At Corumba our entire party, and all their belongings, came aboard our
good little river boat, the Nyoac. Christmas Day saw us making our way
steadily up-stream against the strong current, and between the green
and beautiful banks of the upper Paraguay. The shallow little steamer
was jammed with men, dogs, rifles, partially cured skins, boxes of
provisions, ammunition, tools, and photographic supplies, bags
containing tents, cots, bedding, and clothes, saddles, hammocks, and
the other necessaries for a trip through the "great wilderness," the
"Matto Grosso" of western Brazil.
It was a brilliantly clear day, and, although of course in that
latitude and at that season the heat was intense later on, it was cool
and pleasant in the early morning. We sat on the forward deck,
admiring the trees on the brink of the sheer river banks, the lush,
rank grass of the marshes, and the many water-birds. The two pilots,
one black and one white, stood at the wheel. Colonel Rondon read
Thomas a Kempis. Kermit, Cherrie, and Miller squatted outside the
railing on the deck over one paddle-wheel and put the final touches on
the jaguar skins. Fiala satisfied himself that the boxes and bags were
in place. It was probable that hardship lay in the future; but the day
was our own, and the day was pleasant. In the evening the after-deck,
open all around, where we dined, was decorated with green boughs and
rushes, and we drank the health of the President of the United States
and of the President of Brazil.
Now and then we passed little ranches on the river's edge. This is a
fertile land, pleasant to live in, and any settler who is willing to
work can earn his living. There are mines; there is water-power; there
is abundance of rich soil. The country will soon be opened by rail. It
offers a fine field for immigration and for agricultural, mining, and
business development; and it has a great future.
Cherrie and Miller had secured a little owl a month before in the
Chaco, and it was travelling with them in a basket. It was a dear
little bird, very tame and affectionate. It liked to be handled and
petted; and when Miller, its especial protector, came into the cabin,
it would make queer little noises as a signal that it wished to be
taken up and perched on his hand. Cherrie and Miller had trapped many
mammals. Among them was a tayra weasel, whitish above and black below,
as big and blood-thirsty as a fisher-martin; and a tiny opossum no
bigger than a mouse. They had taken four species of opossum, but they
had not found the curious water-opossum which they had obtained on the
rivers flowing into the Caribbean Sea. This opossum, which is black
and white, swims in the streams like a muskrat or otter, catching fish
and living in burrows which open under water. Miller and Cherrie were
puzzled to know why the young throve, leading such an existence of
constant immersion; one of them once found a female swimming and
diving freely with four quite well-grown young in her pouch.
We saw on the banks screamers--big, crested waders of archaic type,
with spurred wings, rather short bills, and no especial affinities
with other modern birds. In one meadow by a pond we saw three marsh-
deer, a buck and two does. They stared at us, with their thickly
haired tails raised on end. These tails are black underneath, instead
of white as in our whitetail deer. One of the vagaries of the
ultraconcealing-colorationists has been to uphold the (incidentally
quite preposterous) theory that the tail of our deer is colored white
beneath so as to harmonize with the sky and thereby mislead the cougar
or wolf at the critical moment when it makes its spring; but this
marsh-deer shows a black instead of a white flag, and yet has just as
much need of protection from its enemies, the jaguar and the cougar.
In South America concealing coloration plays no more part in the lives
of the adult deer, the tamandua, the tapir, the peccary, the jaguar,
and the puma than it plays in Africa in the lives of such animals as
the zebra, the sable antelope, the wildebeeste, the lion, and the
hunting hyena.
Next day we spent ascending the Sao Lourenco. It was narrower than the
Paraguay, naturally, and the swirling brown current was, if anything,
more rapid. The strange tropical trees, standing densely on the banks,
were matted together by long bush ropes--lianas, or vines, some very
slender and very long. Sometimes we saw brilliant red or blue flowers,
or masses of scarlet berries on a queer palm-like tree, or an array of
great white blossoms on a much larger tree. In a lagoon bordered by
the taquara bamboo a school of big otters were playing; when they came
to the surface, they opened their mouths like seals, and made a loud
hissing noise. The crested screamers, dark gray and as large as
turkeys, perched on the very topmost branches of the tallest trees.
Hyacinth macaws screamed harshly as they flew across the river. Among
the trees was the guan, another peculiar bird as big as a big grouse,
and with certain habits of the wood-grouse, but not akin to any
northern game-bird. The windpipe of the male is very long, extending
down to the end of the breast-bone, and the bird utters queer guttural
screams. A dead cayman floated down-stream, with a black vulture
devouring it. Capybaras stood or squatted on the banks; sometimes they
stared stupidly at us; sometimes they plunged into the river at our
approach. At long intervals we passed little clearings. In each stood
a house of palm-logs, with a steeply pitched roof of palm thatch; and
near by were patches of corn and mandioc. The dusky owner, and perhaps
his family, came out on the bank to watch us as we passed. It was a
hot day--the thermometer on the deck in the shade stood at nearly 100
degrees Fahrenheit. Biting flies came aboard even when we were in
midstream.
Next day we were ascending the Cuyaba River. It had begun raining in
the night, and the heavy downpour continued throughout the forenoon.
In the morning we halted at a big cattle-ranch to get fresh milk and
beef. There were various houses, sheds, and corrals near the river's
edge, and fifty or sixty milch cows were gathered in one corral.
Spurred plover, or lapwings, strolled familiarly among the hens.
Parakeets and red-headed tanagers lit in the trees over our heads. A
kind of primitive houseboat was moored at the bank. A woman was
cooking breakfast over a little stove at one end. The crew were
ashore. The boat was one of those which are really stores, and which
travel up and down these rivers, laden with what the natives most
need, and stopping wherever there is a ranch. They are the only stores
which many of the country-dwellers see from year's end to year's end.
They float down-stream, and up-stream are poled by their crew, or now
and then get a tow from a steamer. This one had a house with a tin
roof; others bear houses with thatched roofs, or with roofs made of
hides. The river wound through vast marshes broken by belts of
woodland.
Always the two naturalists had something of interest to tell of their
past experience, suggested by some bird or beast we came across. Black
and golden orioles, slightly crested, of two different species were
found along the river; they nest in colonies, and often we passed such
colonies, the long pendulous nests hanging from the boughs of trees
directly over the water. Cherrie told us of finding such a colony
built round a big wasp-nest, several feet in diameter. These wasps are
venomous and irritable, and few foes would dare venture near bird's-
nests that were under such formidable shelter; but the birds
themselves were entirely unafraid, and obviously were not in any
danger of disagreement with their dangerous protectors. We saw a dark
ibis flying across the bow of the boat, uttering his deep, two-
syllabled note. Miller told how on the Orinoco these ibises plunder
the nests of the big river-turtles. They are very skilful in finding
where the female turtle has laid her eggs, scratch them out of the
sand, break the shells, and suck the contents.
