On February 27, 1914, shortly after midday, we started down the River
of Doubt into the unknown. We were quite uncertain whether after a
week we should find ourselves in the Gy-Parana, or after six weeks in
the Madeira, or after three months we knew not where. That was why the
river was rightly christened the Duvida.
We had been camped close to the river, where the trail that follows
the telegraph line crosses it by a rough bridge. As our laden dugouts
swung into the stream, Amilcar and Miller and all the others of the
Gy-Parana party were on the banks and the bridge to wave farewell and
wish us good-by and good luck. It was the height of the rainy season,
and the swollen torrent was swift and brown. Our camp was at about 12
degrees 1 minute latitude south and 60 degrees 15 minutes longitude
west of Greenwich. Our general course was to be northward toward the
equator, by waterway through the vast forest.
We had seven canoes, all of them dugouts. One was small, one was
cranky, and two were old, waterlogged, and leaky. The other three were
good. The two old canoes were lashed together, and the cranky one was
lashed to one of the others. Kermit with two paddlers went in the
smallest of the good canoes; Colonel Rondon and Lyra with three other
paddlers in the next largest; and the doctor, Cherrie, and I in the
largest with three paddlers. The remaining eight camaradas--there were
sixteen in all--were equally divided between our two pairs of lashed
canoes. Although our personal baggage was cut down to the limit
necessary for health and efficiency, yet on such a trip as ours, where
scientific work has to be done and where food for twenty-two men for
an unknown period of time has to be carried, it is impossible not to
take a good deal of stuff; and the seven dugouts were too heavily
laden.
The paddlers were a strapping set. They were expert rivermen and men
of the forest, skilled veterans in wilderness work. They were lithe as
panthers and brawny as bears. They swam like waterdogs. They were
equally at home with pole and paddle, with axe and machete; and one
was a good cook and others were good men around camp. They looked like
pirates in the pictures of Howard Pyle or Maxfield Parrish; one or two
of them were pirates, and one worse than a pirate; but most of them
were hard-working, willing, and cheerful. They were white,--or,
rather, the olive of southern Europe,--black, copper-colored, and of
all intermediate shades. In my canoe Luiz the steersman, the headman,
was a Matto Grosso negro; Julio the bowsman was from Bahia and of pure
Portuguese blood; and the third man, Antonio, was a Parecis Indian.
The actual surveying of the river was done by Colonel Rondon and Lyra,
with Kermit as their assistant. Kermit went first in his little canoe
with the sighting-rod, on which two disks, one red and one white, were
placed a metre apart. He selected a place which commanded as long
vistas as possible up-stream and down, and which therefore might be at
the angle of a bend; landed; cut away the branches which obstructed
the view; and set up the sighting-pole--incidentally encountering
maribundi wasps and swarms of biting and stinging ants. Lyra, from his
station up-stream, with his telemetre established the distance, while
Colonel Rondon with the compass took the direction, and made the
records. Then they moved on to the point Kermit had left, and Kermit
established a new point within their sight. The first half-day's work
was slow. The general course of the stream was a trifle east of north,
but at short intervals it bent and curved literally toward every point
of the compass. Kermit landed nearly a hundred times, and we made but
nine and a third kilometres.
My canoe ran ahead of the surveying canoes. The height of the water
made the going easy, for most of the snags and fallen trees were well
beneath the surface. Now and then, however, the swift water hurried us
toward ripples that marked ugly spikes of sunken timber, or toward
uprooted trees that stretched almost across the stream. Then the
muscles stood out on the backs and arms of the paddlers as stroke on
stroke they urged us away from and past the obstacle. If the leaning
or fallen trees were the thorny, slender-stemmed boritana palms, which
love the wet, they were often, although plunged beneath the river, in
full and vigorous growth, their stems curving upward, and their frond-
crowned tops shaken by the rushing water. It was interesting work, for
no civilized man, no white man, had ever gone down or up this river or
seen the country through which we were passing. The lofty and matted
forest rose like a green wall on either hand. The trees were stately
and beautiful. The looped and twisted vines hung from them like great
ropes. Masses of epiphytes grew both on the dead trees and the living;
some had huge leaves like elephants' ears. Now and then fragrant
scents were blown to us from flowers on the banks. There were not many
birds, and for the most part the forest was silent; rarely we heard
strange calls from the depths of the woods, or saw a cormorant or
ibis.
