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THROUGH THE BRAZILIAN WILDERNESS
By Theodore Roosevelt

Chapter 9. 

DOWN AN UNKNOWN RIVER INTO THE EQUATORIAL FOREST

The mightiest river in the world is the Amazon. It runs from west to
east, from the sunset to the sunrise, from the Andes to the Atlantic.
The main stream flows almost along the equator, while the basin which
contains its affluents extends many degrees north and south of the
equator. The gigantic equatorial river basin is filled with an immense
forest, the largest in the world, with which no other forest can be
compared save those of western Africa and Malaysia. We were within the
southern boundary of this great equatorial forest, on a river which
was not merely unknown but unguessed at, no geographer having ever
suspected its existence. This river flowed northward toward the
equator, but whither it would go, whether it would turn one way or
another, the length of its course, where it would come out, the
character of the stream itself, and the character of the dwellers
along its banks--all these things were yet to be discovered.

One morning while the canoes were being built Kermit and I walked a
few kilometres down the river and surveyed the next rapids below. The
vast still forest was almost empty of life. We found old Indian signs.
There were very few birds, and these in the tops of the tall trees. We
saw a recent tapir track; and under a cajazeira tree by the bank there
were the tracks of capybaras which had been eating the fallen fruit.
This fruit is delicious and would make a valuable addition to our
orchards. The tree although tropical is hardy, thrives when
domesticated, and propagates rapidly from shoots. The Department of
Agriculture should try whether it would not grow in southern
California and Florida. This was the tree from which the doctor's
family name was taken. His parental grandfather, although of
Portuguese blood, was an intensely patriotic Brazilian. He was a very
young man when the independence of Brazil was declared, and did not
wish to keep the Portuguese family name; so he changed it to that of
the fine Brazilian tree in question. Such change of family names is
common in Brazil. Doctor Vital Brazil, the student of poisonous
serpents, was given his name by his father, whose own family name was
entirely different; and his brother's name was again different.

There were tremendous downpours of rain, lasting for a couple of hours
and accompanied by thunder and lightning. But on the whole it seemed
as if the rains were less heavy and continuous than they had been. We
all of us had to help in building the canoes now and then. Kermit,
accompanied by Antonio the Parecis and Joao, crossed the river and
walked back to the little river that had entered from the east, so as
to bring back a report of it to Colonel Rondon. Lyra took
observations, by the sun and by the stars. We were in about latitude
11 degrees 2 minutes south, and due north of where we had started. The
river had wound so that we had gone two miles for every one we made
northward. Our progress had been very slow; and until we got out of
the region of incessant rapids, with their attendant labor and hazard,
it was not likely that we should go much faster.

On the morning of March 22 we started in our six canoes. We made ten
kilometres. Twenty minutes after starting we came to the first rapids.
Here every one walked except the three best paddlers, who took the
canoes down in succession--an hour's job. Soon after this we struck a
bees' nest in the top of a tree overhanging the river; our steersman
climbed out and robbed it, but, alas! lost the honey on the way back.
We came to a small steep fall which we did not dare run in our over-
laden, clumsy, and cranky dugouts. Fortunately, we were able to follow
a deep canal which led off for a kilometre, returning just below the
falls, fifty yards from where it had started. Then, having been in the
boats and in motion only one hour and a half, we came to a long
stretch of rapids which it took us six hours to descend, and we camped
at the foot. Everything was taken out of the canoes, and they were run
down in succession. At one difficult and perilous place they were let
down by ropes; and even thus we almost lost one.

We went down the right bank. On the opposite bank was an Indian
village, evidently inhabited only during the dry season. The marks on
the stumps of trees showed that these Indians had axes and knives; and
there were old fields in which maize, beans, and cotton had been
grown. The forest dripped and steamed. Rubber-trees were plentiful. At
one point the tops of a group of tall trees were covered with yellow-
white blossoms. Others bore red blossoms. Many of the big trees, of
different kinds, were buttressed at the base with great thin walls of
wood. Others, including both palms and ordinary trees, showed an even
stranger peculiarity. The trunk, near the base, but sometimes six or
eight feet from the ground, was split into a dozen or twenty branches
or small trunks which sloped outward in tent-like shape, each becoming
a root. The larger trees of this type looked as if their trunks were
seated on the tops of the pole frames of Indian tepees. At one point
in the stream, to our great surprise, we saw a flying fish. It skimmed
the water like a swallow for over twenty yards.

Although we made only ten kilometres we worked hard all day. The last
canoes were brought down and moored to the bank at nightfall. Our
tents were pitched in the darkness.

Next day we made thirteen kilometres. We ran, all told, a little over
an hour and three-quarters. Seven hours were spent in getting past a
series of rapids at which the portage, over rocky and difficult
ground, was a kilometre long. The canoes were run down empty--a
hazardous run, in which one of them upset.

Yet while we were actually on the river, paddling and floating
downstream along the reaches of swift, smooth water, it was very
lovely. When we started in the morning the day was overcast and the
air was heavy with vapor. Ahead of us the shrouded river stretched
between dim walls of forest, half seen in the mist. Then the sun
burned up the fog, and loomed through it in a red splendor that
changed first to gold and then to molten white. In the dazzling light,
under the brilliant blue of the sky, every detail of the magnificent
forest was vivid to the eye: the great trees, the network of bush
ropes, the caverns of greenery, where thick-leaved vines covered all
things else. Wherever there was a hidden boulder the surface of the
current was broken by waves. In one place, in midstream, a pyramidal
rock thrust itself six feet above the surface of the river. On the
banks we found fresh Indian sign.

At home in Vermont Cherrie is a farmer, with a farm of six hundred
acres, most of it woodland. As we sat at the foot of the rapids,
watching for the last dugouts with their naked paddlers to swing into
sight round the bend through the white water, we talked of the
northern spring that was just beginning. He sells cream, eggs,
poultry, potatoes, honey, occasionally pork and veal; but at this
season it was the time for the maple sugar crop. He has a sugar
orchard, where he taps twelve hundred trees and hopes soon to tap as
many more in addition. Said Cherrie: "It's a busy time now for Fred
Rice"--Fred Rice is the hired man, and in sugar time the Cherrie boys
help him with enthusiasm, and, moreover, are paid with exact justice
for the work they do. There is much wild life about the farm, although
it is near Brattleboro. One night in early spring a bear left his
tracks near the sugar house; and now and then in summer Cherrie has
had to sleep in the garden to keep the deer away from the beans,
cabbages, and beets.

