It is hard to estimate what suffering would
result if these launches should be prevented from reaching their
destinations, for the people are absolutely dependent upon them,
the region being non-producing, as I have said, and the supplies
very closely calculated. In Remate de Males, the superintendent, or
the mayor of the town, generally owns a few head of cattle brought
by steamer, and when these are consumed no meat can be had in the
region but Swift's canned "Corned Beef."
Then there are the steamers from the outer world. During the rainy
season, the _Mauretania_ could get up to Remate de Males from
the Atlantic Ocean without difficulty, though there is no heavy
navigation on the upper Javary River. But steamers go up the Amazon
proper several days' journey farther. You can at the present get a
through steamer from Iquitos in Peru down the Amazon to New York.
These boats occasionally bring immigrants from the eastern portions of
Brazil, where they have heard of the fortunes to be made in working the
rubber, and who have come, just as our prospectors came into the West,
hoping to take gold and their lives back with them. Besides passengers,
these boats carry cattle and merchandise and transport the precious
rubber back to Para and Manaos.
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