It was astonishing to find so few mosquitoes on these marshes. They
did not in any way compare as pests with the mosquitoes on the lower
Mississippi, the New Jersey coast, the Red River of the North, or the
Kootenay. Back in the forest near Corumba the naturalists had found
them very bad indeed. Cherrie had spent two or three days on a
mountain-top which was bare of forest; he had thought there would be
few mosquitoes, but the long grass harbored them (they often swarm in
long grass and bush, even where there is no water), and at night they
were such a torment that as soon as the sun set he had to go to bed
under his mosquito-netting. Yet on the vast marshes they were not
seriously troublesome in most places. I was informed that they were
not in any way a bother on the grassy uplands, the high country north
of Cuyaba, which from thence stretches eastward to the coastal region.
It is at any rate certain that this inland region of Brazil, including
the state of Matto Grosso, which we were traversing, is a healthy
region, excellently adapted to settlement; railroads will speedily
penetrate it, and then it will witness an astonishing development.
On the morning of the 28th we reached the home buildings of the great
Sao Joao fazenda, the ranch of Senhor Joao da Costa Marques. Our host
himself, and his son, Dom Joao the younger, who was state secretary of
agriculture, and the latter's charming wife, and the president of
Matto Grosso, and several other ladies and gentlemen, had come down
the river to greet us, from the city of Cuyaba, several hundred miles
farther up-stream. As usual, we were treated with whole-hearted and
generous hospitality. Some miles below the ranch-house the party met
us, on a stern-wheel steamboat and a launch, both decked with many
flags. The handsome white ranch-house stood only a few rods back from
the river's brink, in a grassy opening dotted with those noble trees,
the royal palms. Other trees, buildings of all kinds, flower-gardens,
vegetable-gardens, fields, corrals, and enclosures with high white
walls stood near the house. A detachment of soldiers or state police,
with a band, were in front of the house, and two flagpoles, one with
the Brazilian flag already hoisted. The American flag was run up on
the other as I stepped ashore, while the band played the national
anthems of the two countries. The house held much comfort; and the
comfort was all the more appreciated because even indoors the
thermometer stood at 97 degrees F. In the late afternoon heavy rain
fell, and cooled the air. We were riding at the time. Around the house
the birds were tame: the parrots and parakeets crowded and chattered
in the tree tops; jacanas played in the wet ground just back of the
garden; ibises and screamers called loudly in the swamps a little
distance off.
Until we came actually in sight of this great ranch-house we had been
passing through a hot, fertile, pleasant wilderness, where the few
small palm-roofed houses, each in its little patch of sugar-cane,
corn, and mandioc, stood very many miles apart. One of these little
houses stood on an old Indian mound, exactly like the mounds which
form the only hillocks along the lower Mississippi, and which are also
of Indian origin. These occasional Indian mounds, made ages ago, are
the highest bits of ground in the immense swamps of the upper Paraguay
region. There are still Indian tribes in this neighborhood. We passed
an Indian fishing village on the edge of the river, with huts,
scaffoldings for drying the fish, hammocks, and rude tables. They
cultivated patches of bananas and sugar-cane. Out in a shallow place
in the river was a scaffolding on which the Indians stood to spear
fish. The Indians were friendly, peaceable souls, for the most part
dressed like the poorer classes among the Brazilians.
Next morning there was to have been a great rodeo or round-up, and we
determined to have a hunt first, as there were still several kinds of
beasts of the chase, notably tapirs and peccaries, of which the
naturalists desired specimens. Dom Joao, our host, and his son
accompanied us. Theirs is a noteworthy family. Born in Matto Grosso,
in the tropics, our host had the look of a northerner and, although a
grandfather, he possessed an abounding vigor and energy such as very
few men of any climate or surroundings do possess. All of his sons are
doing well. The son who was with us was a stalwart, powerful man, a
pleasant companion, an able public servant, a finished horseman, and a
skilled hunter. He carried a sharp spear, not a rifle, for in Matto
Grosso it is the custom in hunting the jaguar for riflemen and
spearmen to go in at him together when he turns at bay, the spearman
holding him off if the first shot fails to stop him, so that another
shot can be put in. Altogether, our host and his son reminded one of
the best type of American ranchmen and planters, of those planters and
ranchmen who are adepts in bold and manly field sports, who are
capital men of business, and who also often supply to the state
skilled and faithful public servants. The hospitality the father and
son extended to us was patriarchal: neither, for instance, would sit
at table with their guests at the beginning of the formal meals;
instead they exercised a close personal supervision over the feast.
Our charming hostess, however, sat at the head of the table.
At six in the morning we started, all of us on fine horses. The day
was lowering and overcast. A dozen dogs were with us, but only one or
two were worth anything. Three or four ordinary countrymen, the ranch
hands, or vaqueiros, accompanied us; they were mainly of Indian blood,
and would have been called peons, or caboclos, in other parts of
Brazil, but here were always spoken to and of as "camaradas." They
were, of course, chosen from among the men who were hunters, and each
carried his long, rather heavy and clumsy jaguar-spear. In front rode
our vigorous host and his strapping son, the latter also carrying a
jaguar-spear. The bridles and saddles of the big ranchmen and of the
gentlefolk generally were handsome and were elaborately ornamented
with silver. The stirrups, for instance, were not only of silver, but
contained so much extra metal in ornamented bars and rings that they
would have been awkward for less-practised riders. Indeed, as it was,
they were adapted only for the tips of boots with long, pointed toes,
and were impossible for our feet; our hosts' stirrups were long,
narrow silver slippers. The camaradas, on the other hand, had jim-crow
saddles and bridles, and rusty little iron stirrups into which they
thrust their naked toes. But all, gentry and commonalty alike, rode
equally well and with the same skill and fearlessness. To see our
hosts gallop at headlong speed over any kind of country toward the
sound of the dogs with their quarry at bay, or to see them handle
their horses in a morass, was a pleasure. It was equally a pleasure to
see a camarada carrying his heavy spear, leading a hound in a leash,
and using his machete to cut his way through the tangled vine-ropes of
a jungle, all at the same time and all without the slightest reference
to the plunges, and the odd and exceedingly jerky behavior, of his
wild, half-broken horse--for on such a ranch most of the horses are
apt to come in the categories of half-broken or else of broken-down.
