October, 1910.] 



293 



Saps and Exudations. 



Speaking of hospitality, I wish I had 

 space to describe in detail one dinner at 

 the home of a wealthy and cultured 

 Brazilian, a large owner of rubber lands 

 in the Acre, that I enjoyed. It would 

 take pages to picture the cool spacious- 

 ness of the dwelling, the beautiful 

 courtyard garden, with its rare blooms 

 and extensive orchid trellisses, and the 

 dinner itself, simple and appetizingly 

 elegant, and my host, who in almost 

 perfect English touched lightly on 

 current events in Europe and America, 

 and showed a knowledge of Paris, 

 London, Berlin and New York that made 

 me envious ; but I know I couldn't do it 

 justice, and I must pass it simply as one 

 of my pleasantest memories. 



Every winter that great educational 

 institution, the Hamburg- American line, 

 gathers together some hundreds of 

 untravelled Americans and projects 

 them upon the people of other climes. 

 They learn many things in these voyages ; 

 that is, they have ample opportunity to 

 do so. 



Sitting at midday breakfast in the 

 Cafe La Paz one morning, I knew that 

 one of these great excurison steamers 

 had arrived, for the advance guard of 

 the army that would soon overrun the 

 city began to trickle in. They were a 

 comely, well-dressed, respectable lot, 

 and 1 viewed them with much interest. 

 The self-conscious swagger (we are all 

 afflicted with it) that the men took on, 

 because they felt that many strangers 

 were looking at them in a foreign 

 tongue, was most exhilarating. The 

 half -pitying glances that 'they cast 

 about were not contempt, but simply 

 embarrassment. They were wondering 

 in their innermost recesses what the 

 well-dressed foreigners thought of these 

 fine specimens of American manhood. 

 And those foreigners, sitting erect over 

 their breakfasts, were probably wonder- 

 ing what the wealthy and somewhat 

 noisy Americans thought of the fine 

 specimens of Brazilian gentlemen that 

 they saw for the fiist time. Both were 

 self-conscious to the last degree, only 

 the Americans showed it and the 

 Brazilians did not. 



Having heard that Portuguese was the 

 language of the country, the tourists 

 had a feeling that no one there 

 understood English, or at least not 

 very well, and it came with rather 

 a shock to me that I was also without 

 the pale. My knowledge came this way. 

 Two nice old chaps stopped in front of 

 me, and one said : 



" Do you speak English ? 



"A leetle," was my reply. 



"Good! Well, we want to take a 

 trolly ride and go as far as we can, 

 Understand? See? 



" Si Senor, you wish to go up in zee 

 balloon, I can arrange him." 



" No, no, don't do that. Not a balloon, 

 a trolly car — goes on rails," showing me 

 in pantomime how an electric car ran, 

 and making a buzzing sound that was 

 most illuminating. 



"He is off his trolley, yes?" I re- 

 marked engagingly to his companion. 

 Then, seeing he had left his sense of 

 humour aboard the boat, and they were 

 likely to get away, I went on hurriedly : 



"Oui, yes, si, Senor, you wish the 

 trolley tram. The zip car. It is run 

 by zee door. Go out to Sousa. It's 

 quite a long ride out to Sousa and a 

 pretty one, and if you stay aboard the 

 car it will briug you back, saving a 

 transfer." 



I got interested in describing these 

 details and forgot my accent- Just as I 

 finished one of the inquirers said: 



"You speak very good English." 

 "So do you," said I. 



"But I come from Boston," was his 

 retort. 



"So do I," was mine. 



I forgot to say that before I left my 

 table two tourists sitting at another 

 facing me were enjoying huge glasses 

 of excellent Brazilian beer. One of them, 

 desirous of knowing the brew, held his 

 glasses aloft (he wore cotton gloves, by 

 the way, to protect his hands from 

 yellow fever mosquitoes) and, address- 

 ing me cordially said : 



" Pilsener ? Is this Pilsener beer ? " 



"Thank you I replied, courteously, 

 " I drink only zee champagne. I should 

 be glad of a little bottle." And I 

 beckoned to his waiter, while he gulped 

 the remainder of his drink and bolted. 



The Centre op the Rubber Trade, 

 The centre of the rubber interest in 

 Para is, very naturally, where the 

 houses of the great importers, or rather 

 exporters, aro located. These are on the 

 water front and are not only easily 

 located by the pleasant smell of rubber 

 with which the air is permeated, but 

 during crop arrivals by the great quan- 

 tities of rubber arriving and departing 

 in bulk and in cases, often temporarily 

 piled everywhere and anywhere. The 

 carelessness with which this valuable 

 product is handled would be a shock 

 to any member of the Rubber Stealings 

 Committee. Evidently there is no rubber 

 thievery in Para. 



