The conditions of life and the treatment of the rubber gatherers of the Amazon Valley were brought strongly before the world some years ago by the disclosures of the Putumayo, in Peru, when it was shown that terrible ill-treatment was meted out to the aborigines of the forests, in the greed for rubber. They were shown to be frequently starved, flogged to death, or tortured in various ways, their "crime" being that they would not or could not bring a sufficient quota of rubber. A powerful London company was involved in these scandals, but the directors, when brought before a Parliamentary Commission, protested that they had no knowledge of the matter. It cannot be doubted that cruelties are still practised on the Indian folk, in the rubber-districts of Peru and Bolivia, under the curtain of the forest, although the authorities of these countries have taken measures to endeavour to prevent these. The condition of the rubber industry in the Amazon forests are not, of course, all barbarous or uneconomic. It afforded, or affords, a means of livelihood to a considerable number of people, and created wealth where there was little other means of enrichment. It is, to an extreme, unfortunate that the industry is, in parts, a dying one--superseded in large measure by the active rubber plantations of the Straits Settlement, Malaysia and elsewhere. But it remains to be seen if, some day, under better auspices, the Amazon industry will not be revived. It also remains to be seen if the exotic plantations of Malaysia will be permanent, or whether exhaustion of the soil and other matters with what is an exotic industry there may not lead to deterioration, or decrease of the commodity and its yield, although it is to be hoped that such eventualities may not occur. It is affirmed by experts that wild rubber is superior to plantation rubber. One of the evils of the Malaysian system is that whereby coolie labour is brought in without their women, and consequently no family life is possible among these coloured workers. In the Amazon Valley there are no such restrictions, and under better auspices the native rubber-gatherer could prosper and multiply. Herein lie important matters for the future, especially for that fortunate part of civilized mankind that rides on the rubber tyres of the modern motor-car. Let us cast a passing glance at a rubber metropolis, here on this mighty South American river, at Manaos, a name familiar at least to the London reader of financial newspapers and to the shareholders of British concerns thereat--for British capital furnishes light, and power, and docks, and other matters, for some of these Amazon river ports.