One dusky tatterdemalion wore a pair of boots from which he had
removed the soles, his bare, spur-clad feet projecting from beneath
the uppers. He was on a little devil of a stallion, which he rode
blindfold for a couple of miles, and there was a regular circus when
he removed the bandage; but evidently it never occurred to him that
the animal was hardly a comfortable riding-horse for a man going out
hunting and encumbered with a spear, a machete, and other belongings.
The eight hours that we were out we spent chiefly in splashing across
the marshes, with excursions now and then into vine-tangled belts and
clumps of timber. Some of the bayous we had to cross were
uncomfortably boggy. We had to lead the horses through one, wading
ahead of them; and even so two of them mired down, and their saddles
had to be taken off before they could be gotten out. Among the marsh
plants were fields and strips of the great caete rush. These caete
flags towered above the other and lesser marsh plants. They were
higher than the heads of the horsemen. Their two or three huge banana-
like leaves stood straight up on end. The large brilliant flowers--
orange, red, and yellow--were joined into a singularly shaped and
solid string or cluster. Humming-birds buzzed round these flowers; one
species, the sickle-billed hummer, has its bill especially adapted for
use in these queerly shaped blossoms and gets its food only from them,
never appearing around any other plant.
The birds were tame, even those striking and beautiful birds which
under man's persecution are so apt to become scarce and shy. The huge
jabiru storks, stalking through the water with stately dignity,
sometimes refused to fly until we were only a hundred yards off; one
of them flew over our heads at a distance of thirty or forty yards.
The screamers, crying curu-curu, and the ibises, wailing dolefully,
came even closer. The wonderful hyacinth macaws, in twos and threes,
accompanied us at times for several hundred yards, hovering over our
heads and uttering their rasping screams. In one wood we came on the
black howler monkey. The place smelt almost like a menagerie. Not
watching with sufficient care I brushed against a sapling on which the
venomous fire-ants swarmed. They burnt the skin like red-hot cinders,
and left little sores. More than once in the drier parts of the marsh
we met small caymans making their way from one pool to another. My
horse stepped over one before I saw it. The dead carcasses of others
showed that on their wanderings they had encountered jaguars or human
foes.
We had been out about three hours when one of the dogs gave tongue in
a large belt of woodland and jungle to the left of our line of march
through the marsh. The other dogs ran to the sound, and after a while
the long barking told that the thing, whatever it was, was at bay or
else in some refuge. We made our way toward the place on foot. The
dogs were baying excitedly at the mouth of a huge hollow log, and very
short examination showed us that there were two peccaries within,
doubtless a boar and sow. However, just at this moment the peccaries
bolted from an unsuspected opening at the other end of the log, dove
into the tangle, and instantly disappeared with the hounds in full cry
after them. It was twenty minutes later before we again heard the pack
baying. With much difficulty, and by the incessant swinging of the
machetes, we opened a trail through the network of vines and branches.
This time there was only one peccary, the boar. He was at bay in a
half-hollow stump. The dogs were about his head, raving with
excitement, and it was not possible to use the rifle; so I borrowed
the spear of Dom Joao the younger, and killed the fierce little boar
therewith.
This was an animal akin to our collared peccary, smaller and less
fierce than its white-jawed kinsfolk. It is a valiant and truculent
little beast, nevertheless, and if given the chance will bite a piece
the size of a teacup out of either man or dog. It is found singly or
in small parties, feeds on roots, fruits, grass, and delights to make
its home in hollow logs. If taken young it makes an affectionate and
entertaining pet. When the two were in the hollow log we heard them
utter a kind of moaning, or menacing, grunt, long drawn.
An hour or two afterward we unexpectedly struck the fresh tracks of
two jaguars and at once loosed the dogs, who tore off yelling, on the
line of the scent. Unfortunately, just at this moment the clouds burst
and a deluge of rain drove in our faces. So heavy was the downpour
that the dogs lost the trail and we lost the dogs. We found them again
only owing to one of our caboclos; an Indian with a queer Mongolian
face, and no brain at all that I could discover, apart from his
special dealings with wild creatures, cattle, and horses. He rode in a
huddle of rags; but nothing escaped his eyes, and he rode anything
anywhere. The downpour continued so heavily that we knew the rodeo had
been abandoned, and we turned our faces for the long, dripping,
splashing ride homeward. Through the gusts of driving rain we could
hardly see the way. Once the rain lightened, and half a mile away the
sunshine gleamed through a rift in the leaden cloud-mass. Suddenly in
this rift of shimmering brightness there appeared a flock of beautiful
white egrets. With strong, graceful wing-beats the birds urged their
flight, their plumage flashing in the sun. They then crossed the rift
and were swallowed in the gray gloom of the day.
On the marsh the dogs several times roused capybaras. Where there were
no ponds of sufficient size the capybaras sought refuge in flight
through the tangled marsh. They ran well. Kermit and Fiala went after
one on foot, full-speed, for a mile and a half, with two hounds which
then bayed it--literally bayed it, for the capybara fought with the
courage of a gigantic woodchuck. If the pack overtook a capybara, they
of course speedily finished it; but a single dog of our not very
valorous outfit was not able to overmatch its shrill-squeaking
opponent.
Near the ranch-house, about forty feet up in a big tree, was a
jabiru's nest containing young jabirus. The young birds exercised
themselves by walking solemnly round the edge of the nest and opening
and shutting their wings. Their heads and necks were down-covered,
instead of being naked like those of their parents. Fiala wished to
take a moving-picture of them while thus engaged, and so, after
arranging his machine, he asked Harper to rouse the young birds by
throwing a stick up to the nest. He did so, whereupon one young jabiru
hastily opened its wings in the desired fashion, at the same time
seizing the stick in its bill! It dropped it at once, with an air of
comic disappointment, when it found that the stick was not edible.
There were many strange birds round about. Toucans were not uncommon.
I have never seen any other bird take such grotesque and comic
attitudes as the toucan. This day I saw one standing in the top of a
tree with the big bill pointing straight into the air and the tail
also cocked perpendicularly. The toucan is a born comedian. On the
river and in the ponds we saw the finfoot, a bird with feet like a
grebe and bill and tail like those of a darter, but, like so many
South American birds, with no close affiliations among other species.
