Through the Brazilian Wilderness Part 8

Here we found Amilcar and Mello, who had waited for us with the rear- guard of their pack-train, and we enjoyed our meeting with the two fine fellows, than whom no military service of any nation could produce more efficient men for this kind of difficult and responsible work. Next morning they mustered their soldiers, muleteers, and pack- ox men and marched off. Reinisch the taxidermist was with them. We followed in the late afternoon, camping after a few miles. We left the oxcart at Campos Novos; from thence on the trail was only for pack- animals.

In this neighborhood the two naturalists found many birds which we had not hitherto met. The most conspicuous was a huge oriole, the size of a small crow, with a naked face, a black-and-red bill, and gaudily variegated plumage of green, yellow, and chestnut. Very interesting was the false bellbird, a gray bird with loud, metallic notes. There was also a tiny soft-tailed woodp.e.c.k.e.r, no larger than a kinglet; a queer humming-bird with a slightly flexible bill; and many species of ant-thrush, tanager, manakin, and tody. Among these unfamiliar forms was a vireo looking much like our solitary vireo. At one camp Cherrie collected a dozen perching birds; Miller a beautiful little rail; and Kermit, with the small Luger belt-rifle, a handsome cura.s.sow, nearly as big as a turkey--out of which, after it had been skinned, the cook made a delicious canja, the thick Brazilian soup of fowl and rice than which there is nothing better of its kind. All these birds were new to the collection--no naturalists had previously worked this region--so that the afternoon's work represented nine species new to the collection, six new genera, and a most excellent soup.

Two days after leaving Campos Novos we reached Vilhena, where there is a telegraph station. We camped once at a small river named by Colonel Rondon the "Twelfth of October," because he reached it on the day Columbus discovered America--I had never before known what day it was!--and once at the foot of a hill which he had named after Lyra, his companion in the exploration. The two days' march--really one full day and part of two others--was through beautiful country, and we enjoyed it thoroughly, although there were occasional driving rain- storms, when the rain came in almost level sheets and drenched every one and everything. The country was like that around Campos Novos, and offered a striking contrast to the level, barren, sandy wastes of the chapadao, which is a healthy region, where great industrial centres can arise, but not suited for extensive agriculture as are the lowland flats. For these forty-eight hours the trail climbed into and out of steep valleys and broad basins and up and down hills. In the deep valleys were magnificent woods, in which giant rubber-trees towered, while the huge leaves of the low-growing pacova, or wild banana, were conspicuous in the undergrowth. Great azure b.u.t.terflies flitted through the open, sunny glades, and the bellbirds, sitting motionless, uttered their ringing calls from the dark stillness of the columned groves. The hillsides were gra.s.sy pastures or else covered with low, open forest.

A huge frog, brown above, with a light streak down each side, was found hiding under some sticks in a damp place in one of the improvised kitchens; and another frog, with disks on his toes, was caught on one of the tents. A coral-snake puzzled us. Some coral- snakes are harmless; others are poisonous, although not aggressive.

The best authorities give an infallible recipe for distinguishing them by the pattern of the colors, but this particular specimen, although it corresponded exactly in color pattern with the description of the poisonous snakes, nevertheless had no poison-fangs that even after the most minute examination we could discover. Miller and one of the dogs caught a sariema, a big, long-legged, bustard-like bird, in rather a curious way. We were on the march, plodding along through as heavy a tropic downpour as it was our ill fortune to encounter. The sariema, evidently as drenched and uncomfortable as we were, was hiding under a bush to avoid the pelting rain. The dog discovered it, and after the bird valiantly repelled him, Miller was able to seize it. Its stomach contained about half a pint of gra.s.s-hoppers and beetles and young leaves. At Vilhena there was a tame sariema, much more familiar and at home than any of the poultry. It was without the least fear of man or dog. The sariema (like the screamer and the cura.s.sow) ought to be introduced into our barnyards and on our lawns, at any rate in the Southern States; it is a good-looking, friendly, and attractive bird.

Another bird we met is in some places far more intimate, and domesticates itself. This is the pretty little honey-creeper. In Colombia Miller found the honey-creepers habitually coming inside the houses and hotels at meal-times, hopping about the table, and climbing into the sugar-bowl.

