Diversity 

 of size and characterised by types varying from Caucasian to Mongoloid. 



A religion in which a single Supreme Being is worshipped and invested with 

 all the awe-inspiring and terrifying attributes that such a conception would seem 

 most likely to engender in the thoughts of a people whose mentality could not 

 fail to be influenced by the eeriness and mystery of the stupendous forest, with 

 its hideous and repulsive serpents and deep gloom, the terrific thunderstorms 

 the country is subject to, and the river, treacherous of navigation and full of 

 roaring foaming rapids, such an environment as would, through fear, inspire 

 morbid emotion and superstition. No belief of a future existence. To pay 

 homage to or appease the anger of this Being consists of a ritual of extraordinary 

 and weird rites, but the ceremonies degenerate into orgies of caehire drinking 

 and insensate revelry, and they seem to have lost their power of appeal to the 

 psychical side of the people. 



Live under primitive communal conditions, existing by hunting, fishing, and 

 practising agriculture to a limited extent. All practice monogamy except the 

 chiefs or tuchanas, whose rule is absolute and hereditary in the male line. 



Diseases. — The people's immunity from certain forms and marked suscepti- 

 bility to others. 



The ' caucheris ' or traders and the rubber industry as -iarried on in this 

 region. 



Data from which the man of the river was made. 



MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 5. 



The following Papers and Report were read : — 



1. Cotton Growing tvithin the British Empire. 

 By J. Howard Eeed, F.R.G.S. 



The cotton industry of Lancashire, which ranks next to agriculture in import- 

 ance, employs close upon 500.000 workers and gives sustenance to several millions 

 of people, depends entirely upon an ample supply of raw cotton-fibre, imported 

 from thousands of miles across the seas, not one ounce of which can be grown 

 at home. A shortage in the supply of raw cotton during recent years has caused 

 not a little trouble and distress, and threatens more serious disturbance in the 

 future. The shortage of cotton has been brought about by the greatly increased 

 demands for raw fibre by the mills of Europe, and more especially by the vast 

 development in the manufacture of cotton goods in the United States. Though 

 the quantity of raw cotton used in Lancashire to-day is only a trifle more than 

 was the case twenty years ago. during the same period the weight of fibre used 

 on the Continent has very nearly doubled, and the total is now more than twice 

 that of the British figure. The demand of the American mills has increased 

 at an even greater rate than has that of Europe, and is now nearly double the 

 British demand and nearly equal to that of the whole of the Continental countries. 



Year by year we are gradually approaching a very serious crisis, as the 

 shortage of cotton is regular and progressive, and unless supplies of raw fibre 

 are obtained from other fields than those of America the Lancashire industry will 

 not' only gradually languish and decay, but will completely perish. For this 

 reason it has become all-important that the industry of cotton growing in 

 British colonies should be fostered and developed, and if the effort is not 

 abundantly successful within a few years the great staple trade of Lancashire is 

 doomed. This is a sweeping statement, but it is none the less true, although the 

 people most interested even now do not seem fully to realise the position. For 

 several years the British Cotton Growing Association have energetically devoted 

 themselves to the solution of the problem, with some measure of success, although 

 they have been tardily and inadequately supported with the financial aid which 

 the great work needs, The countries of Egypt and India up to now have been 



