36 
THE GOLDEN RIVER. 
tie up at such a place, on the chance of sport. 
He came on board late one evening, and stood 
talking in the lamplight, fingering his soft hat, 
his shock of dark hair falling across his fore¬ 
head, and the light catching on his sharp cheek¬ 
bones and grooving deep lines on his brown face. 
He was a free man, he said, not like some. 
He worked for a master who treated him fairly, 
he was not beaten, and he got his wages 
regularly. His work took him into the forest 
for weeks at a time, and it was plain to see that 
he was not happy with a roof over his head, 
though he held himself with dignity. 
At dawn, a small expedition set out, looking 
ghost-like in the curling mists, making its way 
through the wall of reeds that came more than 
shoulder high : but it had no luck, and came 
back hungry and disappointed. And the only 
tigre we ever saw was a magnificent one in the 
zoo at Montevideo. 
The lives of these lonely hunters and woods¬ 
men must be strange ones, working as they do 
in the forests, dependent on their own resource 
and courage for life itself, finding their way 
almost by an animal’s instinct; more akin them¬ 
selves to the wild creatures of the jungle than 
to other men. 
We had come across another forest dweller 
in our travels, but a very different one, when 
we tied up one night in a little bay, close to 
which a woodcutter’s clearing stretched like a 