Along this part of our march there was much of what at a hasty glance seemed to be volcanic rock; but Oliveira showed me that it was a kind of conglomerate, with bubbles or hollows in it, made of sand and iron- bearing earth. He said it was a superficial quaternary deposit formed by erosion from the cretaceous rocks, and that there were here no tertiary deposits. He described the geological structure of the lands through which we had pa.s.sed as follows: The panta.n.a.ls were of Pleistocene age. Along the upper Sepotuba, in the region of the rapids, there were sandstones, shales, and clays of Permian age. The rolling country east of this contained eruptive rocks--a porphyritic disbase, with zeolite, quartz, and agate of Tria.s.sic age. With the chapadao of the Parecis plateau we came to a land of sand and clay, dotted with lumps of sandstone and pieces of petrified wood; this, according to Oliveira, is of Mesozoic age, possibly cretaceous and similar to the South African formation. There are geologists who consider it as of Permian age.

At Vilhena we were on a watershed which drained into the Gy-Parana, which itself runs into the Madeira nearly midway between its sources and its mouth. A little farther along and northward we again came to streams running ultimately into the Tapajos; and between them, and close to them, were streamlets which drained into the Duvida and Ananas, whose courses and outlets were unknown. This point is part of the divide between the basins of the Madeira and Tapajos. A singular topographical feature of the Plan Alto, the great interior sandy plateau of Brazil, is that at its westernmost end the southward flowing streams, instead of running into the Paraguay as they do farther east, form the headwaters of the Guapore, which may, perhaps, be called the upper main stream of the Madeira. These westernmost streams from the southern edge of the plateau, therefore, begin by flowing south; then for a long stretch they flow southwest; then north, and finally northeast into the Amazon. According to some exceptionally good geological observers, this is probably due to the fact that in a remote geologic past the ocean sent in an arm from the south, between the Plan Alto and what is now the Andean chain. These rivers then emptied into the Andean Sea. The gradual upheaval of the soil has resulted in subst.i.tuting dry land for this arm of the ocean and in reversing the course of what is now the Madeira, just as, according to these geologists, in somewhat familiar fashion the Amazon has been reversed, it having once been, at least for the upper two thirds of its course, an affluent of the Andean Sea.

From Vilhena we travelled in a generally northward direction. For a few leagues we went across the chapadao, the sands or clays of the nearly level upland plateau, gra.s.sy or covered with thin, stunted forest, the same type of country that had been predominant ever since we ascended the Parecis table-land on the morning of the third day after leaving the Sepotuba. Then, at about the point where the trail dipped into a basin containing the head-springs of the Ananas, we left this type of country and began to march through thick forest, not very high. There was little feed for the animals on the Chapadao. There was less in the forest. Moreover, the continual heavy rains made the travelling difficult and laborious for them, and they weakened.

However, a couple of marches before we reached Tres Burity, where there is a big ranch with hundreds of cattle, we were met by ten fresh pack-oxen, and our serious difficulties were over.

There were piums in plenty by day, but neither mosquitoes nor sand-flies by night; and for us the trip was very pleasant, save for moments of anxiety about the mules. The loose bullocks furnished us abundance of fresh beef, although, as was inevitable under the circ.u.mstances, of a decidedly tough quality. One of the biggest of the bullocks was attacked one night by a vampire bat, and next morning his withers were literally bathed in blood.

With the chapadao we said good-by to the curious, gregarious, and crepuscular or nocturnal spiders which we found so abundant along the line of the telegraph wire. They have offered one of the small problems with which the commission has had to deal. They are not common in the dry season. They swarm during the rains; and, when their tough webs are wet, those that lead from the wire to the ground sometimes effectually short circuit the wire. They have on various occasions caused a good deal of trouble in this manner.

The third night out from Vilhena we emerged for a moment from the endless close-growing forest in which our poor animals got such scanty pickings, and came to a beautiful open country, where gra.s.sy slopes, dotted with occasional trees, came down on either side of a little brook which was one of the headwaters of the Duvida. It was a pleasure to see the mules greedily bury their muzzles in the pasturage. Our tents were pitched in the open, near a shady tree, which sent out its low branches on every side. At this camp Cherrie shot a lark, very characteristic of the open upland country, and Miller found two bats in the rotten wood of a dead log. He heard them squeaking and dug them out; he could not tell by what method they had gotten in.

Here Kermit, while a couple of miles from our tents, came across an encampment of Nhambiquaras. There were twenty or thirty of them--men, women, and a few children. Kermit, after the manner of honest folk in the wilderness, advanced ostentatiously in the open, calling out to give warning of his coming. Like surroundings may cause like manners.