There was not much bird life in the forest, but Cherrie kept getting
species new to the collection. At this camp he shot an interesting
little ant-thrush. It was the size of a warbler, jet-black, with white
under-surfaces of the wings and tail, white on the tail-feathers, and
a large spot of white on the back, normally almost concealed, the
feathers on the back being long and fluffy. When he shot the bird, a
male, it was showing off before a dull-colored little bird, doubtless
the female; and the chief feature of the display was this white spot
on the back. The white feathers were raised and displayed so that the
spot flashed like the "chrysanthemum" on a prongbuck whose curiosity
has been aroused. In the gloom of the forest the bird was hard to see,
but the flashing of this patch of white feathers revealed it at once,
attracting immediate attention. It was an excellent example of a
coloration mark which served a purely advertising purpose; apparently
it was part of a courtship display. The bird was about thirty feet up
in the branches.

In the morning, just before leaving this camp, a tapir swam across
stream a little way above us; but unfortunately we could not get a
shot at it. An ample supply of tapir beef would have meant much to us.
We had started with fifty days' rations; but this by no means meant
full rations, in the sense of giving every man all he wanted to eat.
We had two meals a day, and were on rather short commons--both our
mess and the camaradas'--except when we got plenty of palm-tops. For
our mess we had the boxes chosen by Fiala, each containing a day's
rations for six men, our number. But we made each box last a day and a
half, or at times two days, and in addition we gave some of the food
to the camaradas. It was only on the rare occasions when we had killed
some monkeys or curassows, or caught some fish, that everybody had
enough. We would have welcomed that tapir. So far the game, fish, and
fruit had been too scarce to be an element of weight in our food
supply. In an exploring trip like ours, through a difficult and
utterly unknown country, especially if densely forested, there is
little time to halt, and game cannot be counted on. It is only in
lands like our own West thirty years ago, like South Africa in the
middle of the last century, like East Africa to-day that game can be
made the chief food supply. On this trip our only substantial food
supply from the country hitherto had been that furnished by the
palmtops. Two men were detailed every day to cut down palms for food.

A kilometre and a half after leaving this camp we came on a stretch of
big rapids. The river here twists in loops, and we had heard the
roaring of these rapids the previous afternoon. Then we passed out of
earshot of them; but Antonio Correa, our best waterman, insisted all
along that the roaring meant rapids worse than any we had encountered
for some days. "I was brought up in the water, and I know it like a
fish, and all its sounds," said he. He was right. We had to carry the
loads nearly a kilometre that afternoon, and the canoes were pulled
out on the bank so that they might be in readiness to be dragged
overland next day. Rondon, Lyra, Kermit, and Antonio Correa explored
both sides of the river. On the opposite or left bank they found the
mouth of a considerable river, bigger than the Rio Kermit, flowing in
from the west and making its entrance in the middle of the rapids.
This river we christened the Taunay, in honor of a distinguished
Brazilian, an explorer, a soldier, a senator, who was also a writer of
note. Kermit had with him two of his novels, and I had read one of his
books dealing with a disastrous retreat during the Paraguayan
war.

Next morning, the 25th, the canoes were brought down. A path was
chopped for them and rollers laid; and half-way down the rapids Lyra
and Kermit, who were overseeing the work as well as doing their share
of the pushing and hauling, got them into a canal of smooth water,
which saved much severe labor. As our food supply lowered we were
constantly more desirous of economizing the strength of the men. One
day more would complete a month since we had embarked on the Duvida as
we had started in February, the lunar and calendar months coincided.
We had used up over half our provisions. We had come only a trifle
over 160 kilometres, thanks to the character and number of the rapids.
We believed we had three or four times the distance yet to go before
coming to a part of the river where we might hope to meet assistance,
either from rubber-gatherers, or from Pyrineus, if he were really
coming up the river which we were going down. If the rapids continued
to be as they had been it could not be much more than three weeks
before we were in straits for food, aside from the ever-present danger
of accident in the rapids; and if our progress were no faster than it
had been--and we were straining to do our best--we would in such event
still have several hundreds of kilometres of unknown river before us.
We could not even hazard a guess at what was in front. The river was
now a really big river, and it seemed impossible that it could flow
either into the Gy-Parana or the Tapajos. It was possible that it went
into the Canuma, a big affluent of the Madeira low down, and next to
the Tapajos. It was more probable that it was the headwaters of the
Aripuanan, a river which, as I have said, was not even named on the
excellent English map of Brazil I carried. Nothing but the mouth had
been known to any geographer; but the lower course had long been known
to rubber-gatherers, and recently a commission from the government of
Amazonas had partway ascended one branch of it--not as far as the
rubber-gatherers had gone, and, as it turned out, not the branch we
came down.

Two of our men were down with fever. Another man, Julio, a fellow of
powerful frame, was utterly worthless, being an inborn, lazy shirk
with the heart of a ferocious cur in the body of a bullock. The others
were good men, some of them very good indeed. They were under the
immediate supervision of Pedrinho Craveiro, who was first-class in
every way.

This camp was very lovely. It was on the edge of a bay, into which the
river broadened immediately below the rapids. There was a beach of
white sand, where we bathed and washed our clothes. All around us, and
across the bay, and on both sides of the long water-street made by the
river, rose the splendid forest. There were flocks of parakeets
colored green, blue, and red. Big toucans called overhead, lustrous
green-black in color, with white throats, red gorgets, red-and-yellow
tail coverts, and huge black-and-yellow bills. Here the soil was
fertile; it will be a fine site for a coffee-plantation when this
region is open to settlement. Surely such a rich and fertile land
cannot be permitted to remain idle, to lie as a tenantless wilderness,
while there are such teeming swarms of human beings in the
overcrowded, over-peopled countries of the Old World. The very rapids
and waterfalls which now make the navigation of the river so difficult
and dangerous would drive electric trolleys up and down its whole
length and far out on either side, and run mills and factories, and
lighten the labor on farms. With the incoming of settlement and with
the steady growth of knowledge how to fight and control tropical
diseases, fear of danger to health would vanish. A land like this is a
hard land for the first explorers, and perhaps for their immediate
followers, but not for the people who come after them.

In mid-afternoon we were once more in the canoes; but we had paddled
with the current only a few minutes, we had gone only a kilometre,
when the roar of rapids in front again forced us to haul up to the
bank. As usual, Rondon, Lyra, and Kermit, with Antonio Correa,
explored both sides while camp was being pitched. The rapids were
longer and of steeper descent than the last, but on the opposite or
western side there was a passage down which we thought we could get
the empty dugouts at the cost of dragging them only a few yards at one
spot. The loads were to be carried down the hither bank, for a
kilometre, to the smooth water. The river foamed between great rounded
masses of rock, and at one point there was a sheer fall of six or
eight feet. We found and ate wild pineapples. Wild beans were in
flower. At dinner we had a toucan and a couple of parrots, which were
very good.

