Adventure Magazine Cover — page 91: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

* amount. Jungle Business _ A house, no less, built of split palm trunks and interlaced with lianas close enough to keep out the vampire bats; a luxurious affair of two rooms, all perched upon stilts a good two meters clear of flood water. A veritable hacienda. The Pelloroxo descended upon me with loud cries and many oaths, and dragged me in immediately to eat; for his code of hospi- tality was that a friend must be first of all fed. Manatee steak it was; well prepared and tasty; the good effect of which he would have spoiled by thrusting upon me one of his pernicious cigarets. “T am conserving them with jealous care,” he assured me. But I pushed the foul paper aside and rolled one for myself of pure tobacco in a strip of miripapo bark. “Now tell me all things,’ I said. “But first of all why, in the name of all the saints, you have not been sending your nuts down to Santa Isabel to ship? You have plenty enough already. This is a very center of unexpected industry.”’ He threw out his hands. “My friend,” said he. “Our business is held up by the transportation problem. I need there a fleet. The nuts you see are only a part; for | have been*voyaging up and down stream-and into all the little side creeks; and we have now many little sheds filling steadily up with nuts.” “Miracle!” I grunted. But with skepti- cism; for I knew those Indians. But he was eager to proceed. “True, at first there was difficulty,” he admitted in answer to my tone. “For these Indians ‘have no desire to labor; and they were skeptical; for some of them had been down to the big river where they had fallen in with the traders; and there was a conviction among them that they would be paid either not at all or cheated in the Till I hit upon the plan of paying in advance—and now we have the Indians of twenty-one villages working busily for us.”’ I grunted again. “They may work,” said I. “Or rather, promise to work while you dangle a knife or a machete before their eyes. But how busily they will continue to work after you have gone is another question.” “No my good friend, you are mistaken,” he insisted against my twenty years’ of ex- perience. ‘They will work and produce; for I have taken the business precaution of ~ Os 8 : Os, S ? ¥ A ~ insuring our business. Already we have many more tons of nuts than we can send down. What use in sending a bateldo load or two and a few canoes, which will serve only to attract trader people here before we are well established? No, I will not begin to ship until my fleet is ready.” ‘“Cremento, a fleet you talk of, and in- surance? How do you propose to collecta fleet?”’ I demanded. His grin flashed out. I could see that he was pleased with himself. So much so that he expended another of his precious cigarets. “High finance,” he exulted. “These In- dians, as you know, will do anything rather than settle down to the three months labor of hewing a canoe out of a tree trunk; and they struggle along with any ancient leaky thing till it positively falls apart—and then they will bind it up with vines and use it half full of water. “So I conceived the idea of paying them — for building new canoes for themselves. An ax head to each man who would immediately put it to use in hewing out a canoe; with the stipulation only that the canoe be of seven meters in length or more and that the man fill it up three times with nuts. If tell you my friend, presently we shall be able to despatch a fleet of a hundred ships; and in four trips we can collect in the old rubber shed at Santa Isabel a cargo sufficient to charter the whole available space in the steamer; and then those castanwha gatherers will come to us begging with bribes in their hands = But I cut his rhapsody short. “Him, fine,” I said with sarcasm. “A wonderful dream—if these Indians were peo- ple with whom you could make a contract and who could be compelled to hold to their agreements. But they will shortly weary of labor and will make excuses and——” But he in turn interrupted me. “No, my friend. They will not.” “Psha,” said I. “I know these Indians for twenty years of experience. You can not tell me any new thing about them.” And he, grinning again: “No new thing indeed. But I have done what you yourself advised. I have learned their customs and their beliefs, and have made friends above all things with the tpagé—who is my insurance. In this way it was: The old chief Upanha is old, and the second chief was an enlightened savage. He had been to Santa Isabel often and had Gomicbooks.com