“THE GREEN HELL.”

Manawatu Herald, Volume XXXVI, Issue 1214, 28 February 1914, Page 4

“THE GREEN HELL.”

AX-:. RED WEBBER

HORRORS OF PEONAGE IN SOUTH

AMERICAN FORESTS. LONDON. Nov. 24

At Para and Manaos (writes a Daily News correspondent who recently voyaged along the Amazon to tho Bolivian i.ic>r). when I was there a book by a I■; -:.liau writer vailed “the Green j-fell” was attracting attention. It bore tui its covers tho symbolical figure of Amazonas, a naked Indian woman, whose body was scored with cuts )rom v. nidi her life drained into rl.v little tin 'i-upe used by ‘ m, rubber t •'•Hectors. Peonage, it may be noted, .s a much politer word than slavery, but it has little .more than that to commend it. “Why make all this !nss about the Putumayo.” I was asked more than once on the Amazon. ''lt is not much Averse there than what yon would find tip any of the more inaccessible rivers.” THE VALLEY OF THE AMAZON. 'Die valley of the Amazon is as spacious as half Europe, and is the greatest region of virgin tropics in tho world. There are no roads but the rivers, and there arc 34,000 tortuous hut navigable miles oi rivers in the rainv season. Much of the country fTTniriMimnlM

traversed by the waters is quite unexplored, and what lies between Rio Madrc. tie Dios and the Rio Putumayo nobody knows but the (scattered bands of forest Indians. This river system is mainly within Rarf.il, but it penetrates- also the Republics of Porn, Bolivia. Ecuador and t'olonibia. Indeed, it is possible to launch a canoe on the Beni by the Andes, and to emerge from the Continent by the delta of tho Orinoco. PEONS AND THEIR SUFFERINGS.

The lorost owner i.s usually an absentee. Ho puts a manager in charge, and tho manager has to make the place pay. Labour being scarce it has to he imported. Many of the Brazilian rub-ber-getters ttre natives of Coara, in Southern Brazil, who have been persuaded to emigrate. At great expense to « concessionaire they are imported into the Upper Amazon, planted in a forest clearing as remote from their kind as though they were on a desert island, and there they stop till they die. They are put into debt for their clothes, food, and all they require. The prices charged are fantastic, and they must pay otf the debt with the rubber they get. They never do. In the more remote districts these labourers are whipped for the most trivial offences. An English traveller on the Beni told mo lie saw a woman '■molly beaten for upsetting a lamp. Other travellers in the- same country have told me of 500 lashes us a common punishment. All these men referred to slavery quite casually, spoke of the consequences of it as a daily occurrence there, and said tho padrone of an estate could give whippings for anything lie liked. HUMANS BOUGHT AND SOLD. Each of those men affirmed that they had seen men and women bought for gold, and they told me the story iu Dio country itself, not many miles from the Madrc do Dios. It is country in which there are no alien observers, as in Africa—no missionaries and no travellers—except an occasional young; Englishman- on American who has drifted thither haphazard jooking for fortune, but finding only fever and the direst hardships. 1 really believe the Brazilian Government. at least, is anxious that its Indian subjects should be justly treated by traders. 1 know it sent soldiers to appredeud an American subject—a man 1 met there —for shooting two halfbreeds, and hanged him. But it allows tho .uni of slavery known as peonage, and 0 is that sort of labour which obtains nearly all the rubber exported from tho American tropics. RUBBER FROM DEADLY JUNGLE.

The Amazon, like the Congo, spells rubber. .Practically it has no other commerce. Tin l natives there exchange rubber tor practically all they need, food, clothes, and utensils.. They practise agriculture and manufacture hardly at all. Labour is very scarce indeed —■the Indians will not work unless forced. The hulk of the rubber is now obtained from the obscure headquarters

of the Madeira river including the Beni. Mamore, and Madrc do Dios rivers, flowing through regions which but very few white men have ever scon—and from Dio similar country of the Upper Puma, where lies the district ot Acre.

All is dense jungle, and the fevers are of .such virulence that the olficial Brazilians themselves shrink as much from the mere idea of going there as would a comfortable married native of a London suburb. Tho life of a rubber-getter is as gloomy, famished, and cruel an existence as there is on earth. Ho is a slave, entirely subject to tho will of hi,s master, and hound to hi.s master by the twilight and silence of the limitless junglo about; escape is utterly impossible.