All next day was spent by Lyra in superintending our three best
watermen as they took the canoes down the west side of the rapids, to
the foot, at the spot to which the camp had meantime been shifted. In
the forest some of the huge sipas, or rope vines, which were as big as
cables, bore clusters of fragrant flowers. The men found several
honey-trees, and fruits of various kinds, and small cocoanuts; they
chopped down an ample number of palms, for the palm-cabbage; and, most
important of all, they gathered a quantity of big Brazil-nuts, which
when roasted tasted like the best of chestnuts and are nutritious; and
they caught a number of big piranhas, which were good eating. So we
all had a feast, and everybody had enough to eat and was happy.

By these rapids, at the fall, Cherrie found some strange carvings on a
bare mass of rock. They were evidently made by men a long time ago. As
far as is known, the Indians thereabouts make no such figures now.
They were in two groups, one on the surface of the rock facing the
land, the other on that facing the water. The latter were nearly
obliterated. The former were in good preservation, the figures sharply
cut into the rock. They consisted, upon the upper flat part of the
rock, of four multiple circles with a dot in the middle (O), very
accurately made and about a foot and a half in diameter; and below
them, on the side of the rock, four multiple m's or inverted w's (M).
What these curious symbols represented, or who made them, we could
not, of course, form the slightest idea. It may be that in a very
remote past some Indian tribes of comparatively advanced culture had
penetrated to this lovely river, just as we had now come to it. Before
white men came to South America there had already existed therein
various semi-civilizations, some rude, others fairly advanced, which
rose, flourished, and persisted through immemorial ages, and then
vanished. The vicissitudes in the history of humanity during its stay
on this southern continent have been as strange, varied, and
inexplicable as paleontology shows to have been the case, on the same
continent, in the history of the higher forms of animal life during
the age of mammals. Colonel Rondon stated that such figures as these
are not found anywhere else in Matto Grosso where he has been, and
therefore it was all the more strange to find them in this one place
on the unknown river, never before visited by white men, which we were
descending.

Next morning we went about three kilometers before coming to some
steep hills, beautiful to look upon, clad as they were in dense, tall,
tropical forest, but ominous of new rapids. Sure enough, at their foot
we had to haul up and prepare for a long portage. The canoes we ran
down empty. Even so, we were within an ace of losing two, the lashed
couple in which I ordinarily journeyed. In a sharp bend of the rapids,
between two big curls, they were swept among the boulders and under
the matted branches which stretched out from the bank. They filled,
and the racing current pinned them where they were, one partly on the
other. All of us had to help get them clear. Their fastenings were
chopped asunder with axes. Kermit and half a dozen of the men,
stripped to the skin, made their way to a small rock island in the
little falls just above the canoes, and let down a rope which we tied
to the outermost canoe. The rest of us, up to our armpits and barely
able to keep our footing as we slipped and stumbled among the boulders
in the swift current, lifted and shoved while Kermit and his men
pulled the rope and fastened the slack to a half-submerged tree. Each
canoe in succession was hauled up the little rock island, baled, and
then taken down in safety by two paddlers. It was nearly four o'clock
before we were again ready to start, having been delayed by a rain-
storm so heavy that we could not see across the river. Ten minutes'
run took us to the head of another series of rapids; the exploring
party returned with the news that we had an all day's job ahead of us;
and we made camp in the rain, which did not matter much, as we were
already drenched through. It was impossible, with the wet wood, to
make a fire sufficiently hot to dry all our soggy things, for the rain
was still falling. A tapir was seen from our boat, but, as at the
moment we were being whisked round in a complete circle by a
whirlpool, I did not myself see it in time to shoot.

Next morning we went down a kilometre, and then landed on the other
side of the river. The canoes were run down, and the loads carried to
the other side of a little river coming in from the west, which
Colonel Rondon christened Cherrie River. Across this we went on a
bridge consisting of a huge tree felled by Macario, one of our best
men. Here we camped, while Rondon, Lyra, Kermit, and Antonio Correa
explored what was ahead. They were absent until mid-afternoon. Then
they returned with the news that we were among ranges of low
mountains, utterly different in formation from the high plateau region
to which the first rapids, those we had come to on the 2nd of March,
belonged. Through the first range of these mountains the river ran in
a gorge, some three kilometres long, immediately ahead of us. The
ground was so rough and steep that it would be impossible to drag the
canoes over it and difficult enough to carry the loads; and the rapids
were so bad, containing several falls, one of at least ten metres in
height, that it was doubtful how many of the canoes we could get down
them. Kermit, who was the only man with much experience of rope work,
was the only man who believed we could get the canoes down at all; and
it was, of course, possible that we should have to build new ones at
the foot to supply the place of any that were lost or left behind. In
view of the length and character of the portage, and of all the
unpleasant possibilities that were ahead, and of the need of keeping
every pound of food, it was necessary to reduce weight in every
possible way and to throw away everything except the barest
necessities.

We thought we had reduced our baggage before; but now we cut to the
bone. We kept the fly for all six of us to sleep under. Kermit's shoes
had gone, thanks to the amount of work in the water which he had been
doing; and he took the pair I had been wearing, while I put on my
spare pair. In addition to the clothes I wore, I kept one set of
pajamas, a spare pair of drawers, a spare pair of socks, half a dozen
handkerchiefs, my wash-kit, my pocket medicine-case, and a little bag
containing my spare spectacles, gun-grease, some adhesive plaster,
some needles and thread, the "fly-dope," and my purse and letter of
credit, to be used at Manaos. All of these went into the bag
containing my cot, blanket, and mosquito-net. I also carried a
cartridge-bag containing my cartridges, head-net, and gauntlets.
Kermit cut down even closer; and the others about as close.

The last three days of March we spent in getting to the foot of the
rapids in this gorge. Lyra and Kermit, with four of the best watermen,
handled the empty canoes. The work was not only difficult and
laborious in the extreme, but hazardous; for the walls of the gorge
were so sheer that at the worst places they had to cling to narrow
shelves on the face of the rock, while letting the canoes down with
ropes. Meanwhile Rondon surveyed and cut a trail for the burden-
bearers, and superintended the portage of the loads. The rocky sides
of the gorge were too steep for laden men to attempt to traverse them.
Accordingly the trail had to go over the top of the mountain, both the
ascent and the descent of the rock-strewn, forest-clad slopes being
very steep. It was hard work to carry loads over such a trail. From
the top of the mountain, through an opening in the trees on the edge
of a cliff, there was a beautiful view of the country ahead. All
around and in front of us there were ranges of low mountains about the
height of the lower ridges of the Alleghenies. Their sides were steep
and they were covered with the matted growth of the tropical forest.
Our next camping-place, at the foot of the gorge, was almost beneath
us, and from thence the river ran in a straight line, flecked with
white water, for about a kilometre. Then it disappeared behind and
between mountain ridges, which we supposed meant further rapids. It
was a view well worth seeing; but, beautiful although the country
ahead of us was, its character was such as to promise further
hardships, difficulty, and exhausting labor, and especially further
delay; and delay was a serious matter to men whose food supply was
beginning to run short, whose equipment was reduced to the minimum,
who for a month, with the utmost toil, had made very slow progress,
and who had no idea of either the distance or the difficulties of the
route in front of them.