The exceedingly rich bird fauna of South America contains many species
which seem to be survivals from a very remote geologic past, whose
kinsfolk have perished under the changed conditions of recent ages;
and in the case of many, like the hoatzin and screamer, their like is
not known elsewhere. Herons of many species swarmed in this
neighborhood. The handsomest was the richly colored tiger bittern. Two
other species were so unlike ordinary herons that I did not recognize
them as herons at all until Cherrie told me what they were. One had a
dark body, a white-speckled or ocellated neck, and a bill almost like
that of an ibis. The other looked white, but was really mauve-colored,
with black on the head. When perched on a tree it stood like an ibis;
and instead of the measured wing-beats characteristic of a heron's
flight, it flew with a quick, vigorous flapping of the wings. There
were queer mammals, too, as well as birds. In the fields Miller
trapped mice of a kind entirely new.
Next morning the sky was leaden, and a drenching rain fell as we began
our descent of the river. The rainy season had fairly begun. For our
good fortune we were still where we had the cabins aboard the boat,
and the ranch-house, in which to dry our clothes and soggy shoes; but
in the intensely humid atmosphere, hot and steaming, they stayed wet a
long time, and were still moist when we put them on again. Before we
left the house where we had been treated with such courteous
hospitality--the finest ranch-house in Matto Grosso, on a huge ranch
where there are some sixty thousand head of horned cattle--the son of
our host, Dom Joao the younger, the jaguar-hunter, presented me with
two magnificent volumes on the palms of Brazil, the work of Doctor
Barboso Rodriguez, one-time director of the Botanical Gardens at Rio
Janeiro. The two folios were in a box of native cedar. No gift more
appropriate, none that I would in the future value more as a reminder
of my stay in Matto Grosso, could have been given me.
All that afternoon the rain continued. It was still pouring in
torrents when we left the Cuyaba for the Sao Lourenco and steamed up
the latter a few miles before anchoring; Dom Joao the younger had
accompanied us in his launch. The little river steamer was of very
open build, as is necessary in such a hot climate; and to keep things
dry necessitated also keeping the atmosphere stifling. The German
taxidermist who was with Colonel Rondon's party, Reinisch, a very good
fellow from Vienna, sat on a stool, alternately drenched with rain and
sweltering with heat, and muttered to himself: "Ach, Schweinerei!"
Two small caymans, of the common species, with prominent eyes, were at
the bank where we moored, and betrayed an astonishing and stupid
tameness. Neither the size of the boat nor the commotion caused by the
paddles in any way affected them. They lay inshore, not twenty feet
from us, half out of water; they paid not the slightest heed to our
presence, and only reluctantly left when repeatedly poked at, and
after having been repeatedly hit with clods of mud and sticks; and
even then one first crawled up on shore, to find out if thereby he
could not rid himself of the annoyance we caused him.
Next morning it was still raining, but we set off on a hunt,
anyway, going afoot. A couple of brown camaradas led the way, and
Colonel Rondon, Dom Joao, Kermit, and I followed. The incessant
downpour speedily wet us to the skin. We made our way slowly through
the forest, the machetes playing right and left, up and down, at every
step, for the trees were tangled in a network of vines and creepers.
Some of the vines were as thick as a man's leg. Mosquitoes hummed
about us, the venomous fire-ants stung us, the sharp spines of a small
palm tore our hands--afterward some of the wounds festered. Hour after
hour we thus walked on through the Brazilian forest. We saw monkeys,
the common yellowish kind, a species of cebus; a couple were shot for
the museum and the others raced off among the upper branches of the
trees. Then we came on a party of coatis, which look like reddish,
long-snouted, long-tailed, lanky raccoons. They were in the top of a
big tree. One, when shot at and missed, bounced down to the ground,
and ran off through the bushes; Kermit ran after it and secured it. He
came back, to find us peering hopelessly up into the tree top, trying
to place where the other coatis were. Kermit solved the difficulty by
going up along some huge twisted lianas for forty or fifty feet and
exploring the upper branches; whereupon down came three other coatis
through the branches, one being caught by the dogs and the other two
escaping. Coatis fight savagely with both teeth and claws. Miller told
us that he once saw one of them kill a dog. They feed on all small
mammals, birds, and reptiles, and even on some large ones; they kill
iguanas; Cherrie saw a rattling chase through the trees, a coati
following an iguana at full speed. We heard the rush of a couple of
tapirs, as they broke away in the jungle in front of the dogs and
headed, according to their custom, for the river; but we never saw
them. One of the party shot a bush deer--a very pretty, graceful
creature, smaller than our whitetail deer, but kin to it and doubtless
the southernmost representative of the whitetail group.
The whitetail deer--using the word to designate a group of deer which
can neither be called a subgenus with many species, nor a widely
spread species diverging into many varieties--is the only North
American species which has spread down into and has outlying
representatives in South America. It has been contended that the
species has spread from South America northward. I do not think so;
and the specimen thus obtained furnished a probable refutation of the
theory. It was a buck, and had just shed its small antlers. The
antlers are, therefore, shed at the same time as in the north, and it
appears that they are grown at the same time as in the north. Yet this
variety now dwells in the tropics south of the equator, where the
spring, and the breeding season for most birds, comes at the time of
the northern fall in September, October, and November. That the deer
is an intrusive immigrant, and that it has not yet been in South
America long enough to change its mating season in accordance with the
climate, as the birds--geologically doubtless very old residents--have
changed their breeding season, is rendered probable by the fact that
it conforms so exactly in the time of its antler growth to the
universal rule which obtains in the great arctogeal realm, where deer
of many species abound and where the fossil forms show that they have
long existed. The marsh-deer, which has diverged much further from the
northern type than this bush deer (its horns show a likeness to those
of a blacktail), often keeps its antlers until June or July, although
it begins to grow them again in August; however, too much stress must
not be laid on this fact, inasmuch as the wapiti and the cow caribou
both keep their antlers until spring. The specialization of the marsh-
deer, by the way, is further shown in its hoofs, which, thanks to its
semi-aquatic mode of life, have grown long, like those of such African
swamp antelopes as the lechwe and situtunga.
Miller, when we presented the monkeys to him, told us that the females
both of these monkeys and of the howlers themselves took care of the
young, the males not assisting them, and moreover that when the young
one was a male he had always found the mother keeping by herself, away
from the old males. On the other hand, among the marmosets he found
the fathers taking as much care of the young as the mothers; if the
mother had twins, the father would usually carry one, and sometimes
both, around with him.
