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Powandas Directory 09
Page 08
The last trial of all was yet to be added, when we had come to within 300 m. of the river. The _seringueiro_, from whose hut we had started on our way out, had evidently since our departure set the forest on fire in order to make a _roca_ so as to cultivate the land. Hundreds of carbonized trees had fallen down in all directions; others had been cut down. So that for those last two or three hundred metres we had to get over or under those burned trees and struggle through their blackened boughs, the stumps of which drove holes into and scratched big patches of skin from my legs, arms and face. Where the skin was not taken off altogether it was smeared all over with the black from the burnt trees. We did not look unlike nigger minstrels, with the exception that we were also bleeding all over.
It was impossible to get labour up that river. The few _seringueiros_, chiefly negroes who were there in absolute slavery, had been led and established by their masters up the river, with no chance of getting away. Their masters came, of course, every year to bring down the rubber that had been collected. Twenty times the quantity could easily be brought down to the coast if labour were obtainable. Not only was the Juruena River itself almost absolutely untouched commercially--as we have seen, we did not meet a soul during the fifty days we navigated it--but even important tributaries close to S. Manoel, such as the Euphrasia, the Sao Thome, the Sao Florencio, the Misericordia, and others, were absolutely desert regions, although the quantity of rubber to be found along those streams must be immense. The difficulty of transport, even on the Tapajoz--from the junction of the two rivers the Juruena took the name of Tapajoz River--was very great, although the many rapids there encountered were mere child's play in comparison with those we had met with up above. In them, nevertheless, many lives were lost and many valuable cargoes disappeared for ever yearly. The rubber itself was not always lost when boats were wrecked, as rubber floats, and some of it was generally recovered. The expense of a journey up that river was enormous; it took forty to sixty days from the mouth of the Tapajoz to reach the _collectoria_ of S. Manoel. Thus, on an average the cost of freight on each kilo (about 2 lb.) of rubber between those two points alone was not less than sevenpence or eightpence.
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