“The startling news came down the river that our fine ship, the _Amazonas_, had been abandoned, and left on the captain’s hands, after having been stripped by the two gentlemen supercargoes (our late hospitable entertainers!), and that without so much as a stick of cargo for return voyage to Liverpool. I determined to plunge for it. It seemed to present an occasion either 'to make my spoon or to spoil the horn.’ It was true I had no cash on hand out there, and to realize on an incipient plantation, in such a place and situation, was quite out of the question. The seed was even then beginning to ripen on the trees in the _Monte alto_--the high forest. I knew that Captain Murray must be in a fix, so I wrote to him, boldly chartering the ship on behalf of the Government of India; and I appointed to meet him at the junction of the Tapajos and Amazon Rivers by a certain date. “There was no time to lose. Hurriedly getting an Indian canoe, posting up the right coast of the Tapajos, and traversing the broad river--rather ticklish work in a small canoe at that season--I struck back from the left shore for the deep woods, the _Monte alto_, wherein I knew were to be found the big, full-grown Hevea trees.... “Working with as many Tapüyo Indians as I could get together at short notice, I daily ranged the forest, and packed on our backs in Indian pannier baskets as heavy loads of seeds as we could march down under. I was working against time. Sometimes, however, during times of rest, I would sit down and look into the leafy arches above, and as I gazed, become lost in the wonderful beauty of the upper system overhead--a world of life complete within itself. This is the abode of strange forms of life, strangely plumaged birds, and elfish little _ti-ti_ monkeys, which never descend to the dark soil throughout their lives, but swing and gambol in the aërial gardens of dainty forms and sweet-smelling orchids, for every great tree supports an infinite variety of plant life. All overhead seemed the very exuberance of animal and vegetable existence, and below, its contrast--decay and darkness. Here and there a mass of orchid, carried from above by the fall of some withered branch, sickening into pallor, thrust out from the vitalizing air and life above. “I got the Tapüyo village maids to make up open-work baskets or crates of split _Calamus_ canes for receiving the seed, first, however, being careful to have them slowly but well dried on mats in the shade, before they were put away with layers of dried wild banana leaf betwixt each layer of seed, knowing how easily a seed so rich in a drying-oil becomes rancid or too dry, and so losing all power of germination. Also I had the crates slung up to the beams of the Indian lodges to insure ventilation.