Poor lost creatures! For this draught of the white man's poison, far more terrible to them than the deadly nightshade of their forests, more dangerous than the venom of the loathsome serpent gliding across their path, they are willing to sell body or soul. Soul, did I say? They have never heard of that. To them, so far as I could ascertain, a future life is unknown. The explorer has penetrated some little way into their dark forests in search of rubber, or anything else which it would pay to exploit, but the missionary of the Cross has never sought to illumine their darker minds. They live their little day and go out into the unknown unconscious of the fact that One called Jesus, who was the Incarnate God, died to redeem them. As a traveller, I have often wondered why men should be willing to pay me hundreds of dollars to explore those regions for ultimate worldly gain, and none should ever offer to employ me in proclaiming the greatest wonder of all the ages--the story of Calvary--for eternal gain. After all, are the Indians more blind to the future than we are? Yet, strange to say, we profess to believe in the teachings of that One who inculcated the practice of laying up treasure in heaven, while they have not even heard His name. For love of gain men have been willing to accompany me through the most deadly fever-breeding morass, or to brave the poisoned arrows of the lynx-eyed Indian, but few have ever offered to go and tell of Him whom they profess to serve. The suffocating atmosphere quite precluded the idea of writing, for a pen, dipped in ink, would dry before reaching the paper, and the latter be saturated with perspiration in a few seconds; so these observations were penned later. So far as I could ascertain, the Romish Church has never touched the Guatos, and, notwithstanding all I have said about them, I unhesitatingly affirm that it is better so. Geo. R. Witte, missionary to Brazil, says: "With one exception, all the priests with whom I came in contact (when on a journey through Northern Brazil) were immoral, drunken, and ignorant. The tribes who have come under priestly care are decidedly inferior in morals, industry, and order to the tribes who refuse to have anything to do with the whites. The Charentes and Apinages have been, for years, under the care of Catholic friars--this is the way I found them: both men and women walk about naked." "We heard not one contradiction of the general testimony that the people who were not under the influence of the Roman Catholic Church as it is in S. America were better morally than those who were." [Footnote: Robert E. Speer, "Missions in South America."]