After we had been out four hours our camaradas got lost; three several
times they travelled round in a complete circle; and we had to set
them right with the compass. About noon the rain, which had been
falling almost without interruption for forty-eight hours, let up, and
in an hour or two the sun came out. We went back to the river, and
found our rowboat. In it the hounds--a motley and rather worthless
lot--and the rest of the party were ferried across to the opposite
bank, while Colonel Rondon and I stayed in the boat, on the chance
that a tapir might be roused and take to the river. However, no tapir
was found; Kermit killed a collared peccary, and I shot a capybara
representing a color-phase the naturalists wished.
Next morning, January 1, 1914, we were up at five and had a good New
Year's Day breakfast of hardtack, ham, sardines, and coffee before
setting out on an all day's hunt on foot. I much feared that the pack
was almost or quite worthless for jaguars, but there were two or three
of the great spotted cats in the neighborhood and it seemed worth
while to make a try for them anyhow. After an hour or two we found
the fresh tracks of two, and after them we went. Our party consisted
of Colonel Rondon, Lieutenant Rogaciano--an excellent man, himself a
native of Matto Grosso, of old Matto Grosso stock--two others of the
party from the Sao Joao ranch, Kermit, and myself, together with four
dark-skinned camaradas, cowhands from the same ranch. We soon found
that the dogs would not by themselves follow the jaguar trail; nor
would the camaradas, although they carried spears. Kermit was the one
of our party who possessed the requisite speed, endurance, and
eyesight, and accordingly he led. Two of the dogs would follow the
track half a dozen yards ahead of him, but no farther; and two of the
camaradas could just about keep up with him. For an hour we went
through thick jungle, where the machetes were constantly at work. Then
the trail struck off straight across the marshes, for jaguars swim and
wade as freely as marsh-deer. It was a hard walk. The sun was out. We
were drenched with sweat. We were torn by the spines of the
innumerable clusters of small palms with thorns like needles. We were
bitten by the hosts of fire-ants, and by the mosquitoes, which we
scarcely noticed where the fire-ants were found, exactly as all dread
of the latter vanished when we were menaced by the big red wasps, of
which a dozen stings will disable a man, and if he is weak or in bad
health will seriously menace his life. In the marsh we were
continually wading, now up to our knees, now up to our hips. Twice we
came to long bayous so deep that we had to swim them, holding our
rifles above water in our right hands. The floating masses of marsh
grass, and the slimy stems of the water-plants, doubled our work as we
swam, cumbered by our clothing and boots and holding our rifles aloft.
One result of the swim, by the way, was that my watch, a veteran of
Cuba and Africa, came to an indignant halt. Then on we went, hampered
by the weight of our drenched clothes while our soggy boots squelched
as we walked. There was no breeze. In the undimmed sky the sun stood
almost overhead. The heat beat on us in waves. By noon I could only go
forward at a slow walk, and two of the party were worse off than I
was. Kermit, with the dogs and two camaradas close behind him,
disappeared across the marshes at a trot. At last, when he was out of
sight, and it was obviously useless to follow him, the rest of us
turned back toward the boat. The two exhausted members of the party
gave out, and we left them under a tree. Colonel Rondon and Lieutenant
Rogaciano were not much tired; I was somewhat tired, but was perfectly
able to go for several hours more if I did not try to go too fast; and
we three walked on to the river, reaching it about half past four,
after eleven hours' stiff walking with nothing to eat. We were soon on
the boat. A relief party went back for the two men under the tree, and
soon after it reached them Kermit also turned up with his hounds and
his camaradas trailing wearily behind him. He had followed the jaguar
trail until the dogs were so tired that even after he had bathed them,
and then held their noses in the fresh footprints, they would pay no
heed to the scent. A hunter of scientific tastes, a hunter-naturalist,
or even an outdoors naturalist, or faunal naturalist interested in big
mammals, with a pack of hounds such as those with which Paul Rainey
hunted lion and leopard in Africa, or such a pack as the packs of
Johnny Goff and Jake Borah with which I hunted cougar, lynx, and bear
in the Rockies, or such packs as those of the Mississippi and
Louisiana planters with whom I have hunted bear, wild-cat, and deer in
the cane-brakes of the lower Mississippi, would not only enjoy fine
hunting in these vast marshes of the upper Paraguay, but would also do
work of real scientific value as regards all the big cats.
Only a limited number of the naturalists who have worked in the
tropics have had any experience with the big beasts whose life-
histories possess such peculiar interest. Of all the biologists who
have seriously studied the South American fauna on the ground, Bates
probably rendered most service; but he hardly seems even to have seen
the animals with which the hunter is fairly familiar. His interests,
and those of the other biologists of his kind, lay in other
directions. In consequence, in treating of the life-histories of the
very interesting big game, we have been largely forced to rely either
on native report, in which acutely accurate observation is invariably
mixed with wild fable, or else on the chance remarks of travellers or
mere sportsmen, who had not the training to make them understand even
what it was desirable to observe. Nowadays there is a growing
proportion of big-game hunters, of sportsmen, who are of the
Schilling, Selous, and Shiras type. These men do work of capital value
for science. The mere big-game butcher is tending to disappear as a
type. On the other hand, the big-game hunter who is a good observer, a
good field naturalist, occupies at present a more important position
than ever before, and it is now recognized that he can do work which
the closest naturalist cannot do. The big-game hunter of this type and
the outdoors, faunal naturalist, the student of the life-histories of
big mammals, have open to them in South America a wonderful field in
which to work.
The fire-ants, of which I have above spoken, are generally found on a
species of small tree or sapling, with a greenish trunk. They bend the
whole body as they bite, the tail and head being thrust downward. A
few seconds after the bite the poison causes considerable pain; later
it may make a tiny festering sore. There is certainly the most
extraordinary diversity in the traits by which nature achieves the
perpetuation of species. Among the warrior and predaceous insects the
prowess is in some cases of such type as to render the possessor
practically immune from danger. In other cases the condition of its
exercise may normally be the sacrifice of the life of the possessor.
There are wasps that prey on formidable fighting spiders, which yet
instinctively so handle themselves that the prey practically never
succeeds in either defending itself or retaliating, being captured and
paralyzed with unerring efficiency and with entire security to the
wasp. The wasp's safety is absolute. On the other hand, these fighting
ants, including the soldiers even among the termites, are frantically
eager for a success which generally means their annihilation; the
condition of their efficiency is absolute indifference to their own
security. Probably the majority of the ants that actually lay hold on
a foe suffer death in consequence; certainly they not merely run the
risk of but eagerly invite death.