The early Saxons in England deemed it legal to kill any man who came through the woods without shouting or blowing a horn; and in Nhambiquara land at the present time it is against etiquette, and may be very unhealthy, to come through the woods toward strangers without loudly announcing one's presence. The Nhambiquaras received Kermit with the utmost cordiality, and gave him pineapple-wine to drink. They were stark naked as usual; they had no hammocks or blankets, and their huts were flimsy shelters of palm-branches. Yet they were in fine condition. Half a dozen of the men and a couple of boys accompanied Kermit back to our camp, paying not slightest heed to the rain which was falling. They were bold and friendly, good-natured--at least superficially--and very inquisitive. In feasting, the long reeds thrust through holes in their lips did not seem to bother them, and they laughed at the suggestion of removing them; evidently to have done so would have been rather bad manners--like using a knife as an aid in eating ice-cream. They held two or three dances, and we were again struck by the rhythm and weird, haunting melody of their chanting. After supper they danced beside the camp-fire; and finally, to their delight, most of the members of our own party, Americans and Brazilians, enthusiastically joined the dance, while the colonel and I furnished an appreciative and applauding audience. Next morning, when we were awakened by the chattering and screaming of the numerous macaws, parrots, and parakeets, we found that nearly all the Indians, men and women, were gathered outside the tent. As far as clothing was concerned, they were in the condition of Adam and Eve before the fall.

One of the women carried a little squirrel monkey. She put it up the big tree some distance from the tents; and when she called, it came scampering to her across the gra.s.s, ran up her, and clung to her neck.

They would have liked to pilfer; but as they had no clothes it was difficult for them to conceal anything. One of the women was observed to take a fork; but as she did not possess a rag of clothing of any kind all she did do was to try to bury the fork in the sand and then sit on it; and it was reclaimed without difficulty. One or two of the children wore necklaces and bracelets made of the polished wood of the tuc.u.m palm, and of the molars of small rodents.

Next day's march led us across a hilly country of good pastureland.

The valleys were densely wooded, palms of several kinds being conspicuous among the other trees; and the brooks at the bottoms we crossed at fords or by the usual rude pole bridges. On the open pastures were occasional trees, usually slender bacaba palms, with heads which the winds had dishevelled until they looked like mops. It was evidently a fine natural cattle country, and we soon began to see scores, perhaps hundreds, of the cattle belonging to the government ranch at Tres Burity, which we reached in the early afternoon. It is beautifully situated: the view roundabout is lovely, and certainly the land will prove healthy when settlements have been definitely established. Here we revelled in abundance of good fresh milk and eggs; and for dinner we had chicken canja and fat beef roasted on big wooden spits; and we even had watermelons. The latter were from seeds brought down by the American engineers who built the Madeira Marmore Railroad--a work which stands honorably distinguished among the many great and useful works done in the development of the tropics of recent years.

Amilcar's pack-oxen, which were nearly worn out, had been left in these fertile pastures. Most of the fresh oxen which he took in their places were unbroken, and there was a perfect circus before they were packed and marched off; in every direction, said the gleeful narrators, there were bucking oxen and loads strewed on the ground.

This cattle ranch is managed by the colonel's uncle, his mother's brother, a hale old man of seventy, white-haired but as active and vigorous as ever; with a fine, kindly, intelligent face. His name is Miguel Evangalista. He is a native of Matto Grosso, of practically pure Indian blood, and was dressed in the ordinary costume of the Caboclo--hat, shirt, trousers, and no shoes or stockings. Within the last year he had killed three jaguars, which had been living on the mules; as long as they could get mules they did not at this station molest the cattle.

It was with this uncle's father, Colonel Rondon's own grandfather, that Colonel Rondon as an orphan spent the first seven years of his life. His father died before he was born, and his mother when he was only a year old. He lived on his grandfather's cattle-ranch, some fifty miles from Cuyaba. Then he went to live in Cuyaba with a kinsman on his father's side, from whom he took the name of Rondon; his own father's name was DaSilva. He studied in the Cuyaba Government School, and at sixteen was inscribed as one of the instructors. Then he went to Rio, served for a year in the army as an enlisted man in the ranks, and succeeded finally in getting into the military school. After five years as pupil he served three years as professor of mathematics in this school; and then, as a lieutenant of engineers in the Brazilian army, he came back to his home in Matto Grosso and began his life-work of exploring the wilderness.

