Madeira-Mamore Railway, showing Cut through Tropical Forest.
Next day, October 16th, as I was in great suspense lest the men should not arrive in time—Mr. Pinto being pressed to get quickly down the river with some thousands of kilos of rubber he had purchased—my men eventually arrived with part of the baggage. They had abandoned the rest in the forest, including my valuable botanical collection, which had taken me so many months of careful labour. Alcides said that the termites had played havoc with all my things. The wooden boxes had been almost entirely destroyed, as well as most of the contents. I was glad, nevertheless, to get back what I did, the man Benedicto on that occasion behaving splendidly—even going back to the spot where the tragic scene had taken place with the Indian Miguel on our outward journey and recovering some of my instruments which I had abandoned there.
In the afternoon of October 16th I bade goodbye to Albuquerque, and gave him a present of £20 sterling, as he would not accept payment for the hospitality he had offered me.
With a powerful crew of men we sped down the river quickly. In a couple of hours we had already arrived at the rapids of the Capueras. After passing the island of Pombas before entering the rapids, we encountered the first rapid of Sirgar Torta; then the second rapid of Baunilla—named after the vanilla plant. The third rapid of the Capueras group was called Chafaris; then the fourth was the Campinho.
We went along the banks of the beautiful island of Antas, after which we halted at the house of José Maracati, a Mundurucu chieftain, with thirty Indians under him. A delegate of the Para Province in charge of the Indians—a man of strong Malay characteristics and evidently of Indian parentage—received us, and gave me much information about the local rubber industry. He told me that the best rubber found in that region was the kind locally called seringa preta, a black rubber which was coagulated with the smoke of the coco de palmeira. He calculated that 150 rubber trees gave about 14 kilos of rubber a day. The seringa preta exuded latex all the year round, even during the rainy season.
There was in that region also another kind of rubber tree—the itauba—but it was of inferior quality, as the latex was too liquid, like reddish milk, quite weak, and with little elasticity.
A few trees of the castanha do Para were also found in that region, producing the well-known nut which has rendered Brazil famous in England.