There was not much life in the woods, big or little. Small birds were
rare, although Cherrie's unwearied efforts were rewarded from time to
time by a species new to the collection. There were tracks of tapir,
deer, and agouti; and if we had taken two or three days to devote to
nothing else than hunting them we might perchance have killed
something; but the chance was much too uncertain, the work we were
doing was too hard and wearing, and the need of pressing forward
altogether too great to permit us to spend any time in such manner.
The hunting had to come in incidentally. This type of well nigh
impenetrable forest is the one in which it is most difficult to get
even what little game exists therein. A couple of curassows and a big
monkey were killed by the colonel and Kermit. On the day the monkey
was brought in Lyra, Kermit, and their four associates had spent from
sunrise to sunset in severe and at moments dangerous toil among the
rocks and in the swift water, and the fresh meat was appreciated. The
head, feet, tail, skin, and entrails were boiled for the gaunt and
ravenous dogs. The flesh gave each of us a few mouthfuls; and how good
those mouthfuls tasted!

Cherrie, in addition to being out after birds in every spare moment,
helped in all emergencies. He was a veteran in the work of the tropic
wilderness. We talked together often, and of many things, for our
views of life, and of a man's duty to his wife and children, to other
men, and to women, and to the state in peace and war, were in all
essentials the same. His father had served all through the Civil War,
entering an Iowa cavalry regiment as a private and coming out as a
captain; his breast-bone was shattered by a blow from a musket-butt,
in hand-to-hand fighting at Shiloh.

During this portage the weather favored us. We were coming toward the
close of the rainy season. On the last day of the month, when we moved
camp to the foot of the gorge, there was a thunder-storm; but on the
whole we were not bothered by rain until the last night, when it
rained heavily, driving under the fly so as to wet my cot and bedding.
However, I slept comfortably enough, rolled in the damp blanket.
Without the blanket I should have been uncomfortable; a blanket is a
necessity for health. On the third day Lyra and Kermit, with their
daring and hard-working watermen, after wearing labor, succeeded in
getting five canoes through the worst of the rapids to the chief fall.
The sixth, which was frail and weak, had its bottom beaten out on the
jagged rocks of the broken water. On this night, although I thought I
had put my clothes out of reach, both the termites and the
carregadores ants got at them, ate holes in one boot, ate one leg of
my drawers, and riddled my handkerchief; and I now had nothing to
replace anything that was destroyed.

Next day Lyra, Kermit, and their camaradas brought the five canoes
that were left down to camp. They had in four days accomplished a work
of incredible labor and of the utmost importance; for at the first
glance it had seemed an absolute impossibility to avoid abandoning the
canoes when we found that the river sank into a cataract broken
torrent at the bottom of a canyon-like gorge between steep mountains.
On April 2 we once more started, wondering how soon we should strike
other rapids in the mountains ahead, and whether in any reasonable
time we should, as the aneroid indicated, be so low down that we
should necessarily be in a plain where we could make a journey of at
least a few days without rapids. We had been exactly a month going
through an uninterrupted succession of rapids. During that month we
had come only about 110 kilometres, and had descended nearly 150
metres--the figures are approximate but fairly accurate. We had lost
four of the canoes with which we started, and one other, which we had
built, and the life of one man; and the life of a dog which by its
death had in all probability saved the life of Colonel Rondon. In a
straight line northward, toward our supposed destination, we had not
made more than a mile and a quarter a day; at the cost of bitter toil
for most of the party, of much risk for some of the party, and of some
risk and some hardship for all the party. Most of the camaradas were
downhearted, naturally enough, and occasionally asked one of us if we
really believed that we should ever get out alive; and we had to cheer
them up as best we could.

There was no change in our work for the time being. We made but three
kilometres that day. Most of the party walked all the time; but the
dugouts carried the luggage until we struck the head of the series of
rapids which were to take up the next two or three days. The river
rushed through a wild gorge, a chasm or canyon, between two mountains.
Its sides were very steep, mere rock walls, although in most places so
covered with the luxuriant growth of the trees and bushes that clung
in the crevices, and with green moss, that the naked rock was hardly
seen. Rondon, Lyra, and Kermit, who were in front, found a small level
spot, with a beach of sand, and sent back word to camp there, while
they spent several hours in exploring the country ahead. The canoes
were run down empty, and the loads carried painfully along the face of
the cliffs; so bad was the trail that I found it rather hard to
follow, although carrying nothing but my rifle and cartridge bag. The
explorers returned with the information that the mountains stretched
ahead of us, and that there were rapids as far as they had gone. We
could only hope that the aneroid was not hopelessly out of kilter, and
that we should, therefore, fairly soon find ourselves in comparatively
level country. The severe toil, on a rather limited food supply, was
telling on the strength as well as on the spirits of the men; Lyra and
Kermit, in addition to their other work, performed as much actual
physical labor as any of them.

Next day, the 3rd of April, we began the descent of these sinister
rapids of the chasm. Colonel Rondon had gone to the summit of the
mountain in order to find a better trail for the burden-bearers, but
it was hopeless, and they had to go along the face of the cliffs. Such
an exploring expedition as that in which we were engaged of necessity
involves hard and dangerous labor, and perils of many kinds. To follow
down-stream an unknown river, broken by innumerable cataracts and
rapids, rushing through mountains of which the existence has never
been even guessed, bears no resemblance whatever to following even a
fairly dangerous river which has been thoroughly explored and has
become in some sort a highway, so that experienced pilots can be
secured as guides, while the portages have been pioneered and trails
chopped out, and every dangerous feature of the rapids is known
beforehand. In this case no one could foretell that the river would
cleave its way through steep mountain chains, cutting narrow clefts in
which the cliff walls rose almost sheer on either hand. When a rushing
river thus "canyons," as we used to say out West, and the mountains
are very steep, it becomes almost impossible to bring the canoes down
the river itself and utterly impossible to portage them along the
cliff sides, while even to bring the loads over the mountain is a task
of extraordinary labor and difficulty. Moreover, no one can tell how
many times the task will have to be repeated, or when it will end, or
whether the food will hold out; every hour of work in the rapids is
fraught with the possibility of the gravest disaster, and yet it is
imperatively necessary to attempt it; and all this is done in an
uninhabited wilderness, or else a wilderness tenanted only by
unfriendly savages, where failure to get through means death by
disease and starvation. Wholesale disasters to South American
exploring parties have been frequent. The first recent effort to
descend one of the unknown rivers to the Amazon from the Brazilian
highlands resulted in such a disaster. It was undertaken in 1889 by a
party about as large as ours under a Brazilian engineer officer,
Colonel Telles Peres. In descending some rapids they lost everything--
canoes, food, medicine, implements--everything. Fever smote them, and
then starvation. All of them died except one officer and two men, who
were rescued months later. Recently, in Guiana, a wilderness veteran,
Andre, lost two-thirds of his party by starvation. Genuine wilderness
exploration is as dangerous as warfare. The conquest of wild nature
demands the utmost vigor, hardihood, and daring, and takes from the
conquerors a heavy toll of life and health.