The following day we descended the Sao Lourenco to its junction with
the Paraguay, and once more began the ascent of the latter. At one
cattle-ranch where we stopped, the troupials, or big black and yellow
orioles, had built a large colony of their nests on a dead tree near
the primitive little ranch-house. The birds were breeding; the old
ones were feeding the young. In this neighborhood the naturalists
found many birds that were new to them, including a tiny woodpecker no
bigger than a ruby-crowned kinglet. They had collected two night
monkeys--nocturnal monkeys, not as agile as the ordinary monkey; these
two were found at dawn, having stayed out too late.
The early morning was always lovely on these rivers, and at that hour
many birds and beasts were to be seen. One morning we saw a fine marsh
buck, holding his head aloft as he stared at us, his red coat vivid
against the green marsh. Another of these marsh-deer swam the river
ahead of us; I shot at it as it landed, and ought to have got it, but
did not. As always with these marsh-deer--and as with so many other
deer--I was struck by the revealing or advertising quality of its red
coloration; there was nothing in its normal surroundings with which
this coloration harmonized; so far as it had any effect whatever it
was always a revealing and not a concealing effect. When the animal
fled the black of the erect tail was an additional revealing mark,
although not of such startlingly advertising quality as the flag of
the whitetail. The whitetail, in one of its forms, and with the
ordinary whitetail custom of displaying the white flag as it runs, is
found in the immediate neighborhood of the swamp-deer. It has the same
foes. Evidently it is of no survival consequence whether the running
deer displays a white or a black flag. Any competent observer of big
game must be struck by the fact that in the great majority of the
species the coloration is not concealing, and that in many it has a
highly revealing quality. Moreover, if the spotted or striped young
represent the ancestral coloration, and if, as seems probable, the
spots and stripes have, on the whole, some slight concealing value, it
is evident that in the life history of most of these large mammals,
both among those that prey and those that are preyed on, concealing
coloration has not been a survival factor; throughout the ages during
which they have survived they have gradually lost whatever of
concealing coloration they may once have had--if any--and have
developed a coloration which under present conditions has no
concealing and perhaps even has a revealing quality, and which in all
probability never would have had a concealing value in any
"environmental complex" in which the species as a whole lived during
its ancestral development. Indeed, it seems astonishing, when one
observes these big beasts--and big waders and other water-birds--in
their native surroundings, to find how utterly non-harmful their often
strikingly revealing coloration is. Evidently the various other
survival factors, such as habit, and in many cases cover, etc., are of
such overmastering importance that the coloration is generally of no
consequence whatever, one way or the other, and is only very rarely a
factor of any serious weight.
The junction of the Sao Lourenco and the Paraguay is a day's journey
above Corumba. From Corumba there is a regular service by shallow
steamers to Cuyaba, at the head of one fork, and to Sao Luis de
Caceres, at the head of the other. The steamers are not powerful and
the voyage to each little city takes a week. There are other forks
that are navigable. Above Cuyaba and Caceres launches go up-stream for
several days' journey, except during the dryest parts of the season.
North of this marshy plain lies the highland, the Plan Alto, where the
nights are cool and the climate healthy. But I wish emphatically to
record my view that these marshy plains, although hot, are also
healthy; and, moreover, the mosquitoes, in most places, are not in
sufficient numbers to be a serious pest, although of course there must
be nets for protection against them at night. The country is
excellently suited for settlement, and offers a remarkable field for
cattle-growing. Moreover, it is a paradise for water-birds and for
many other kinds of birds, and for many mammals. It is literally an
ideal place in which a field naturalist could spend six months or a
year. It is readily accessible, it offers an almost virgin field for
work, and the life would be healthy as well as delightfully
attractive. The man should have a steam-launch. In it he could with
comfort cover all parts of the country from south of Corumbra to north
of Cuyaba and Caceres. There would have to be a good deal of
collecting (although nothing in the nature of butchery should be
tolerated), for the region has only been superficially worked,
especially as regards mammals. But if the man were only a collector he
would leave undone the part of the work best worth doing. The region
offers extraordinary opportunities for the study of the life-histories
of birds which, because of their size, their beauty, or their habits,
are of exceptional interest. All kinds of problems would be worked
out. For example, on the morning of the 3rd, as we were ascending the
Paraguay, we again and again saw in the trees on the bank big nests of
sticks, into and out of which parakeets were flying by the dozen. Some
of them had straws or twigs in their bills. In some of the big
globular nests we could make out several holes of exit or entrance.
Apparently these parakeets were building or remodelling communal
nests; but whether they had themselves built these nests, or had taken
old nests and added to or modified them, we could not tell. There was
so much of interest all along the banks that we were continually
longing to stop and spend days where we were. Mixed flocks of scores
of cormorants and darters covered certain trees, both at sunset and
after sunrise. Although there was no deep forest, merely belts or
fringes of trees along the river, or in patches back of it, we
frequently saw monkeys in this riverine tree-fringe--active common
monkeys and black howlers of more leisurely gait. We saw caymans and
capybaras sitting socially near one another on the sandbanks. At night
we heard the calling of large flights of tree-ducks. These were now
the most common of all the ducks, although there were many muscovy
ducks also. The evenings were pleasant and not hot, as we sat on the
forward deck; there was a waxing moon. The screamers were among the
most noticeable birds. They were noisy; they perched on the very tops
of the trees, not down among the branches; and they were not shy. They
should be carefully protected by law, for they readily become tame,
and then come familiarly round the houses. From the steamer we now and
then saw beautiful orchids in the trees on the river bank.
One afternoon we stopped at the home buildings or headquarters of one
of the great outlying ranches of the Brazil Land and Cattle Company,
the Farquahar syndicate, under the management of Murdo Mackenzie--than
whom we have in the United States no better citizen or more competent
cattleman. On this ranch there are some seventy thousand head of
stock. We were warmly greeted by McLean, the head of the ranch, and
his assistant Ramsey, an old Texan friend. Among the other assistants,
all equally cordial, were several Belgians and Frenchmen. The hands
were Paraguayans and Brazilians, and a few Indians--a hard-bit set,
each of whom always goes armed and knows how to use his arms, for
there are constant collisions with cattle thieves from across the
Bolivian border, and the ranch has to protect itself. These cowhands,
vaqueiros, were of the type with which we were now familiar: dark-
skinned, lean, hard-faced men, in slouch-hats, worn shirts and
trousers, and fringed leather aprons, with heavy spurs on their bare
feet. They are wonderful riders and ropers, and fear neither man nor
beast. I noticed one Indian vaqueiro standing in exactly the attitude
of a Shilluk of the White Nile, with the sole of one foot against the
other leg, above the knee. This is a region with extraordinary
possibilities of cattle-raising.
