l an
inventive woman discovered that yellow dots could also be worked in. In
addition to these dresses, the women will squander money on elegant
patent-leather French slippers (with which they generally neglect to
wear stockings), and use silk handkerchiefs perfumed with the finest
Parisian eau de Cologne, bought at a cost of from fourteen to fifteen
dollars a bottle. Arrayed in all her glory on some gala occasion,
the whole effect enhanced by the use of a short pipe from which she
blows volumes of smoke, the woman of Remate de Males is a unique sight.

CHAPTER II

THE SOCIAL AND POLITICAL LIFE OF REMATE DE MALES

The social life of the town is in about the same stage of development
as it must have been during the Stone Age. When darkness falls over the
village, as it does at six o'clock all the year round, life practically
stops, and a few hours afterwards everyone is in his hammock.

There is one resort where the town-sports come to spend their
evenings, the so-called _Recreio Popular_. Its principal patrons are
_seringueiros_, or rubber-workers, who have large rolls of money that
they are anxious to spend with the least possible effort, and generally
get their desire over the gaming boards. The place is furnished with
a billiard table and a gramophone with three badly worn records. The
billiard table is in constant use by a certain element up to midnight,
and so are the three eternal records of the gramophone. It will take
me years surrounded by the comforts of civilisation to get those three
frightful tunes out of my head, and I do not see how they could fail
to drive even the hardened _seringueiros_ to an early grave.

Another resort close by, where the native _cachassa_ is sold, is
patronised principally by negroes and half-breeds. Here they play
the guitar, in combination with a home-made instrument resembling
a mandolin, as accompaniment to a monotonous native song, which
is kept up for hours. With the exception of these two places, the
village does not furnish any life or local colour after nightfall,
the natives spending their time around the mis-treated gramophones,
which are found in almost every hut.

The men of the village, unlike the women, are not picturesque
in appearance. The officials are well paid, so is everyone else,
yet they never think of spending money to improve the looks of the
village or even their own. Most of them are ragged. A few exhibit an
inadequate elegance, dressed in w