The Ordway new era., 1913-03-28

their home women slaves will labor
in rubber forest under the lash Of
brutes desperately eager to gather a
fortune, determined to go back to civil
lization rich. Disease will be every
where. Life can be bought for pound
of crude rubber. Money. money
money at any sacrifice. that Is the
code in the forests about Iquitos.
Would Brook No Delay.
So quickly did she act. this daugh.
ter OF a banker many times a million.
aire. that she had her trunks packed
and her passage to New York engaged
before she received letter from her
husband. telling the details Of this ex-
pedition into the heart OF the rubber
forests of Peru.
Comforts, luxuries. entertainments: !:
without regret she turned from them
to go to fight side by side with her
husband who had been chosen by the
Peruvian government to bring health
into the most disease-ridden city in
the world.
AS for his going alone-that was i'm.
possible. In the first place. Mrs. Con-
verse wouldn't have consented to q
separation for two years. In the sec
ond. his duties in Deaths favorite rec
reation ground were such that he
would need the aid Of his wife.
Before accepting the Peruvian mis-
sion. DR.. Converse talked the matter
over with his brother officers in the
service. They told him that his only
chance to live to clean up q tropical
pesthole that is menacing health at
the Panama canal would be to set mp
in Iquitos a personal establishment.
governed BY the strictest rules Of lhy-
giene.
He must live in rat-proof and in
sect-proof house. which must be kept
sterilized from top to bottom to kill
the death floating in the miasmic air
OF the Jungle. Utensils must be scald-
ed always before use: all food must
be cooked. except fruit. which must
be scalded; cooked food II touched
by a fly or other insect. must be
thrown away: clothing must be care
fully sterilized. and only certain fab
RIGS must be worn; the house. Of
course. must be kept scrupulously
clean.
Love Called for Sacrifice.
Money could not buy the sort Of
household service the preservation of
DR.. Converse's health and life would
demand: only love could be relied up
on to give such service. never to slip
In its adherence to the scientific rules
of hygiene. So he must take his
young wife with him to the plague
stricken city. Her work in maintain
ing a sanitary household in Iquitos
would be fully as important part Of
the government mission as her hus.
band's-and fully as dangerous.
DR.. Converse didn't need the $1,000
month the Peruvian government
contracted to pay him for two years
service. The Converse family II we'll
known In California and has lands
and wealth in abundance, and young
George Converse went into the public
health and marine hospital service be-
thing: because life of uselessness
held no charms for him.
"suburb Of He'll"
Men who have come out Of Iquitos
alive call it "a suburb Of hell" There
are no ''old Inhabitants" in Iquitos.
They talk of events Of year ago and
believe they are discussing history.
Men visit Iquitos as river visits q
sunken treasure ship: they enter the
city as fireman enters q burning
building, ready to nee as soon As they
find that which they seek.
The rubber trade must bear the
blame for this. When Charles Good
year discovered the process for turn
ing crude rubber Into an article of
commerce there was a wild rush of
adventurers into the forest regions of
South America. Here gold grew in
trees. Rubber gathering is slow work.
Impatience brought out the brute in
these men. They made slaves of the
Indians who lived in the montana, as
the forest region is called.
whispered tales began to come out
of the Amazon rubber district, espe-
cially from the Putumayo district at
the northern end Of it-blood curdlins
tales of barbarous cruelties and tor
tures-old women locked into cribs
and starved to death because they
were too feeble to gather the quota
of rubber their drivers demanded of
them;. babies cut In two with one
stroke Of the machete when their
mothers protested that they must
y