PREPARING TO RESCUE FILIPPE 
had to be employed for the crew, as none of the sailors 
could be induced to condescend to be the chef. Two 
applicants were eventually found. One who was willing 
to do the cooking at a salary of <£3 10s. a day, his chief 
ability, said he, consisting in boiling rice and fish. An¬ 
other fellow eventually undertook the job at a salary of 
<£l 10s. a day, he being willing to do the cooking at such 
a small salary as he said he had never in his life cooked 
before, and he did not know whether we should care for 
his cooking or not. It must not for one moment be be¬ 
lieved that these men were trying to cheat me, and 
asking advanced prices, for indeed these are the current 
rates for everybody who wishes to travel in those regions. 
The cost of commodities of any kind in Manaos was 
excessive, and went beyond even the limits of robbery. 
I went into a chemist’s shop to purchase a small 
bottle of quinine tablets, worth in England perhaps 
eightpence or a shilling. The price charged there 
was £2 10s. 
Principally owing to the Booth Line Steamship 
Company and the allied companies, Manaos has become 
a good-sized place. The harbour works and the works 
made by the Manaos Improvements, Ltd., have been a 
great boon to that place, and have made it almost as 
civilized as a third-class European city. But obstacles 
have been placed in the way of honest foreign companies 
carrying on their work successfully, the unscrupulous 
behaviour of the Governor and the attitude of the mob 
having proved serious drawbacks to the development of 
the place. 
Large sums of money have been wasted in building 
a strawberry-coloured theatre of immense size and of 
appalling architectural lines, on the top of which has been 
erected a tiled dome of gigantic proportions over an im¬ 
mense water-tank in order to protect the theatre against 
fire. The water-tank was calculated to let down a great 
Vol. II.— 23 353 
