night at a small Indian village at a point where a certain
tributary--the name and position of which I withhold--opens
into the main river. The natives were Cucama Indians, an amiable
but degraded race, with mental powers hardly superior to the
average Londoner. I had effected some cures among them upon my
way up the river, and had impressed them considerably with my
personality, so that I was not surprised to find myself eagerly
awaited upon my return. I gathered from their signs that someone
had urgent need of my medical services, and I followed the chief
to one of his huts. When I entered I found that the sufferer to
whose aid I had been summoned had that instant expired. He was,
to my surprise, no Indian, but a white man; indeed, I may say a
very white man, for he was flaxen-haired and had some
characteristics of an albino. He was clad in rags, was very
emaciated, and bore every trace of prolonged hardship. So far as
I could understand the account of the natives, he was a complete
stranger to them, and had come upon their village through the
woods alone and in the last stage of exhaustion.

"The man's knapsack lay beside the couch, and I examined the contents.
His name was written upon a tab within it--Maple White, Lake
Avenue, Detroit, Michigan. It is a name to which I am prepared
always to lift my hat. It is not too much to say that it will
rank level with my own when the final credit of this business
comes to be apportioned.

"From the contents of the knapsack it was evident that this man
had been an artist and poet in search of effects. There were
scraps of verse. I do not profess to be a judge of such things,
but they appeared to me to be singularly wanting in merit.