ACROSS UNKNOWN SOUTH AMERICA 
up the river, with no chance of getting away. Their 
masters came, of course, every year to bring down the 
rubber that had been collected. Twenty times the 
quantity could easily be brought down to the coast, if 
labour were obtainable. Not only was the Juruena River 
itself almost absolutely untouched commercially — as we 
have seen, we did not meet a soul during the fifty days we 
navigated it — but even important tributaries close to 
S. Manoel, such as the Euphrasia, the Sao Thome, the Sao 
Florencio, the Misericordia, and others, were absolutely 
desert regions, although the quantity of rubber to be 
found along those streams must be immense. The diffi¬ 
culty of transport, even on the Tapajoz— from the junc¬ 
tion of the two rivers the Juruena took the name of 
Tapajoz River — was very great, although the many 
rapids there encountered were mere child’s play in com¬ 
parison with those we had met with up above. In them, 
nevertheless, many lives were lost, and many valuable 
cargoes disappeared for ever yearly. The rubber itself 
was not always lost when boats were wrecked, as rubber 
floats, and some of it was generally recovered. The 
expense of a journey up that river was enormous; it took 
forty to sixty days from the mouth of the Tapajoz to 
reach the collectoria of S. Manoel. Thus, on an average, 
the cost of freight on each kilo (about two pounds) of 
rubber between those two points alone was not less than 
sevenpence or eightpence. 
As the river Tapajoz is extremely tortuous and 
troublesome, I think that some day, in order to exploit 
that region fully, it will be found necessary to cut a road 
through the forest from S. Manoel to one of the tributaries 
of the Madeira, such as the river Secundury-Canuma, 
from which the rubber could be taken down to the Amazon 
in a few days. 
From the point of junction of the river Tres Rarras 
or S. Manoel and the Juruena, the river was fairly well 
232 