My canoe ran only a couple of hours. Then we halted to wait for the
others. After a couple of hours more, as the surveyors had not turned
up, we landed and made camp at a spot where the bank rose sharply for
a hundred yards to a level stretch of ground. Our canoes were moored
to trees. The axemen cleared a space for the tents; they were pitched,
the baggage was brought up, and fires were kindled. The woods were
almost soundless. Through them ran old tapir trails, but there was no
fresh sign. Before nightfall the surveyors arrived. There were a few
piums and gnats, and a few mosquitoes after dark, but not enough to
make us uncomfortable. The small stingless bees, of slightly aromatic
odor, swarmed while daylight lasted and crawled over our faces and
hands; they were such tame, harmless little things that when they
tickled too much I always tried to brush them away without hurting
them. But they became a great nuisance after a while. It had been
raining at intervals, and the weather was overcast; but after the sun
went down the sky cleared. The stars were brilliant overhead, and the
new moon hung in the west. It was a pleasant night, the air almost
cool, and we slept soundly.
Next morning the two surveying canoes left immediately after
breakfast. An hour later the two pairs of lashed canoes pushed off. I
kept our canoe to let Cherrie collect, for in the early hours we could
hear a number of birds in the woods near by. The most interesting
birds he shot were a cotinga, brilliant turquoise-blue with a magenta-
purple throat, and a big woodpecker, black above and cinnamon below
with an entirely red head and neck. It was almost noon before we
started. We saw a few more birds; there were fresh tapir and paca
tracks at one point where we landed; once we heard howler monkeys from
the depth of the forest, and once we saw a big otter in midstream. As
we drifted and paddled down the swirling brown current, through the
vivid rain-drenched green of the tropic forest, the trees leaned over
the river from both banks. When those that had fallen in the river at
some narrow point were very tall, or where it happened that two fell
opposite each other, they formed barriers which the men in the leading
canoes cleared with their axes. There were many palms, both the burity
with its stiff fronds like enormous fans, and a handsome species of
bacaba, with very long, gracefully curving fronds. In places the palms
stood close together, towering and slender, their stems a stately
colonnade, their fronds an arched fretwork against the sky.
Butterflies of many hues fluttered over the river. The day was
overcast, with showers of rain. When the sun broke through rifts in
the clouds, his shafts turned the forest to gold.
In mid-afternoon we came to the mouth of a big and swift affluent
entering from the right. It was undoubtedly the Bandeira, which we had
crossed well toward its head, some ten days before, on our road to
Bonofacio. The Nhambiquaras had then told Colonel Rondon that it
flowed into the Duvida. After its junction, with the added volume of
water, the river widened without losing its depth. It was so high that
it had overflowed and stood among the trees on the lower levels. Only
the higher stretches were dry. On the sheer banks where we landed we
had to push the canoes for yards or rods through the branches of the
submerged trees, hacking and hewing. There were occasional bays and
ox-bows from which the current had shifted. In these the coarse marsh
grass grew tall.
This evening we made camp on a flat of dry ground, densely wooded, of
course, directly on the edge of the river and five feet above it. It
was fine to see the speed and sinewy ease with which the choppers
cleared an open space for the tents. Next morning, when we bathed
before sunrise, we dived into deep water right from the shore, and
from the moored canoes. This second day we made sixteen and a half
kilometres along the course of the river, and nine kilometres in a
straight line almost due north.
The following day, March 1, there was much rain--sometimes showers,
sometimes vertical sheets of water. Our course was somewhat west of
north and we made twenty and a half kilometres. We passed signs of
Indian habitation. There were abandoned palm-leaf shelters on both
banks. On the left bank we came to two or three old Indian fields,
grown up with coarse fern and studded with the burned skeletons of
trees. At the mouth of a brook which entered from the right some
sticks stood in the water, marking the site of an old fish-trap. At
one point we found the tough vine hand-rail of an Indian bridge
running right across the river, a couple of feet above it. Evidently
the bridge had been built at low water. Three stout poles had been
driven into the stream-bed in a line at right angles to the current.