Lyra, Kermit, and Cherrie, with four of the men, worked the canoes
half-way down the canyon. Again and again it was touch and go whether
they could get by a given point. At one spot the channel of the
furious torrent was only fifteen yards across. One canoe was lost, so
that of the seven with which we had started only two were left.
Cherrie labored with the other men at times, and also stood as guard
over them, for, while actually working, of course no one could carry a
rifle. Kermit's experience in bridge building was invaluable in
enabling him to do the rope work by which alone it was possible to get
the canoes down the canyon. He and Lyra had now been in the water for
days. Their clothes were never dry. Their shoes were rotten. The
bruises on their feet and legs had become sores. On their bodies some
of the insect bites had become festering wounds, as indeed was the
case with all of us. Poisonous ants, biting flies, ticks, wasps, bees
were a perpetual torment. However, no one had yet been bitten by a
venomous serpent, a scorpion, or a centipede, although we had killed
all of the three within camp limits.

Under such conditions whatever is evil in men's natures comes to the
front. On this day a strange and terrible tragedy occurred. One of the
camaradas, a man of pure European blood, was the man named Julio, of
whom I have already spoken. He was a very powerful fellow and had been
importunately eager to come on the expedition; and he had the
reputation of being a good worker. But, like so many men of higher
standing, he had had no idea of what such an expedition really meant,
and under the strain of toil, hardship, and danger his nature showed
its true depths of selfishness, cowardice, and ferocity. He shirked
all work. He shammed sickness. Nothing could make him do his share;
and yet unlike his self-respecting fellows he was always shamelessly
begging for favors. Kermit was the only one of our party who smoked;
and he was continually giving a little tobacco to some of the
camaradas, who worked especially well under him. The good men did not
ask for it; but Julio, who shirked every labor, was always, and always
in vain, demanding it. Colonel Rondon, Lyra, and Kermit each tried to
get work out of him, and in order to do anything with him had to
threaten to leave him in the wilderness. He threw all his tasks on his
comrades; and, moreover, he stole their food as well as ours. On such
an expedition the theft of food comes next to murder as a crime, and
should by rights be punished as such. We could not trust him to cut
down palms or gather nuts, because he would stay out and eat what
ought to have gone into the common store. Finally, the men on several
occasions themselves detected him stealing their food. Alone of the
whole party, and thanks to the stolen food, he had kept in full flesh
and bodily vigor.

One of our best men was a huge negro named Paixao Paishon--a corporal
and acting sergeant in the engineer corps. He had, by the way,
literally torn his trousers to pieces, so that he wore only the
tatters of a pair of old drawers until I gave him my spare trousers
when we lightened loads. He was a stern disciplinarian. One evening he
detected Julio stealing food and smashed him in the mouth. Julio came
crying to us, his face working with fear and malignant hatred; but
after investigation he was told that he had gotten off uncommonly
lightly. The men had three or four carbines, which were sometimes
carried by those who were not their owners.

On this morning, at the outset of the portage, Pedrinho discovered
Julio stealing some of the men's dried meat. Shortly afterward Paishon
rebuked him for, as usual, lagging behind. By this time we had reached
the place where the canoes were tied to the bank and then taken down
one at a time. We were sitting down, waiting for the last loads to be
brought along the trail. Pedrinho was still in the camp we had left.
Paishon had just brought in a load, left it on the ground with his
carbine beside it, and returned on the trail for another load. Julio
came in, put down his load, picked up the carbine, and walked back on
the trail, muttering to himself but showing no excitement. We thought
nothing of it, for he was always muttering; and occasionally one of
the men saw a monkey or big bird and tried to shoot it, so it was
never surprising to see a man with a carbine.

In a minute we heard a shot; and in a short time three or four of the
men came up the trail to tell us that Paishon was dead, having been
shot by Julio, who had fled into the woods. Colonel Rondon and Lyra
were ahead; I sent a messenger for them, directed Cherrie and Kermit
to stay where they were and guard the canoes and provisions, and
started down the trail with the doctor--an absolutely cool and plucky
man, with a revolver but no rifle--and a couple of the camaradas. We
soon passed the dead body of poor Paishon. He lay in a huddle, in a
pool of his own blood, where he had fallen, shot through the heart. I
feared that Julio had run amuck, and intended merely to take more
lives before he died, and that he would begin with Pedrinho, who was
alone and unarmed in the camp we had left. Accordingly I pushed on,
followed by my companions, looking sharply right and left; but when we
came to the camp the doctor quietly walked by me, remarking, "My eyes
are better than yours, colonel; if he is in sight I'll point him out
to you, as you have the rifle." However, he was not there, and the
others soon joined us with the welcome news that they had found the
carbine.

The murderer had stood to one side of the path and killed his victim,
when a dozen paces off, with deliberate and malignant purpose. Then
evidently his murderous hatred had at once given way to his innate
cowardice; and, perhaps hearing some one coming along the path, he
fled in panic terror into the wilderness. A tree had knocked the
carbine from his hand. His footsteps showed that after going some rods
he had started to return, doubtless for the carbine, but had fled
again, probably because the body had then been discovered. It was
questionable whether or not he would live to reach the Indian
villages, which were probably his goal. He was not a man to feel
remorse--never a common feeling; but surely that murderer was in a
living hell, as, with fever and famine leering at him from the
shadows, he made his way through the empty desolation of the
wilderness. Franca, the cook, quoted out of the melancholy proverbial
philosophy of the people the proverb: "No man knows the heart of any
one"; and then expressed with deep conviction a weird ghostly belief I
had never encountered before: "Paishon is following Julio now, and
will follow him until he dies; Paishon fell forward on his hands and
knees, and when a murdered man falls like that his ghost will follow
the slayer as long as the slayer lives."

