A hypodermic outfit, quinine, and a few bistouries completed my
primitive medical department. Later on these proved of the greatest
value. I would never think of omitting such supplies even in a case
where a few pounds of extra weight are not rashly to be considered. It
turned out that in the regions I penetrated, medical assistance was
a thing unheard of within a radius of several hundred miles.

A Luger automatic pistol of a calibre of nine millimetres, and several
hundred cartridges, were my armament, and for weeks this pistol became
my only means of providing a scant food supply.

Thus equipped I was on hand early in the morning of the day of
starting, anxious to see what sort of shipmates I was to have. They
proved all to be _seringueiros_, bound for the upper river. Our
craft was a forty-foot launch called the _Carolina_. There was a
large crowd of the passengers assembled when I arrived, and they
kept coming. To my amazement, it developed that one hundred and
twenty souls were expected to find room on board, together with
several tons of merchandise. The mystery of how the load was to be
accommodated was somewhat solved, when I saw them attach a lighter to
each side of the launch, and again, when some of the helpers brought
up a fleet of dugouts which they proceeded to make fast by a stern
hawser. But the mystery was again increased, when I was told that
none of the passengers intended to occupy permanent quarters on the
auxiliary fleet. As I was already taken care of, I resolved that if
the problem was to worry anybody, it would be the _seringueiros_,
though I realised that I would be travelling by "slow steamer" when
the little old-fashioned _Carolina_ should at length begin the task
of fighting the five-mile current with this tagging fleet to challenge