The bridge had consisted of poles fastened to these supports, leading
between them and from the support at each end to the banks. The rope
of tough vines had been stretched as a hand-rail, necessary with such
precarious footing. The rise of the river had swept away the bridge,
but the props and the rope hand-rail remained. In the afternoon, from
the boat, Cherrie shot a large dark-gray monkey with a prehensile
tail. It was very good eating.
We camped on a dry level space, but a few feet above, and close
beside, the river--so that our swimming-bath was handy. The trees were
cleared and camp was made with orderly hurry. One of the men almost
stepped on a poisonous coral-snake, which would have been a serious
thing, as his feet were bare. But I had on stout shoes, and the fangs
of these serpents--unlike those of the pit-vipers--are too short to
penetrate good leather. I promptly put my foot on him, and he bit my
shoe with harmless venom. It has been said that the brilliant hues of
the coral-snake when in its native haunts really confer on it a
concealing coloration. In the dark and tangled woods, and to an only
less extent in the ordinary varied landscape, anything motionless,
especially if partially hidden, easily eludes the eye. But against the
dark-brown mould of the forest floor on which we found this coral-
snake its bright and varied coloration was distinctly revealing;
infinitely more so than the duller mottling of the jararaca and other
dangerous snakes of the genus lachecis. In the same place, however, we
found a striking example of genuine protective or mimetic coloration
and shape. A rather large insect larva--at least we judged it to be a
larval form, but we were none of us entomologists--bore a resemblance
to a partially curled dry leaf which was fairly startling. The tail
exactly resembled the stem or continuation of the midrib of the dead
leaf. The flattened body was curled up at the sides, and veined and
colored precisely like the leaf. The head, colored like the leaf,
projected in front.
We were still in the Brazilian highlands. The forest did not teem with
life. It was generally rather silent; we did not hear such a chorus of
birds and mammals as we had occasionally heard even on our overland
journey, when more than once we had been awakened at dawn by the
howling, screaming, yelping, and chattering of monkeys, toucans,
macaws, parrots, and parakeets. There were, however, from time to
time, queer sounds from the forest, and after nightfall different
kinds of frogs and insects uttered strange cries and calls. In volume
and frequency these seemed to increase until midnight. Then they died
away and before dawn everything was silent.
At this camp the carregadores ants completely devoured the doctor's
undershirt, and ate holes in his mosquito-net; and they also ate the
strap of Lyra's gun-case. The little stingless bees, of many kinds,
swarmed in such multitudes, and were so persevering, that we had to
wear our head-nets when we wrote or skinned specimens.
The following day was almost without rain. It was delightful to drift
and paddle slowly down the beautiful tropical river. Until mid-
afternoon the current was not very fast, and the broad, deep, placid
stream bent and curved in every direction, although the general course
was northwest. The country was flat, and more of the land was under
than above water. Continually we found ourselves travelling between
stretches of marshy forest where for miles the water stood or ran
among the trees. Once we passed a hillock. We saw brilliantly colored
parakeets and trogons. At last the slow current quickened. Faster it
went, and faster, until it began to run like a mill-race, and we heard
the roar of rapids ahead. We pulled to the right bank, moored the
canoes, and while most of the men pitched camp two or three of them
accompanied us to examine the rapids. We had made twenty kilometres.
