CHAPTER VIII. 
GUAYRA. 
For four hours we jerked clumsily through 
the forest. The train is only used for the 
bringing of yerba to the little port, and the 
workers on the property travel by it. That 
property stretches for a hundred miles along 
the river, and we were crossing a corner of it. 
We skirted a few clearings, with the blackened 
stumps of dead trees sticking up through the 
vivid green of young maize, and tiny thatched 
huts with mud walls, from which a figure or 
two would watch us pass. More often there 
were only shelters, made of a thatched cover set 
on bamboo poles, with floors of beaten earth. 
But all scrupulously clean, and the few 
possessions tidily arranged. Close by there 
was generally a pool, in which the women 
washed clothes, the pool sometimes roughly 
roofed in with boughs, to keep off the sun. 
These little clearings stand in the midst of the 
jungle, and are made by burning down the 
forest trees, then roughly breaking up the 
ground, and planting maize. After three 
