ght a camp-fire for protection.

On the other hand, is heard the noise of the domestic animals of
the village. Cows, calves, goats, and pigs seemed to make a habit of
exercising their vocal organs thoroughly before retiring. Dogs bark
at the moon; cats chase rats through openings of the palm-leaf roofs,
threatening every moment to fall, pursued and pursuers, down upon the
hammocks. Vampires flutter around from room to room, occasionally
resting on the tops of the iron partitions, and when they halt,
continuing to chirp for a while like hoarse sparrows. Occasionally
there will come out of the darkness of the river a disagreeable
sound as if some huge animal were gasping for its last breath before
suffocating in the mud. The sound has its effect, even upon animals,
coming as it does out of the black mysterious night, warning them not
to venture far for fear some uncanny force may drag them to death in
the dismal waters. It is the night call of the alligator.

The sweet plaintive note of a little partridge, called _inamboo_,
would sometimes tremble through the air and compel me to forget
the spell of unholy sounds arising from the beasts of the jungle and
river. Throughout the evening this amorous bird would call to its mate,
and somewhere there would be an answering call back in the woods. Many
were the nights when, weak with fever, I awoke and listened to their
calling and answering. Yet never did they seem to achieve the bliss
of meeting, for after a brief lull the calling and answering voices
would again take up their pretty song.

Slowly the days went by and, with their passing, the river fell lower
and lower until the waters receded from the land itself and were
confined once more to their old course in the river-bed. As the ground
began to dry, the time came when the mosquitoes were particularly
vicious. They multiplied by the million. Soon the village was filled
with malaria, and the hypodermic needle was in full activity.

A crowd of about fifty Indians from the Curuca River had been brought
to Remate de Males by launch. They belonged to the territory owned by
Mons. Danon and slept outside the store-rooms of this plutocrat. Men,
women, and children arranged their quarters in the soft mud until they
could be taken to his rubber estate some hundred miles up the Javary
River. They were still waiting to be equipped with rubber-workers'
outfits when the malaria began its work among them. The poor mistreated
Indians