Saturday news. (Watertown, S.D.) 19??-19??, 1914-05-21
The Colonel Back.

st, Paul Dispatch: Romantic were the tales of adventure
told when Colonel Roosevelt and his explorers emerged from the
jungle. They brought to the world the first accounts of the
strange animal and plant life and the mysterious geography of
that vast jungle land which lies south of the Amazon, between
the Madeira and the Tapajos rivers.
1t $ a part of the Matte Crosse, or great forest, which is per-
haps the least known and at the same time the most fabulously
rich region on earth. The soil is incredibly fertile and beneath
1t / many places lies virgin gold. Diamonds are found on many
OF the river bottoms. Its plants and trees supply every possible
need of mankind. k -.
Entering the heart of this rich wilderness from the south in
the nelghborhood of the Geral mountains, the members of the
Roosevelt party found vegetation so dense and so profuse in va
r1ety- as they descended from the plateau, that classigcation was
almost impossible. The trees here grow to great heights, many
of them being more than $50 feet tall. There are magnificent
mahogany, palm and Brazilwood trees, the latter furnishing a
precious wood very like ebony.
Some specimens are found of a tree which is useful to man
IN more ways than any other known, the wax palm, native to the
northeast of Brazil From its roots the Indians make a heating
drink something like sarsaparila. It's trunk furnishes several
kinds of valuable wood, and the leaves an equally valuable wax.
An incsion IN its bark produces a flow of delicious liquid resem.
bling the milk of the cocoanut. Another tree, descriptivey called
the cowtree, also yields a milk which explorers assert can hardly
be distinguished IN taste and nutritive qualities from the bovine
product.
The animal life of the great jungle proved especially fascin-
atlng to the explorers, Among their trophies was the body of
a cururu, a little burrowing rodent which Roosevelt himself shot.
They found that larger animals were at times extremely scarce,
1t is possible to travel for days on end in this gloomy jungle with
out ever meeting a single sign of animal life other than gaudy
feathered parrots and occasional bands of. monkeys.
The monkeys of one species, known as the "howlers, - am
tStu heuSelN VIII tHe annoying pfactice OF gathering about
the camp after dark, and keeping the explorers all awake by
chanting an endless, mournful song, in which they were led by
one who seemed to be the leader of the tribe. Nevertheless, the
Roosevelt party fund the monkeys a blessing rather than annoy
ance during the latter part of the trip when they surely would
have persisted of starvation but for the monkey meat which they
obtained.
Of hostile animals the jaguar was one of the most savage
which they had to fear. Powerful as the man eating tiger of
India, the jaguar is equally remarkable for its cunning. The
Indians say that it can initiate to perfection the calls of nearly
every animal and bird in the jungle, and that by 50 doing it lures
its prey near enough to pounce upon. They also assert that it
fishes IN the streams, splashing the water with its tail, and then
Selling the fish which come to the surface thinking the splash
may have been caused by something of food value that has
fallen in.
Of human life the party saw few signs in all this vast wild
erness, though they heard often the sound of Indians making
their hasty escape some distance off in the jungle.
Once an arrow was fired by a lurking savage. This may
have been the deed of one of the Mandrucus, the most warlke
savages of South America, who haunt part of this region. It
is one of the interesting customs of these Indians to cut off the
heads of their fallen enemies and preserve them as trophies of
victory.