We soon found that the rapids were a serious obstacle. There were many
curls, and one or two regular falls, perhaps six feet high. It would
have been impossible to run them, and they stretched for nearly a
mile. The carry, however, which led through woods and over rocks in a
nearly straight line, was somewhat shorter. It was not an easy portage
over which to carry heavy loads and drag heavy dugout canoes. At the
point where the descent was steepest there were great naked flats of
friable sandstone and conglomerate. Over parts of these, where there
was a surface of fine sand, there was a growth of coarse grass. Other
parts were bare and had been worn by the weather into fantastic
shapes--one projection looked like an old-fashioned beaver hat upside
down. In this place, where the naked flats of rock showed the
projection of the ledge through which the river had cut its course,
the torrent rushed down a deep, sheer-sided, and extremely narrow
channel. At one point it was less than two yards across, and for quite
a distance not more than five or six yards. Yet only a mile or two
above the rapids the deep, placid river was at least a hundred yards
wide. It seemed extraordinary, almost impossible, that so broad a
river could in so short a space of time contract its dimensions to the
width of the strangled channel through which it now poured its entire
volume.
This has for long been a station where the Nhambiquaras at intervals
built their ephemeral villages and tilled the soil with the rude and
destructive cultivation of savages. There were several abandoned old
fields, where the dense growth of rank fern hid the tangle of burnt
and fallen logs. Nor had the Nhambiquaras been long absent. In one
trail we found what gypsies would have called a "pateran," a couple of
branches arranged crosswise, eight leaves to a branch; it had some
special significance, belonging to that class of signals, each with
some peculiar and often complicated meaning, which are commonly used
by many wild peoples. The Indians had thrown a simple bridge,
consisting of four long poles, without a hand-rail, across one of the
narrowest parts of the rock gorge through which the river foamed in
its rapid descent. This sub-tribe of Indians was called the Navaite;
we named the rapids after them, Navaite Rapids. By observation Lyra
found them to be (in close approximation to) latitude 11 degrees 44
minutes south and longitude 60 degrees 18 minutes west from Greenwich.
We spent March 3 and 4 and the morning of the 5th in portaging around
the rapids. The first night we camped in the forest beside the spot
where we had halted. Next morning we moved the baggage to the foot of
the rapids, where we intended to launch the canoes, and pitched our
tents on the open sandstone flat. It rained heavily. The little bees
were in such swarms as to be a nuisance. Many small stinging bees were
with them, which stung badly. We were bitten by huge horse-flies, the
size of bumblebees. More serious annoyance was caused by the pium and
boroshuda flies during the hours of daylight, and by the polvora, the
sand-flies, after dark. There were a few mosquitoes. The boroshudas
were the worst pests; they brought the blood at once, and left marks
that lasted for weeks. I did my writing in head-net and gauntlets.
Fortunately we had with us several bottles of "fly dope"--so named on
the label--put up, with the rest of our medicine, by Doctor Alexander
Lambert; he had tested it in the north woods and found it excellent. I
had never before been forced to use such an ointment, and had been
reluctant to take it with me; but now I was glad enough to have it,
and we all of us found it exceedingly useful. I would never again go
into mosquito or sand-fly country without it. The effect of an
application wears off after half an hour or so, and under many
conditions, as when one is perspiring freely, it is of no use; but
there are times when minute mosquitoes and gnats get through head-nets
and under mosquito-bars, and when the ointments occasionally renewed
may permit one to get sleep or rest which would otherwise be
impossible of attainment. The termites got into our tent on the sand-
flat, ate holes in Cherrie's mosquito-net and poncho, and were
starting to work at our duffel-bags, when we discovered them.
Packing the loads across was simple. Dragging the heavy dugouts was
labor. The biggest of the two water-logged ones was the heaviest. Lyra
and Kermit did the job. All the men were employed at it except the
cook, and one man who was down with fever. A road was chopped through
the forest and a couple of hundred stout six-foot poles, or small
logs, were cut as rollers and placed about two yards apart. With block
and tackle the seven dugouts were hoisted out of the river up the
steep banks, and up the rise of ground until the level was reached.