Next day we journeyed to the telegraph station at Bonofacio, through alternate spells of glaring sunshine and heavy rain. On the way we stopped at an aldea-village of Nhambiquaras. We first met a couple of men going to hunt, with bows and arrows longer than themselves. A rather comely young woman, carrying on her back a wickerwork basket, or creel, supported by a forehead band, and accompanied by a small child, was with them. At the village there were a number of men, women, and children. Although as completely naked as the others we had met, the members of this band were more ornamented with beads, and wore earrings made from the inside of mussel-sh.e.l.ls or very big snail- sh.e.l.ls. They were more hairy than the ones we had so far met. The women, but not the men, completely remove the hair from their bodies-- and look more, instead of less, indecent in consequence. The chief, whose body was painted red with the juice of a fruit, had what could fairly be styled a mustache and imperial; and one old man looked somewhat like a hairy Ainu, or perhaps even more like an Australian black fellow. My companion told me that this probably represented an infusion of negro blood, and possibly of mulatto blood, from runaway slaves of the old days, when some of the Matto Grosso mines were worked by slave labor. They also thought it possible that this infiltration of African negroes might be responsible for the curious shape of the bigger huts, which were utterly unlike their flimsy, ordinary shelters, and bore no resemblance in shape to those of the other Indian tribes of this region; whereas they were not unlike the ordinary beehive huts of the agricultural African negroes. There were in this village several huts or shelters open at the sides, and two of the big huts. These were of closely woven thatch, circular in outline, with a rounded dome, and two doors a couple of feet high opposite each other, and no other opening. There were fifteen or twenty people to each hut. Inside were their implements and utensils, such as wicker baskets (some of them filled with pineapples), gourds, fire-sticks, wooden knives, wooden mortars, and a board for grating mandioc, made of a thick slab of wood inset with sharp points of a harder wood. From the Brazilians one or two of them had obtained blankets, and one a hammock; and they had also obtained knives, which they sorely needed, for they are not even in the stone age. One woman shielded herself from the rain by holding a green palm-branch down her back. Another had on her head what we at first thought to be a monkey-skin head- dress. But it was a little, live, black monkey. It stayed habitually with its head above her forehead, and its arms and legs spread so that it lay moulded to the shape of her head; but both woman and monkey showed some reluctance about having their photographs taken.

Bonofacio consisted of several thatched one-room cabins, connected by a stockade which was extended to form an enclosure behind them. A number of tame parrots and parakeets, of several different species, scrambled over the roofs and entered the houses. In the open pastures near by were the curious, extensive burrows of a gopher rat, which ate the roots of gra.s.s, not emerging to eat the gra.s.s but pulling it into the burrows by the roots. These burrows bore a close likeness to those of our pocket gophers. Miller found the animals difficult to trap.

Finally, by the aid of Colonel Rondon, several Indians, and two or three of our men, he dug one out. From the central shaft several surface galleries radiated, running for many rods about a foot below the surface, with, at intervals of half a dozen yards, mounds where the loose earth had been expelled. The central shaft ran straight down for about eight feet, and then laterally for about fifteen feet, to a kind of chamber. The animal dug hard to escape, but when taken and put on the surface of the ground it moved slowly and awkwardly. It showed vicious courage. In looks it closely resembled our pocket gophers, but it had no pockets. This was one of the most interesting small mammals that we secured.

After breakfast at Bonofacio a number of Nhambiquaras--men, women, and children--strolled in. The men gave us an exhibition of not very good archery; when the bow was bent, it was at first held so that the arrow pointed straight upwards and was then lowered so that the arrow was aimed at the target. Several of the women had been taken from other tribes, after their husbands or fathers had been killed; for the Nhambiquaras are light-hearted robbers and murderers. Two or three miserable dogs accompanied them, half-starved and mangy, but each decorated with a collar of beads. The headmen had three or four wives apiece, and the women were the burden-bearers, but apparently were not badly treated. Most of them were dirty, although well-fed looking, and their features were of a low type; but some, especially among the children, were quite attractive.

