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Plato Profile Directory 14
Page 09
Edward FitzGerald once said that a fault of modern writing was that it tried to compress too many good things into a page, and aimed too much at omitting the homelier interspaces. We must not try to make our lives into a perpetual feast; at least we must try to do so, but it must be by conquest rather than by inglorious flight; we must face the fact that the stuff of life is both homely and indeed amiss, and realise, if we can, that our happiness is bound up with energetically trying to escape from conditions which we cannot avoid. When we are young and fiery-hearted, we think that a tame counsel; but, like all great truths, it dawns on us slowly. Not until we begin to ascend the hill do we grasp how huge, how complicated, how intricate the plain, with all its fields, woods, hamlets, and streams is; we are happy men and women if in middle age we even faintly grasp that the actual truth about life is vastly larger and finer than any impatient youthful fancies about it are, though it is good to have indulged our splendid fancies in youth, if only for the delight of learning how much more magnificent is the real design.
We went along the banks of the beautiful island of Antas, after which we halted at the house of Jose Maracati, a Mundurucu chieftain, with thirty Indians under him. A delegate of the Para Province in charge of the Indians--a man of strong Malay characteristics and evidently of Indian parentage--received us, and gave me much information about the local rubber industry. He told me that the best rubber found in that region was the kind locally called _seringa preta_, a black rubber which was coagulated with the smoke of the _coco de palmeira_. He calculated that 150 rubber trees gave about 14 kilos of rubber a day. The _seringa preta_ exuded latex all the year round, even during the rainy season.
The name of the bear is "Jack." I fetched him from the West India Import Dock on the 5th of November, 1870. He was running about with another bear on board ship, but the job was to catch him. After many attempts we at last put a strong collar round his neck, to which was attached a long chain, and then we got him into a large barrel, and fastened the head on with hoop-iron, lowered him over the side of the vessel into a boat, and then pulled to the quay, and hauled him up into a cart. For a time the little fellow was quiet enough, but he got very inquisitive when being driven toward the city, and wanted to have a look round. I managed to quiet him by giving him pieces of lump sugar. He arrived safely at the Crystal Palace, and has lived in an aviary till the beginning of last month, when he was put into his new bear-pit. The little fellow has grown twice the size he was when he first came. He is very playful, but sometimes shows his teeth when he is teased.
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