At this ranch there was a tannery; a slaughter-house; a cannery; a
church; buildings of various kinds and all degrees of comfort for the
thirty or forty families who made the place their headquarters; and
the handsome, white, two-story big house, standing among lemon-trees
and flamboyants on the river-brink. There were all kinds of pets
around the house. The most fascinating was a wee, spotted fawn which
loved being petted. Half a dozen curassows of different species
strolled through the rooms; there were also parrots of several
different species, and immediately outside the house four or five
herons, with unclipped wings, which would let us come within a few
feet and then fly gracefully off, shortly afterward returning to the
same spot. They included big and little white egrets and also the
mauve and pearl-colored heron, with a partially black head and many-
colored bill, which flies with quick, repeated wing-flappings, instead
of the usual slow heron wing-beats.
In the warehouse were scores of skins of jaguar, puma, ocelot, and
jaguarundi, and one skin of the big, small-toothed red wolf. These
were all brought in by the cowhands and by friendly Indians, a price
being put on each, as they destroyed the stock. The jaguars
occasionally killed horses and full-grown cows, but not bulls. The
pumas killed the calves. The others killed an occasional very young
calf, but ordinarily only sheep, little pigs, and chickens. There was
one black jaguar-skin; melanism is much more common among jaguars than
pumas, although once Miller saw a black puma that had been killed by
Indians. The patterns of the jaguar-skins, and even more of the
ocelot-skins, showed wide variation, no two being alike. The pumas
were for the most part bright red, but some were reddish gray, there
being much the same dichromatism that I found among their Colorado
kinsfolk. The jaguarundis were dark brownish gray. All these animals,
the spotted jaguars and ocelots, the monochrome black jaguars, red
pumas, and dark-gray jaguarundis, were killed in the same locality,
with the same environment. A glance at the skins and a moment's
serious thought would have been enough to show any sincere thinker that
in these cats the coloration pattern, whether concealing or revealing,
is of no consequence one way or the other as a survival factor. The
spotted patterns conferred no benefit as compared with the nearly or
quite monochrome blacks, reds, and dark grays. The bodily condition of
the various beasts was equally good, showing that their success in
life, that is, their ability to catch their prey, was unaffected by
their several color schemes. Except white, there is no color so
conspicuously advertising as black; yet the black jaguar had been a
fine, well-fed, powerful beast. The spotted patterns in the forests,
and perhaps even in the marshes which the jaguars so frequently
traversed, are probably a shade less conspicuous than the monochrome
red and gray, but the puma and jaguarundi are just as hard to see, and
evidently find it just as easy to catch prey, as the jaguar and
ocelot. The little fawn which we saw was spotted; the grown deer had
lost the spots; if the spots do really help to conceal the wearer, it
is evident that the deer has found the original concealing coloration
of so little value that it has actually been lost in the course of the
development of the species. When these big cats and the deer are
considered, together with the dogs, tapirs, peccaries, capybaras, and
big ant-eaters which live in the same environment, and when we also
consider the difference between the young and the adult deer and
tapirs (both of which when adult have substituted a complete or
partial monochrome for the ancestral spots and streaks), it is evident
that in the present life and in the ancestral development of the big
mammals of South America coloration is not and has not been a survival
factor; any pattern and any color may accompany the persistence and
development of the qualities and attributes which are survival
factors. Indeed, it seems hard to believe that in their ordinary
environments such color schemes as the bright red of the marsh-deer,
the black of the black jaguar, and the black with white stripes of the
great tamandua, are not positive detriments to the wearers. Yet such
is evidently not the case. Evidently the other factors in species-
survival are of such overwhelming importance that the coloration
becomes negligible from this standpoint, whether it be concealing or
revealing. The cats mould themselves to the ground as they crouch or
crawl. They take advantage of the tiniest scrap of cover. They move
with extraordinary stealth and patience. The other animals which try
to sneak off in such manner as to escape observation approach more or
less closely to the ideal which the cats most nearly realize.
Wariness, sharp senses, the habit of being rigidly motionless when
there is the least suspicion of danger, and ability to take advantage
of cover, all count. On the bare, open, treeless plain, whether marsh,
meadow, or upland, anything above the level of the grass is seen at
once. A marsh-deer out in the open makes no effort to avoid
observation; its concern is purely to see its foes in time to leave a
dangerous neighborhood. The deer of the neighboring forest skulk and
hide and lie still in dense cover to avoid being seen. The white-
lipped peccaries make no effort to escape observation by being either
noiseless or motionless; they trust for defence to their
gregariousness and truculence. The collared peccary also trusts to its
truculence, but seeks refuge in a hole where it can face any opponent
with its formidable biting apparatus. As for the giant tamandua, in
spite of its fighting prowess I am wholly unable to understand how
such a slow and clumsy beast has been able through the ages to exist
and thrive surrounded by jaguars and pumas. Speaking generally, the
animals that seek to escape observation trust primarily to smell to
discover their foes or their prey, and see whatever moves and do not
see whatever is motionless.
By the morning of January 5 we had left the marsh region. There were
low hills here and there, and the land was covered with dense forest.
From time to time we passed little clearings with palm-thatched
houses. We were approaching Caceres, where the easiest part of our
trip would end. We had lived in much comfort on the little steamer.
The food was plentiful and the cooking good. At night we slept on deck
in cots or hammocks. The mosquitoes were rarely troublesome, although
in the daytime we were sometimes bothered by numbers of biting horse-
flies. The bird life was wonderful. One of the characteristic sights
we were always seeing was that of a number of heads and necks of
cormorants and snake-birds, without any bodies, projecting above
water, and disappearing as the steamer approached. Skimmers and thick-
billed tern were plentiful here right in the heart of the continent.
In addition to the spurred lapwing, characteristic and most
interesting resident of most of South America, we found tiny red-
legged plover which also breed and are at home in the tropics. The
contrasts in habits between closely allied species are wonderful.