From Bonofacio we went about seven miles, across a rolling prairie dotted with trees and clumps of shrub. There, on February 24, we joined Amilcar, who was camped by a brook which flowed into the Duvida. We were only some six miles from our place of embarkation on the Duvida, and we divided our party and our belongings. Amilcar, Miller, Mello, and Oliveira were to march three days to the Gy-Parana, and then descend it, and continue down the Madeira to Manaos. Rondon, Lyra, the doctor, Cherrie, Kermit, and I, with sixteen paddlers, in seven canoes, were to descend the Duvida, and find out whether it led into the Gy-Parana, our purpose was to return and descend the Ananas, whose outlet was also unknown. Having this in view, we left a fortnight's provisions for our party of six at Bonofacio. We took with us provisions for about fifty days; not full rations, for we hoped in part to live on the country--on fish, game, nuts, and palm-tops. Our personal baggage was already well cut down: Cherrie, Kermit, and I took the naturalist's fly to sleep under, and a very light little tent extra for any one who might fall sick. Rondon, Lyra, and the doctor took one of their own tents. The things that we carried were necessities--food, medicines, bedding, instruments for determining the alt.i.tude and longitude and lat.i.tude--except a few books, each in small compa.s.s: Lyra's were in German, consisting of two tiny volumes of Goethe and Schiller; Kermit's were in Portuguese; mine, all in English, included the last two volumes of Gibbon, the plays of Sophocles, More's "Utopia," Marcus Aurelius, and Epictetus, the two latter lent me by a friend, Major Shipton of the regulars, our military attache at Buenos Aires.

If our canoe voyage was prosperous we would gradually lighten the loads by eating the provisions. If we met with accidents, such as losing canoes and men in the rapids, or losing men in encounters with Indians, or if we encountered overmuch fever and dysentery, the loads would lighten themselves. We were all armed. We took no cartridges for sport. Cherrie had some to be used sparingly for collecting specimens.

The others were to be used--unless in the unlikely event of having to repel an attack--only to procure food. The food and the arms we carried represented all reasonable precautions against suffering and starvation; but, of course, if the course of the river proved very long and difficult, if we lost our boats over falls or in rapids, or had to make too many and too long portages, or were brought to a halt by impa.s.sable swamps, then we would have to reckon with starvation as a possibility. Anything might happen. We were about to go into the unknown, and no one could say what it held.

NOTE: The first four days, before we struck the upper rapids, and during which we made nearly seventy kilometres, are of course not included when I speak of our making our way down the rapids.

I hope that this year the Ananas, or Pineapple, will also be put on the map. One of Colonel Rondon's subordinates is to attempt the descent of the river. We pa.s.sed the headwaters of the Pineapple on the high plateau, very possibly we pa.s.sed its mouth, although it is also possible that it empties into the Canama or Tapajos. But it will not be "put on the map" until some one descends and finds out where, as a matter of fact, it really does go.

It would be well if a geographical society of standing would investigate the formal and official charges made by Colonel Rondon, an officer and gentleman of the highest repute, against Mr. Savage Landor. Colonel Rondon, in an official report to the Brazilian Government, has written a scathing review of Mr. Landor. He states that Mr. Savage Landor did not perform, and did not even attempt to perform, the work he had contracted to do in exploration for the Brazilian Government. Mr. Landor had a.s.serted and promised that he would go through unknown country along the line of eleven degrees lat.i.tude south, and, as Colonel Rondon states, it was because of this proposal of his that the Brazilian Government gave him material financial a.s.sistance in advance. However, Colonel Rondon sets forth that Mr. Landor did not keep his word or make any serious effort to fulfil his moral obligation to do as he had said he would do. In a letter to me under date of May 1, 1914--a letter which has been published in full in France--Colonel Rondon goes at length into the question of what territory Mr. Landor had traversed. Colonel Rondon states that--excepting on one occasion, when Mr. Landor, wandering off a beaten trail, immediately got lost and shortly returned to his starting-point without making any discoveries--he kept to old, well- travelled routes. One sentence of the colonel's letter to me runs as follows: "I can guarantee to you that in Brazil Mr. Landor did not cross a hand's breadth of land that had not been explored, the greater part of it many centuries ago." As regards Mr. Landor's sole and brief experience in leaving a beaten route, Colonel Rondon states that at Sao Manoel Mr. Landor engaged from Senhor Jose Sotero Barreto (the revenue officer of Matto Grosso, at Sao Manoel) a guide to lead him across a well-travelled trail which connects the Tapajos with the Madeira via the Canama. The guide, however, got lost, and after a few days they all returned to the point of departure instead of going through to the Canama.

Senhor Barreto, a gentleman of high standing, related this last incident to Fiala when Fiala descended the Tapajos (and, by the way, Fiala's trip down the Papagaio, Juruena, and Tapajos was infinitely more important than all the work Mr. Landor did in South America put together). Lieutenants Pyrineus and Mello, mentioned in the body of this work, informed me that they accompanied Mr. Landor on most of his overland trip before he embarked on the Arinos, and that he simply followed the highroad or else the telegraph-line, and furthermore, Colonel Rondon states that the Indians whom Mr. Landor encountered and photographed were those educated at the missions.

