PLENTIFUL RUBBER 
the poisoning from medicine the evil effects of excessive 
drinking. Add again to this that few men can manage 
to be brave for a long period of time, and that the brain 
gradually becomes unbalanced, and you have the reason 
why murders are committed wholesale chiefly in a stupid 
effort to preserve oneself. 
The Apiacar Indians, I was told, were formerly much 
more numerous in that region than at present. Most of 
them had been killed off, and their women stolen. When 
Mr. Barretto arrived at the collectoria , he had great 
trouble in persuading the Indians to come near him; but 
he has been so extremely kind to them that now the entire 
tribe — some twenty people — have established them- 
selves at the collectoria itself, where they are given work 
to do as police, rubber collectors, and agriculturists com¬ 
bined. Mr. Barretto and his assistant were much re¬ 
spected and loved by the natives. Unlike his predecessor, 
he treated them with the greatest consideration and 
generosity. 
Mr. Barretto furnished me with an interesting table 
showing the amount of production and export of rubber 
from that district for the year 1910. From this table it 
appears that from May third to December thirty-first 
30,356 kilometres of the finest quality rubber, 10,153 
kilometres of sernamby (or scrap rubber), 4,858 kilo¬ 
metres of caoutchouc , and 30,655 kilometres of sernamby 
caoutchouc — altogether a total of 76,022 kilometres — 
passed through the collectoria on the Matto Grosso side, 
which does not include the opposite side of the river, 
belonging to the Province of Para, where another collec¬ 
toria has been established. That quantity of rubber had 
been collected by some eighty people, all told, including 
the local Indians. 
It was impossible to get labour up that river. The 
few seringueiros, chiefly negroes who were there in abso¬ 
lute slavery, had been led and established by their masters 
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