We did not attempt to pursue the murderer. We could not legally put
him to death, although he was a soldier who in cold blood had just
deliberately killed a fellow soldier. If we had been near civilization
we would have done our best to bring him in and turn him over to
justice. But we were in the wilderness, and how many weeks' journey
were ahead of us we could not tell. Our food was running low, sickness
was beginning to appear among the men, and both their courage and
their strength were gradually ebbing. Our first duty was to save the
lives and the health of the men of the expedition who had honestly
been performing, and had still to perform, so much perilous labor. If
we brought the murderer in he would have to be guarded night and day
on an expedition where there were always loaded firearms about, and
where there would continually be opportunity and temptation for him to
make an effort to seize food and a weapon and escape, perhaps
murdering some other good man. He could not be shackled while climbing
along the cliff slopes; he could not be shackled in the canoes, where
there was always chance of upset and drowning; and standing guard
would be an additional and severe penalty on the weary, honest men
already exhausted by overwork. The expedition was in peril, and it was
wise to take every chance possible that would help secure success.
Whether the murderer lived or died in the wilderness was of no moment
compared with the duty of doing everything to secure the safety of the
rest of the party. For the two days following we were always on the
watch against his return, for he could have readily killed some one
else by rolling rocks down on any of the men working on the cliff
sides or in the bottom of the gorge. But we did not see him until the
morning of the third day. We had passed the last of the rapids of the
chasm, and the four boats were going down-stream when he appeared
behind some trees on the bank and called out that he wished to
surrender and be taken aboard; for the murderer was an arrant craven
at heart, a strange mixture of ferocity and cowardice. Colonel
Rondon's boat was far in advance; he did not stop nor answer. I kept
on in similar fashion with the rear boats, for I had no intention of
taking the murderer aboard, to the jeopardy of the other members of
the party, unless Colonel Rondon told me that it would have to be done
in pursuance of his duty as an officer of the army and a servant of
the Government of Brazil. At the first halt Colonel Rondon came up to
me and told me that this was his view of his duty, but that he had not
stopped because he wished first to consult me as the chief of the
expedition. I answered that for the reasons enumerated above I did not
believe that in justice to the good men of the expedition we should
jeopardize their safety by taking the murderer along, and that if the
responsibility were mine I should refuse to take him; but that he,
Colonel Rondon, was the superior officer of both the murderer and of
all the other enlisted men and army officers on the expedition, and in
return was responsible for his actions to his own governmental
superiors and to the laws of Brazil; and that in view of this
responsibility he must act as his sense of duty bade him. Accordingly,
at the next camp he sent back two men, expert woodsmen, to find the
murderer and bring him in. They failed to find him.

  NOTE:
  The above account of all the circumstances connected with the murder
  was read to and approved as correct by all six members of the
  expedition.

I have anticipated my narrative because I do not wish to recur to the
horror more than is necessary. I now return to my story. After we
found that Julio had fled, we returned to the scene of the tragedy.
The murdered man lay with a handkerchief thrown over his face. We
buried him beside the place where he fell. With axes and knives the
camaradas dug a shallow grave while we stood by with bared heads. Then
reverently and carefully we lifted the poor body which but half an
hour before had been so full of vigorous life. Colonel Rondon and I
bore the head and shoulders. We laid him in the grave, and heaped a
mound over him, and put a rude cross at his head. We fired a volley
for a brave and loyal soldier who had died doing his duty. Then we
left him forever, under the great trees beside the lonely river.

That day we got only half-way down the rapids. There was no good place
to camp. But at the foot of one steep cliff there was a narrow,
boulder-covered slope where it was possible to sling hammocks and
cook; and a slanting spot was found for my cot, which had sagged until
by this time it looked like a broken-backed centipede. It rained a
little during the night, but not enough to wet us much. Next day Lyra,
Kermit, and Cherrie finished their job, and brought the four remaining
canoes to camp, one leaking badly from the battering on the rocks. We
then went down-stream a few hundred yards, and camped on the opposite
side; it was not a good camping-place, but it was better than the one
we left.

The men were growing constantly weaker under the endless strain of
exhausting labor. Kermit was having an attack of fever, and Lyra and
Cherrie had touches of dysentery, but all three continued to work.
While in the water trying to help with an upset canoe I had by my own
clumsiness bruised my leg against a boulder; and the resulting
inflammation was somewhat bothersome. I now had a sharp attack of
fever, but thanks to the excellent care of the doctor, was over it in
about forty-eight hours; but Kermit's fever grew worse and he too was
unable to work for a day or two. We could walk over the portages,
however. A good doctor is an absolute necessity on an exploring
expedition in such a country as that we were in, under penalty of a
frightful mortality among the members; and the necessary risks and
hazards are so great, the chances of disaster so large, that there is
no warrant for increasing them by the failure to take all feasible
precautions.

The next day we made another long portage round some rapids, and
camped at night still in the hot, wet, sunless atmosphere of the
gorge. The following day, April 6, we portaged past another set of
rapids, which proved to be the last of the rapids of the chasm. For
some kilometres we kept passing hills, and feared lest at any moment
we might again find ourselves fronting another mountain gorge; with,
in such case, further days of grinding and perilous labor ahead of us,
while our men were disheartened, weak, and sick. Most of them had
already begun to have fever. Their condition was inevitable after over
a month's uninterrupted work of the hardest kind in getting through
the long series of rapids we had just passed; and a long further
delay, accompanied by wearing labor, would have almost certainly meant
that the weakest among our party would have begun to die. There were
already two of the camaradas who were too weak to help the others,
their condition being such as to cause us serious concern.

However, the hills gradually sank into a level plain, and the river
carried us through it at a rate that enabled us during the remainder
of the day to reel off thirty-six kilometres, a record that for the
first time held out promise. Twice tapirs swam the river while we
passed, but not near my canoe. However, the previous evening, Cherrie
had killed two monkeys and Kermit one, and we all had a few mouthfuls
of fresh meat; we had already had a good soup made out of a turtle
Kermit had caught. We had to portage by one short set of rapids, the
unloaded canoes being brought down without difficulty. At last, at
four in the afternoon, we came to the mouth of a big river running in
from the right. We thought it was probably the Ananas, but, of course,
could not be certain. It was less in volume than the one we had
descended, but nearly as broad; its breadth at this point being
ninety-five yards as against one hundred and twenty for the larger
river. There were rapids ahead, immediately after the junction, which
took place in latitude 10 degrees 58 minutes south. We had come 216
kilometres all told, and were nearly north of where we had started. We
camped on the point of land between the two rivers. It was
extraordinary to realize that here about the eleventh degree we were
on such a big river, utterly unknown to the cartographers and not
indicated by even a hint on any map. We named this big tributary Rio
Cardozo, after a gallant officer of the commission who had died of
beriberi just as our expedition began. We spent a day at this spot,
determining our exact position by the sun, and afterward by the stars,
and sending on two men to explore the rapids in advance. They returned
with the news that there were big cataracts in them, and that they
would form an obstacle to our progress. They had also caught a huge
iluroid fish, which furnished an excellent meal for everybody in camp.
This evening at sunset the view across the broad river, from our camp
where the two rivers joined, was very lovely; and for the first time
we had an open space in front of and above us, so that after nightfall
the stars, and the great waxing moon, were glorious over-head, and
against the rocks in midstream the broken water gleamed like tossing
silver.

