254 SELLING LATIN AMERICA 
often polluted. Your drinking water should 
be boiled; if good water is not obtainable 
otherwise drink some reliable mineral water. 
Remember that plague comes from the bite of 
the flea, and yellow fever and malaria from the 
bite of the mosquito, so avoid as much as possi 
ble the places where these pests are to be 
found. Daily baths are apt to remove danger 
from flea bites and sleeping under a net mini 
mizes the possibilities of contracting yellow 
and malarial fevers. Personal hygiene should 
always be observed. In twenty years of the 
roughest and toughest travelling up creeks and 
down tropical rivers, through forests heavy 
with dew, across barren, wind-swept plains, 
over mountains, in high and low altitudes, by 
exercising these suggested precautions I have 
had only one serious illness, yellow fever. 
Conditions have vastly improved since I first 
began my trips and are getting better every 
year. With judgment one could now take a 
journey all over Latin America without any 
physical dangers or serious illness intervening, 
and with less risk than he would be liable to