rivers. In nine cases out of ten it would amount to suicide to do
so, and the natives have bathhouses along the shores; more literally
bathhouses than ours, for their baths are actually taken in them. They
are just as careful about clothing being aired and clean. Indeed, the
main item of the Brazilian woman's housekeeping is the washing. The
cooking is rather happy-go-lucky; and there is no use cleaning and
polishing iron walls; they get rusty anyhow.

The people are all occupied with the rubber industry and the town
owes its existence to the economic necessity of having here a shipping
and trading point for the product. The rubber is gathered farther up
along the shores of the Javary and the Itecoahy and is transported
by launch and canoe to Remate de Males. Here it is shipped directly
or sold to travelling dealers who send it down to Manaos or Para via
the boat of the Amazon Steam Navigation Co., which comes up during
the rainy season. Thence it goes to the ports of the world.

The rubber-worker is a well paid labourer even though he belongs to
the unskilled class. The tapping of the rubber trees and the smoking of
the milk pays from eight to ten dollars a day in American gold. This,
to him, of course, is riches and the men labour here in order that they
may go back to their own province as wealthy men. Nothing else will
yield this return; the land is not used for other products. It is hard
to see how agriculture or cattle-raising could be carried on in this
region, and, if they could, they would certainly not return more than
one fourth or one fifth of what the rubber industry does. The owners of
the great rubber estates, or _seringales_, are enormously wealthy men.

There are fewer women than men in Remate de Males, and none of the
former is beautiful. They are for the most part Indians or Brazilians