Among the plovers and bay snipe there are species that live all the
year round in almost the same places, in tropical and subtropical
lands; and other related forms which wander over the whole earth, and
spend nearly all their time, now in the arctic and cold temperate
regions of the far north, now in the cold temperate regions of the
south. These latter wide-wandering birds of the seashore and the river
bank pass most of their lives in regions of almost perpetual sunlight.
They spend the breeding season, the northern summer, in the land of
the midnight sun, during the long arctic day. They then fly for
endless distances down across the north temperate zone, across the
equator, through the lands where the days and nights are always of
equal length, into another hemisphere, and spend another summer of
long days and long twilights in the far south, where the Antarctic
winds cool them, while their nesting home, at the other end of the
world, is shrouded beneath the iron desolation of the polar night.
In the late afternoon of the 5th we reached the quaint old-fashioned
little town of Sao Luis de Caceres, on the outermost fringe of the
settled region of the state of Matto Grosso, the last town we should
see before reaching the villages of the Amazon. As we approached we
passed half-clad black washerwomen on the river's edge. The men, with
the local band, were gathered at the steeply sloping foot of the main
street, where the steamer came to her moorings. Groups of women and
girls, white and brown, watched us from the low bluff; their skirts
and bodices were red, blue, green, of all colors. Sigg had gone ahead
with much of the baggage; he met us in an improvised motor-boat,
consisting of a dugout to the side of which he had clamped our
Evinrude motor; he was giving several of the local citizens of
prominence a ride, to their huge enjoyment. The streets of the little
town were unpaved, with narrow brick sidewalks. The one-story houses
were white or blue, with roofs of red tiles and window-shutters of
latticed woodwork, come down from colonial days and tracing back
through Christian and Moorish Portugal to a remote Arab ancestry.
Pretty faces, some dark, some light, looked out from these windows;
their mothers' mothers, for generations past, must thus have looked
out of similar windows in the vanished colonial days. But now even
here in Caceres the spirit of the new Brazil is moving; a fine new
government school has been started, and we met its principal, an
earnest man doing excellent work, one of the many teachers who, during
the last few years, have been brought to Matto Grosso from Sao Paulo,
a centre of the new educational movement which will do so much for
Brazil.
Father Zahm went to spend the night with some French Franciscan
friars, capital fellows. I spent the night at the comfortable house of
Lieutenant Lyra; a hot-weather house with thick walls, big doors, and
an open patio bordered by a gallery. Lieutenant Lyra was to accompany
us; he was an old companion of Colonel Rondon's explorations. We
visited one or two of the stores to make some final purchases, and in
the evening strolled through the dusky streets and under the trees of
the plaza; the women and girls sat in groups in the doorways or at the
windows, and here and there a stringed instrument tinkled in the
darkness.
From Caceres onward we were entering the scene of Colonel Rondon's
explorations. For some eighteen years he was occupied in exploring and
in opening telegraph lines through the eastern or north middle part of
the great forest state, the wilderness state of the "Matto Grosso"--
the "great wilderness," or, as Australians would call it, "the bush."
Then, in 1907, he began to penetrate the unknown region lying to the
north and west. He was the head of the exploring expeditions sent out
by the Brazilian Government to traverse for the first time this
unknown land; to map for the first time the courses of the rivers
which from the same divide run into the upper portions of the Tapajos
and the Madeira, two of the mighty affluents of the Amazon, and to
build telegraph-lines across to the Madeira, where a line of Brazilian
settlements, connected by steamboat lines and a railroad, again
occurs. Three times he penetrated into this absolutely unknown,
Indian-haunted wilderness, being absent for a year or two at a time
and suffering every imaginable hardship, before he made his way
through to the Madeira and completed the telegraph-line across. The
officers and men of the Brazilian Army and the civilian scientists who
followed him shared the toil and the credit of the task. Some of his
men died of beriberi; some were killed or wounded by the Indians; he
himself almost died of fever; again and again his whole party was
reduced almost to the last extremity by starvation, disease, hardship,
and the over-exhaustion due to wearing fatigues. In dealing with the
wild, naked savages he showed a combination of fearlessness, wariness,
good judgment, and resolute patience and kindliness. The result was
that they ultimately became his firm friends, guarded the telegraph-
lines, and helped the few soldiers left at the isolated, widely
separated little posts. He and his assistants explored, and mapped for
the first time, the Juruena and the Gy-Parana, two important affluents
of the Tapajos and the Madeira respectively. The Tapajos and the
Madeira, like the Orinoco and Rio Negro, have been highways of travel
for a couple of centuries. The Madeira (as later the Tapajos) was the
chief means of ingress, a century and a half ago, to the little
Portuguese settlements of this far interior region of Brazil; one of
these little towns, named Matto Grosso, being the original capital of
the province. It has long been abandoned by the government, and
practically so by its inhabitants, the ruins of palace, fortress, and
church now rising amid the rank tropical luxuriance of the wild
forest. The mouths of the main affluents of these highway rivers were
as a rule well known. But in many cases nothing but the mouth was
known. The river itself was not known, and it was placed on the map by
guesswork. Colonel Rondon found, for example, that the course of the
Gy-Parana was put down on the map two degrees out of its proper place.
He, with his party, was the first to find out its sources, the first
to traverse its upper course, the first to map its length. He and his
assistants performed a similar service for the Juruena, discovering
the sources, discovering and descending some of the branches, and for
the first time making a trustworthy map of the main river itself,
until its junction with the Tapajos. Near the watershed between the
Juruena and the Gy-Parana he established his farthest station to the
westward, named Jose Bonofacio, after one of the chief republican
patriots of Brazil. A couple of days' march northwestward from this
station, he in 1909 came across a part of the stream of a river
running northward between the Gy-Parana and the Juruena; he could only
guess where it debouched, believing it to be into the Madeira,
although it was possible that it entered the Gy-Parana or Tapajos. The
region through which it flows was unknown, no civilized man having
ever penetrated it; and as all conjecture as to what the river was, as
to its length, and as to its place of entering into some highway
river, was mere guess-work, he had entered it on his sketch maps as
the Rio da Duvida, the River of Doubt. Among the officers of the
Brazilian Army and the scientific civilians who have accompanied him
there have been not only expert cartographers, photographers, and
telegraphists, but astronomers, geologists, botanists, and zoologists.
Their reports, published in excellent shape by the Brazilian
Government, make an invaluable series of volumes, reflecting the
highest credit on the explorers, and on the government itself. Colonel
Rondon's own accounts of his explorations, of the Indian tribes he has
visited, and of the beautiful and wonderful things he has seen,
possess a peculiar interest.