Colonel Rondon's official report to the Brazilian Government and his letter to me are of interest to all geographers and other scientific men who have any concern with the alleged discoveries of Mr. Landor.

They contain very grave charges, with which it is not necessary for me to deal. Suffice it to say that Mr. Landor's accounts of his alleged exploration cannot be considered as ent.i.tled to the slightest serious consideration until he has satisfactorily and in detail answered Colonel Rondon; and this he has thus far signally failed to do.

Fortunately, there are numerous examples of exactly the opposite type of work. From the days of Humboldt and Spix and Martius to the present time, German explorers have borne a conspicuous part in the exploration of South America. As representatives of the men and women who have done such capital work, who have fronted every hazard and hardship and labored in the scientific spirit, and who have added greatly to our fund of geographic, biologic, and ethnographic knowledge, I may mention Miss Snethlage and Herr Karl von den Steinen.

VIII. THE RIVER OF DOUBT

On February 27, 1914, shortly after midday, we started down the River of Doubt into the unknown. We were quite uncertain whether after a week we should find ourselves in the Gy-Parana, or after six weeks in the Madeira, or after three months we knew not where. That was why the river was rightly christened the Duvida.

We had been camped close to the river, where the trail that follows the telegraph line crosses it by a rough bridge. As our laden dugouts swung into the stream, Amilcar and Miller and all the others of the Gy-Parana party were on the banks and the bridge to wave farewell and wish us good-by and good luck. It was the height of the rainy season, and the swollen torrent was swift and brown. Our camp was at about 12 degrees 1 minute lat.i.tude south and 60 degrees 15 minutes longitude west of Greenwich. Our general course was to be northward toward the equator, by waterway through the vast forest.

We had seven canoes, all of them dugouts. One was small, one was cranky, and two were old, waterlogged, and leaky. The other three were good. The two old canoes were lashed together, and the cranky one was lashed to one of the others. Kermit with two paddlers went in the smallest of the good canoes; Colonel Rondon and Lyra with three other paddlers in the next largest; and the doctor, Cherrie, and I in the largest with three paddlers. The remaining eight camaradas--there were sixteen in all--were equally divided between our two pairs of lashed canoes. Although our personal baggage was cut down to the limit necessary for health and efficiency, yet on such a trip as ours, where scientific work has to be done and where food for twenty-two men for an unknown period of time has to be carried, it is impossible not to take a good deal of stuff; and the seven dugouts were too heavily laden.

The paddlers were a strapping set. They were expert rivermen and men of the forest, skilled veterans in wilderness work. They were lithe as panthers and brawny as bears. They swam like waterdogs. They were equally at home with pole and paddle, with axe and machete; and one was a good cook and others were good men around camp. They looked like pirates in the pictures of Howard Pyle or Maxfield Parrish; one or two of them were pirates, and one worse than a pirate; but most of them were hard-working, willing, and cheerful. They were white,--or, rather, the olive of southern Europe,--black, copper-colored, and of all intermediate shades. In my canoe Luiz the steersman, the headman, was a Matto Grosso negro; Julio the bowsman was from Bahia and of pure Portuguese blood; and the third man, Antonio, was a Parecis Indian.

The actual surveying of the river was done by Colonel Rondon and Lyra, with Kermit as their a.s.sistant. Kermit went first in his little canoe with the sighting-rod, on which two disks, one red and one white, were placed a metre apart. He selected a place which commanded as long vistas as possible up-stream and down, and which therefore might be at the angle of a bend; landed; cut away the branches which obstructed the view; and set up the sighting-pole--incidentally encountering maribundi wasps and swarms of biting and stinging ants. Lyra, from his station up-stream, with his telemetre established the distance, while Colonel Rondon with the compa.s.s took the direction, and made the records. Then they moved on to the point Kermit had left, and Kermit established a new point within their sight. The first half-day's work was slow. The general course of the stream was a trifle east of north, but at short intervals it bent and curved literally toward every point of the compa.s.s. Kermit landed nearly a hundred times, and we made but nine and a third kilometres.

