CHAPTER XVII 
A Fiscal Agency — Former Atrocities — The Apiacar Indians — 
Plentiful Rubber — Unexploited Regions — Precious Fossils 
THROWN AWAY BY AUTHOR’S FOLLOWERS — A TERRIFIC STORM- 
Author’s Canoe dashed to Pieces — The Mount S. Benedicto 
T HE State of Matto Grosso had recently established 
a fiscal agency at the junction of the two rivers in 
order to collect the tax on the rubber exported 
from that region. The fiscal agent, Mr. Jose Sotero 
Barretto, and his assistant, Mr. Julio Vieira Nerv, were 
intelligent and polished gentlemen. Their predecessor 
was not like them. His barbarity, not only to the 
Apiacar Indians but also to the Brazilians in his em¬ 
ploy, was almost incredible. For no reason whatever 
he killed men right and left, until one day, as he was 
getting out of his canoe, one of his men shot him in the 
back. 
So much has been said of late of atrocities in the 
Putumayo region that perhaps one may be allowed to 
say that the Putumayo region is not the only place where 
atrocities have occurred. To any one not acquainted with 
those regions it is difficult to understand why those 
atrocities take place at all. Curiously enough, they are 
due to a large extent to medicine. Those regions are all 
extremely malarial. The people who are ordered there 
are afraid of being infected long before they start on their 
journey. They begin taking preventive quinine and 
arsenic, which render them most irritable and ill- 
tempered ; the solitude preys upon them, and they add to 
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