The huge catfish which the men had caught was over three feet and a
half long, with the usual enormous head, out of all proportions to the
body, and the enormous mouth, out of all proportion to the head. Such
fish, although their teeth are small, swallow very large prey. This
one contained the nearly digested remains of a monkey. Probably the
monkey had been seized while drinking from the end of a branch; and
once engulfed in that yawning cavern there was no escape. We Americans
were astounded at the idea of a catfish making prey of a monkey; but
our Brazilian friends told us that in the lower Madeira and the part
of the Amazon near its mouth there is a still more gigantic catfish
which in similar fashion occasionally makes prey of man. This is a
grayish-white fish over nine feet long, with the usual
disproportionately large head and gaping mouth, with a circle of small
teeth; for the engulfing mouth itself is the danger, not the teeth. It
is called the piraiba--pronounced in four syllables. While stationed
at the small city of Itacoatiara, on the Amazon, at the mouth of the
Madeira, the doctor had seen one of these monsters which had been
killed by the two men it had attacked. They were fishing in a canoe
when it rose from the bottom--for it is a ground fish--and raising
itself half out of the water lunged over the edge of the canoe at
them, with open mouth. They killed it with their falcons, as machetes
are called in Brazil. It was taken round the city in triumph in an
oxcart; the doctor saw it, and said it was three metres long. He said
that swimmers feared it even more than the big cayman, because they
could see the latter, whereas the former lay hid at the bottom of the
water. Colonel Rondon said that in many villages where he had been on
the lower Madeira the people had built stockaded enclosures in the
water in which they bathed, not venturing to swim in the open water
for fear of the piraiba and the big cayman.

Next day, April 8, we made five kilometres only, as there was a
succession of rapids. We had to carry the loads past two of them, but
ran the canoes without difficulty, for on the west side were long
canals of swift water through the forest. The river had been higher,
but was still very high, and the current raced round the many islands
that at this point divided the channel. At four we made camp at the
head of another stretch of rapids, over which the Canadian canoes
would have danced without shipping a teaspoonful of water, but which
our dugouts could only run empty. Cherrie killed three monkeys and
Lyra caught two big piranhas, so that we were again all of us well
provided with dinner and breakfast. When a number of men, doing hard
work, are most of the time on half-rations, they grow to take a lively
interest in any reasonably full meal that does arrive.

On the 10th we repeated the proceedings: a short quick run; a few
hundred metres' portage, occupying, however, at least a couple of
hours; again a few minutes' run; again other rapids. We again made
less than five kilometres; in the two days we had been descending
nearly a metre for every kilometre we made in advance; and it hardly
seemed as if this state of things could last, for the aneroid showed
that we were getting very low down. How I longed for a big Maine
birch-bark, such as that in which I once went down the Mattawamkeag at
high water! It would have slipped down these rapids as a girl trips
through a country dance. But our loaded dugouts would have shoved
their noses under every curl. The country was lovely. The wide river,
now in one channel, now in several channels, wound among hills; the
shower-freshened forest glistened in the sunlight; the many kinds of
beautiful palm-fronds and the huge pacova-leaves stamped the peculiar
look of the tropics on the whole landscape--it was like passing by
water through a gigantic botanical garden. In the afternoon we got an
elderly toucan, a piranha, and a reasonably edible side-necked river-
turtle; so we had fresh meat again. We slept as usual in earshot of
rapids. We had been out six weeks, and almost all the time we had been
engaged in wearily working our own way down and past rapid after
rapid. Rapids are by far the most dangerous enemies of explorers and
travellers who journey along these rivers.

Next day was a repetition of the same work. All the morning was spent
in getting the loads to the foot of the rapids at the head of which we
were encamped, down which the canoes were run empty. Then for thirty
or forty minutes we ran down the swift, twisting river, the two lashed
canoes almost coming to grief at one spot where a swirl of the current
threw them against some trees on a small submerged island. Then we
came to another set of rapids, carried the baggage down past them, and
made camp long after dark in the rain--a good exercise in patience for
those of us who were still suffering somewhat from fever. No one was
in really buoyant health. For some weeks we had been sharing part of
the contents of our boxes with the camaradas; but our food was not
very satisfying to them. They needed quantity and the mainstay of each
of their meals was a mass of palmitas; but on this day they had no
time to cut down palms. We finally decided to run these rapids with
the empty canoes, and they came down in safety. On such a trip it is
highly undesirable to take any save necessary risks, for the
consequences of disaster are too serious; and yet if no risks are
taken the progress is so slow that disaster comes anyhow; and it is
necessary perpetually to vary the terms of the perpetual working
compromise between rashness and over-caution. This night we had a very
good fish to eat, a big silvery fellow called a pescada, of a kind we
had not caught before.

One day Trigueiro failed to embark with the rest of us, and we had to
camp where we were next day to find him. Easter Sunday we spent in the
fashion with which we were altogether too familiar. We only ran in a
clear course for ten minutes all told, and spent eight hours in
portaging the loads past rapids down which the canoes were run; the
balsa was almost swamped. This day we caught twenty-eight big fish,
mostly piranhas, and everybody had all he could eat for dinner, and
for breakfast the following morning.

The forenoon of the following day was a repetition of this wearisome
work; but late in the afternoon the river began to run in long quiet
reaches. We made fifteen kilometres, and for the first time in several
weeks camped where we did not hear the rapids. The silence was
soothing and restful. The following day, April 14, we made a good run
of some thirty-two kilometres. We passed a little river which entered
on our left. We ran two or three light rapids, and portaged the loads
by another. The river ran in long and usually tranquil stretches. In
the morning when we started the view was lovely. There was a mist, and
for a couple of miles the great river, broad and quiet, ran between
the high walls of tropical forest, the tops of the giant trees showing
dim through the haze. Different members of the party caught many fish,
and shot a monkey and a couple of jacare-tinga birds kin to a turkey,
but the size of a fowl--so we again had a camp of plenty. The dry
season was approaching, but there were still heavy, drenching rains.
On this day the men found some new nuts of which they liked the taste;
but the nuts proved unwholesome and half of the men were very sick and
unable to work the following day. In the balsa only two were left fit
to do anything, and Kermit plied a paddle all day long.