My canoe ran ahead of the surveying canoes. The height of the water made the going easy, for most of the snags and fallen trees were well beneath the surface. Now and then, however, the swift water hurried us toward ripples that marked ugly spikes of sunken timber, or toward uprooted trees that stretched almost across the stream. Then the muscles stood out on the backs and arms of the paddlers as stroke on stroke they urged us away from and past the obstacle. If the leaning or fallen trees were the th.o.r.n.y, slender-stemmed boritana palms, which love the wet, they were often, although plunged beneath the river, in full and vigorous growth, their stems curving upward, and their frond- crowned tops shaken by the rushing water. It was interesting work, for no civilized man, no white man, had ever gone down or up this river or seen the country through which we were pa.s.sing. The lofty and matted forest rose like a green wall on either hand. The trees were stately and beautiful. The looped and twisted vines hung from them like great ropes. Ma.s.ses of epiphytes grew both on the dead trees and the living; some had huge leaves like elephants' ears. Now and then fragrant scents were blown to us from flowers on the banks. There were not many birds, and for the most part the forest was silent; rarely we heard strange calls from the depths of the woods, or saw a cormorant or ibis.

My canoe ran only a couple of hours. Then we halted to wait for the others. After a couple of hours more, as the surveyors had not turned up, we landed and made camp at a spot where the bank rose sharply for a hundred yards to a level stretch of ground. Our canoes were moored to trees. The axemen cleared a s.p.a.ce for the tents; they were pitched, the baggage was brought up, and fires were kindled. The woods were almost soundless. Through them ran old tapir trails, but there was no fresh sign. Before nightfall the surveyors arrived. There were a few piums and gnats, and a few mosquitoes after dark, but not enough to make us uncomfortable. The small stingless bees, of slightly aromatic odor, swarmed while daylight lasted and crawled over our faces and hands; they were such tame, harmless little things that when they tickled too much I always tried to brush them away without hurting them. But they became a great nuisance after a while. It had been raining at intervals, and the weather was overcast; but after the sun went down the sky cleared. The stars were brilliant overhead, and the new moon hung in the west. It was a pleasant night, the air almost cool, and we slept soundly.

Next morning the two surveying canoes left immediately after breakfast. An hour later the two pairs of lashed canoes pushed off. I kept our canoe to let Cherrie collect, for in the early hours we could hear a number of birds in the woods near by. The most interesting birds he shot were a cotinga, brilliant turquoise-blue with a magenta- purple throat, and a big woodp.e.c.k.e.r, black above and cinnamon below with an entirely red head and neck. It was almost noon before we started. We saw a few more birds; there were fresh tapir and paca tracks at one point where we landed; once we heard howler monkeys from the depth of the forest, and once we saw a big otter in midstream. As we drifted and paddled down the swirling brown current, through the vivid rain-drenched green of the tropic forest, the trees leaned over the river from both banks. When those that had fallen in the river at some narrow point were very tall, or where it happened that two fell opposite each other, they formed barriers which the men in the leading canoes cleared with their axes. There were many palms, both the burity with its stiff fronds like enormous fans, and a handsome species of bacaba, with very long, gracefully curving fronds. In places the palms stood close together, towering and slender, their stems a stately colonnade, their fronds an arched fretwork against the sky.

b.u.t.terflies of many hues fluttered over the river. The day was overcast, with showers of rain. When the sun broke through rifts in the clouds, his shafts turned the forest to gold.

In mid-afternoon we came to the mouth of a big and swift affluent entering from the right. It was undoubtedly the Bandeira, which we had crossed well toward its head, some ten days before, on our road to Bonofacio. The Nhambiquaras had then told Colonel Rondon that it flowed into the Duvida. After its junction, with the added volume of water, the river widened without losing its depth. It was so high that it had overflowed and stood among the trees on the lower levels. Only the higher stretches were dry. On the sheer banks where we landed we had to push the canoes for yards or rods through the branches of the submerged trees, hacking and hewing. There were occasional bays and ox-bows from which the current had shifted. In these the coa.r.s.e marsh gra.s.s grew tall.

This evening we made camp on a flat of dry ground, densely wooded, of course, directly on the edge of the river and five feet above it. It was fine to see the speed and sinewy ease with which the choppers cleared an open s.p.a.ce for the tents. Next morning, when we bathed before sunrise, we dived into deep water right from the sh.o.r.e, and from the moored canoes. This second day we made sixteen and a half kilometres along the course of the river, and nine kilometres in a straight line almost due north.

The following day, March 1, there was much rain--sometimes showers, sometimes vertical sheets of water. Our course was somewhat west of north and we made twenty and a half kilometres. We pa.s.sed signs of Indian habitation. There were abandoned palm-leaf shelters on both banks. On the left bank we came to two or three old Indian fields, grown up with coa.r.s.e fern and studded with the burned skeletons of trees. At the mouth of a brook which entered from the right some sticks stood in the water, marking the site of an old fish-trap. At one point we found the tough vine hand-rail of an Indian bridge running right across the river, a couple of feet above it. Evidently the bridge had been built at low water. Three stout poles had been driven into the stream-bed in a line at right angles to the current.

