calling and answering. Yet never did they seem to achieve the bliss
of meeting, for after a brief lull the calling and answering voices
would again take up their pretty song.

Slowly the days went by and, with their passing, the river fell lower
and lower until the waters receded from the land itself and were
confined once more to their old course in the river-bed. As the ground
began to dry, the time came when the mosquitoes were particularly
vicious. They multiplied by the million. Soon the village was filled
with malaria, and the hypodermic needle was in full activity.

A crowd of about fifty Indians from the Curuça River had been brought
to Remate de Males by launch. They belonged to the territory owned by
Mons. Danon and slept outside the store-rooms of this plutocrat. Men,
women, and children arranged their quarters in the soft mud until they
could be taken to his rubber estate some hundred miles up the Javary
River. They were still waiting to be equipped with rubber-workers'
outfits when the malaria began its work among them. The poor mistreated
Indians seemed to have been literally saturated with the germs, as
they always slept without any protection whatever; consequently their
systems offered less resistance to the disease than the ordinary
Brazilian's. In four days there were only twelve persons left out
of fifty-two.

During the last weeks of my stay in Remate de Males, I received an
invitation to take lunch with the local Department Secretary, Professor
Silveiro, an extremely hospitable and well educated Brazilian. The
importance of such an invitation meant for me a radical change in
appearance--an extensive alteration that could not be wrought without
considerable pains. I had to have a five-months' beard shaved off, and