Accordingly, it was a rather sorry crew that embarked the following
morning, April 15. But it turned out a red-letter day. The day before,
we had come across cuttings, a year old, which were probably but not
certainly made by pioneer rubbermen. But on this day--during which we
made twenty-five kilometres--after running two hours and a half we
found on the left bank a board on a post, with the initials J. A., to
show the farthest up point which a rubberman had reached and claimed
as his own. An hour farther down we came on a newly built house in a
little planted clearing; and we cheered heartily. No one was at home,
but the house, of palm thatch, was clean and cool. A couple of dogs
were on watch, and the belongings showed that a man, a woman, and a
child lived there, and had only just left. Another hour brought us to
a similar house where dwelt an old black man, who showed the innate
courtesy of the Brazilian peasant. We came on these rubbermen and
their houses in about latitude 10 degrees 24 minutes.

In mid-afternoon we stopped at another clean, cool, picturesque house
of palm thatch. The inhabitants all fled at our approach, fearing an
Indian raid; for they were absolutely unprepared to have any one come
from the unknown regions up-stream. They returned and were most
hospitable and communicative; and we spent the night there. Said
Antonio Correa to Kermit: "It seems like a dream to be in a house
again, and hear the voices of men and women, instead of being among
those mountains and rapids." The river was known to them as the
Castanho, and was the main affluent or rather the left or western
branch, of the Aripuanan; the Castanho is a name used by the rubber-
gatherers only; it is unknown to the geographers. We were, according
to our informants, about fifteen days' journey from the confluence of
the two rivers; but there were many rubbermen along the banks, some of
whom had become permanent settlers. We had come over three hundred
kilometres, in forty-eight days, over absolutely unknown ground; we
had seen no human being, although we had twice heard Indians. Six
weeks had been spent in steadily slogging our way down through the
interminable series of rapids. It was astonishing before, when we were
on a river of about the size of the upper Rhine or Elbe, to realize
that no geographer had any idea of its existence. But, after all, no
civilized man of any grade had ever been on it. Here, however, was a
river with people dwelling along the banks, some of whom had lived in
the neighborhood for eight or ten years; and yet on no standard map
was there a hint of the river's existence. We were putting on the map
a river, running through between five and six degrees of latitude--of
between seven and eight if, as should properly be done, the lower
Aripuanan is included as part of it--of which no geographer, in any
map published in Europe, or the United States, or Brazil had even
admitted the possibility of the existence; for the place actually
occupied by it was filled, on the maps, by other--imaginary--streams,
or by mountain ranges. Before we started, the Amazonas Boundary
Commission had come up the lower Aripuanan and then the eastern
branch, or upper Aripuanan, to 8 degrees 48 minutes, following the
course which for a couple of decades had been followed by the
rubbermen, but not going as high. An employee, either of this
commission or of one of the big rubbermen, had been up the Castanho,
which is easy of ascent in its lower course, to about the same
latitude, not going nearly as high as the rubbermen had gone; this we
found out while we ourselves were descending the lower Castanho. The
lower main stream, and the lower portion of its main affluent, the
Castanho, had been commercial highways for rubbermen and settlers for
nearly two decades, and, as we speedily found, were as easy to
traverse as the upper stream, which we had just come down, was
difficult to traverse; but the governmental and scientific
authorities, native and foreign, remained in complete ignorance; and
the rubbermen themselves had not the slightest idea of the headwaters,
which were in country never hitherto traversed by civilized men.
Evidently the Castanho was, in length at least, substantially equal,
and probably superior, to the upper Aripuanan; it now seemed even more
likely that the Ananas was the headwaters of the main stream than of
the Cardozo.

For the first time this great river, the greatest affluent of the
Madiera, was to be put on the map; and the understanding of its real
position and real relationship, and the clearing up of the complex
problem of the sources of all these lower right-hand affluents of the
Madiera, was rendered possible by the seven weeks of hard and
dangerous labor we had spent in going down an absolutely unknown
river, through an absolutely unknown wilderness. At this stage of the
growth of world geography I esteemed it a great piece of good fortune
to be able to take part in such a feat--a feat which represented the
capping of the pyramid which during the previous seven years had been
built by the labor of the Brazilian Telegraphic Commission.

We had passed the period when there was a chance of peril, of
disaster, to the whole expedition. There might be risk ahead to
individuals, and some difficulties and annoyances for all of us; but
there was no longer the least likelihood of any disaster to the
expedition as a whole. We now no longer had to face continual anxiety,
the need of constant economy with food, the duty of labor with no end
in sight, and bitter uncertainty as to the future.

It was time to get out. The wearing work, under very unhealthy
conditions, was beginning to tell on every one. Half of the camaradas
had been down with fever and were much weakened; only a few of them
retained their original physical and moral strength. Cherrie and
Kermit had recovered; but both Kermit and Lyra still had bad sores on
their legs, from the bruises received in the water work. I was in
worse shape. The after effects of the fever still hung on; and the leg
which had been hurt while working in the rapids with the sunken canoe
had taken a turn for the bad and developed an abscess. The good
doctor, to whose unwearied care and kindness I owe much, had cut it
open and inserted a drainage tube; an added charm being given the
operation, and the subsequent dressings, by the enthusiasm with which
the piums and boroshudas took part therein. I could hardly hobble, and
was pretty well laid up. But "there aren't no 'stop, conductor,' while
a battery's changing ground." No man has any business to go on such a
trip as ours unless he will refuse to jeopardize the welfare of his
associates by any delay caused by a weakness or ailment of his. It is
his duty to go forward, if necessary on all fours, until he drops.
Fortunately, I was put to no such test. I remained in good shape until
we had passed the last of the rapids of the chasms. When my serious
trouble came we had only canoe-riding ahead of us. It is not ideal for
a sick man to spend the hottest hours of the day stretched on the
boxes in the bottom of a small open dugout, under the well-nigh
intolerable heat of the torrid sun of the mid-tropics, varied by
blinding, drenching downpours of rain; but I could not be sufficiently
grateful for the chance. Kermit and Cherrie took care of me as if they
had been trained nurses; and Colonel Rondon and Lyra were no less
thoughtful.

The north was calling strongly to the three men of the north--Rocky
Dell Farm to Cherrie, Sagamore Hill to me; and to Kermit the call was
stronger still. After nightfall we could now see the Dipper well above
the horizon--upside down, with the two pointers pointing to a north
star below the world's rim; but the Dipper, with all its stars. In our
home country spring had now come, the wonderful northern spring of
long glorious days, of brooding twilights, of cool delightful nights.
Robin and bluebird, meadow-lark and song sparrow, were singing in the
mornings at home; the maple-buds were red; windflowers and bloodroot
were blooming while the last patches of snow still lingered; the
rapture of the hermithrush in Vermont, the serene golden melody of the
woodthrush on Long Island, would be heard before we were there to
listen. Each man to his home, and to his true love! Each was longing
for the homely things that were so dear to him, for the home people
who were dearer still, and for the one who was dearest of all.