The bridge had consisted of poles fastened to these supports, leading between them and from the support at each end to the banks. The rope of tough vines had been stretched as a hand-rail, necessary with such precarious footing. The rise of the river had swept away the bridge, but the props and the rope hand-rail remained. In the afternoon, from the boat, Cherrie shot a large dark-gray monkey with a prehensile tail. It was very good eating.

We camped on a dry level s.p.a.ce, but a few feet above, and close beside, the river--so that our swimming-bath was handy. The trees were cleared and camp was made with orderly hurry. One of the men almost stepped on a poisonous coral-snake, which would have been a serious thing, as his feet were bare. But I had on stout shoes, and the fangs of these serpents--unlike those of the pit-vipers--are too short to penetrate good leather. I promptly put my foot on him, and he bit my shoe with harmless venom. It has been said that the brilliant hues of the coral-snake when in its native haunts really confer on it a concealing coloration. In the dark and tangled woods, and to an only less extent in the ordinary varied landscape, anything motionless, especially if partially hidden, easily eludes the eye. But against the dark-brown mould of the forest floor on which we found this coral- snake its bright and varied coloration was distinctly revealing; infinitely more so than the duller mottling of the jararaca and other dangerous snakes of the genus lachecis. In the same place, however, we found a striking example of genuine protective or mimetic coloration and shape. A rather large insect larva--at least we judged it to be a larval form, but we were none of us entomologists--bore a resemblance to a partially curled dry leaf which was fairly startling. The tail exactly resembled the stem or continuation of the midrib of the dead leaf. The flattened body was curled up at the sides, and veined and colored precisely like the leaf. The head, colored like the leaf, projected in front.

We were still in the Brazilian highlands. The forest did not teem with life. It was generally rather silent; we did not hear such a chorus of birds and mammals as we had occasionally heard even on our overland journey, when more than once we had been awakened at dawn by the howling, screaming, yelping, and chattering of monkeys, toucans, macaws, parrots, and parakeets. There were, however, from time to time, queer sounds from the forest, and after nightfall different kinds of frogs and insects uttered strange cries and calls. In volume and frequency these seemed to increase until midnight. Then they died away and before dawn everything was silent.

At this camp the carregadores ants completely devoured the doctor's undershirt, and ate holes in his mosquito-net; and they also ate the strap of Lyra's gun-case. The little stingless bees, of many kinds, swarmed in such mult.i.tudes, and were so persevering, that we had to wear our head-nets when we wrote or skinned specimens.

The following day was almost without rain. It was delightful to drift and paddle slowly down the beautiful tropical river. Until mid- afternoon the current was not very fast, and the broad, deep, placid stream bent and curved in every direction, although the general course was northwest. The country was flat, and more of the land was under than above water. Continually we found ourselves travelling between stretches of marshy forest where for miles the water stood or ran among the trees. Once we pa.s.sed a hillock. We saw brilliantly colored parakeets and trogons. At last the slow current quickened. Faster it went, and faster, until it began to run like a mill-race, and we heard the roar of rapids ahead. We pulled to the right bank, moored the canoes, and while most of the men pitched camp two or three of them accompanied us to examine the rapids. We had made twenty kilometres.

We soon found that the rapids were a serious obstacle. There were many curls, and one or two regular falls, perhaps six feet high. It would have been impossible to run them, and they stretched for nearly a mile. The carry, however, which led through woods and over rocks in a nearly straight line, was somewhat shorter. It was not an easy portage over which to carry heavy loads and drag heavy dugout canoes. At the point where the descent was steepest there were great naked flats of friable sandstone and conglomerate. Over parts of these, where there was a surface of fine sand, there was a growth of coa.r.s.e gra.s.s. Other parts were bare and had been worn by the weather into fantastic shapes--one projection looked like an old-fashioned beaver hat upside down. In this place, where the naked flats of rock showed the projection of the ledge through which the river had cut its course, the torrent rushed down a deep, sheer-sided, and extremely narrow channel. At one point it was less than two yards across, and for quite a distance not more than five or six yards. Yet only a mile or two above the rapids the deep, placid river was at least a hundred yards wide. It seemed extraordinary, almost impossible, that so broad a river could in so short a s.p.a.ce of time contract its dimensions to the width of the strangled channel through which it now poured its entire volume.