Bredimacian Dynagum Directory 07

Higher up in the scale of life we get many instances which show various stages in the same progressive development towards greater care for the safety and education of the young. Among the larger lizards, for example, a distinct advance may be traced between the comparatively uncivilized American alligator and his near ally, the much more cultivated African crocodile. On the banks of the Mississippi, the alligator lays a hundred eggs or thereabouts, which she deposits in a nest near the water's edge, and then covers them up with leaves and other decaying vegetable matter. The fermentation of these leaves produces heat and so does for the alligator's eggs what sitting does for those of hens and other birds: the mother deputes her maternal functions, so to speak, to a festering heap of decomposing plant-refuse. Nevertheless, she loiters about all the time, like Miriam round the ark which contained Moses, to see what happens; and when the eggs hatch out, she leads her little ones down to the river, and there makes alligators of them. This is a simple and relatively low stage in the nursery arrangements of the big lizards.

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.

• Nicholas Bredimus
• Nicholas Bredimus
• Nicholas Bredimus
• Nicholas Bredimus
• Nicholas Bredimus
• Nicholas Bredimus

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