To the Amazon and Home 331 



For four days there were no rapids we could not run 

 without unloading. Then, on the 19th, we got a canoe 

 from Senhor Barboso. He was a most kind and hos- 

 pitable man, who also gave us a duck and a chicken and 

 some mandioc and six pounds of rice, and would take no 

 payment ; he lived in a roomy house with his dusky, cigar- 

 smoking wife and his many children. The new canoe 

 was light and roomy, and we were able to rig up a low 

 shelter under which I could lie ; I was still sick. At noon 

 we passed the mouth of a big river, the Rio Branco, com- 

 ing in from the left; this was about in latitude 9° 38'. 

 Soon afterward we came to the first serious rapids, the 

 Panela. We carried the boats past, ran down the empty 

 canoes, and camped at the foot in a roomy house. The 

 doctor bought a handsome trumpeter bird, very friendly 

 and confiding, which was thenceforth my canoe com- 

 panion. 



We had already passed many inhabited — ^and a still 

 larger number of uninhabited — houses. The dwellers 

 were rubber-men, but generally they were permanent set- 

 tlers also, home-makers, with their wives and children. 

 Some, both of the men and women, were apparently of 

 pure negro blood, or of pure Indian or south European 

 blood; but in the great majority all three strains were 

 mixed in varying degrees. They were most friendly, 

 courteous, and hospitable. Often they refused payment 

 for what they could afford, out of their little, to give us. 

 When they did charge, the prices were very high, as was 

 but Just, for they live back of the beyond, and everything 

 costs them fabulously, save what they raise themselves. 

 The cool, bare houses of poles and palm thatch contained 