Then the men harnessed themselves two by two on the drag-rope, while
one of their number pried behind with a lever, and the canoe, bumping
and sliding, was twitched through the woods. Over the sandstone flats
there were some ugly ledges, but on the whole the course was down-hill
and relatively easy. Looking at the way the work was done, at the
good-will, the endurance, and the bull-like strength of the camaradas,
and at the intelligence and the unwearied efforts of their commanders,
one could but wonder at the ignorance of those who do not realize the
energy and the power that are so often possessed by, and that may be
so readily developed in, the men of the tropics. Another subject of
perpetual wonder is the attitude of certain men who stay at home, and
still more the attitude of certain men who travel under easy
conditions, and who belittle the achievements of the real explorers
of, the real adventures in, the great wilderness. The impostors and
romancers among explorers or would-be explorers and wilderness
wanderers have been unusually prominent in connection with South
America (although the conspicuous ones are not South Americans, by the
way); and these are fit subjects for condemnation and derision. But
the work of the genuine explorer and wilderness wanderer is fraught
with fatigue, hardship, and danger. Many of the men of little
knowledge talk glibly of portaging as if it were simple and easy. A
portage over rough and unknown ground is always a work of difficulty
and of some risk to the canoe; and in the untrodden, or even in the
unfrequented, wilderness risk to the canoe is a serious matter. This
particular portage at Navaite Rapids was far from being unusually
difficult; yet it not only cost two and a half days of severe and
incessant labor, but it cost something in damage to the canoes. One in
particular, the one in which I had been journeying, was split in a
manner which caused us serious uneasiness as to how long, even after
being patched, it would last. Where the canoes were launched, the bank
was sheer, and one of the water-logged canoes filled and went to the
bottom; and there was more work in raising it.
We were still wholly unable to tell where we were going or what lay
ahead of us. Round the camp-fire, after supper, we held endless
discussions and hazarded all kinds of guesses on both subjects. The
river might bend sharply to the west and enter the Gy-Parana high up
or low down, or go north to the Madeira, or bend eastward and enter
the Tapajos, or fall into the Canuma and finally through one of its
mouths enter the Amazon direct. Lyra inclined to the first, and
Colonel Rondon to the second, of these propositions. We did not know
whether we had one hundred or eight hundred kilometres to go, whether
the stream would be fairly smooth or whether we would encounter
waterfalls, or rapids, or even some big marsh or lake. We could not
tell whether or not we would meet hostile Indians, although no one of
us ever went ten yards from camp without his rifle. We had no idea how
much time the trip would take. We had entered a land of unknown
possibilities.
We started down-stream again early in the afternoon of March 5. Our
hands and faces were swollen from the bites and stings of the insect
pests at the sand-flat camp, and it was a pleasure once more to be in
the middle of the river, where they did not come, in any numbers,
while we were in motion. The current was swift, but the river was so
deep that there were no serious obstructions. Twice we went down over
slight riffles, which in the dry season were doubtless rapids; and
once we struck a spot where many whirlpools marked the presence
underneath of boulders which would have been above water had not the
river been so swollen by the rains. The distance we covered in a day
going down-stream would have taken us a week if we had been going up.
The course wound hither and thither, sometimes in sigmoid curves; but
the general direction was east of north. As usual, it was very
beautiful; and we never could tell what might appear around any curve.
In the forest that rose on either hand were tall rubber-trees. The
surveying canoes, as usual, went first, while I shepherded the two
pairs of lashed cargo canoes. I kept them always between me and the
surveying canoes--ahead of me until I passed the surveying canoes,
then behind me until, after an hour or so, I had chosen a place to
camp. There was so much overflowed ground that it took us some little
time this afternoon before we found a flat place high enough to be
dry. Just before reaching camp Cherrie shot a jacu, a handsome bird
somewhat akin to, but much smaller than, a turkey; after Cherrie had
taken its skin, its body made an excellent canja. We saw parties of
monkeys; and the false bellbirds uttered their ringing whistles in
the dense timber around our tents. The giant ants, an inch and a
quarter long, were rather too plentiful around this camp; one stung
Kermit; it was almost like the sting of a small scorpion, and pained
severely for a couple of hours. This half-day we made twelve
kilometres.
On the following day we made nineteen kilometres, the river twisting
in every direction, but in its general course running a little west of
north. Once we stopped at a bee-tree, to get honey. The tree was a
towering giant, of the kind called milk-tree, because a thick milky
juice runs freely from any cut. Our camaradas eagerly drank the white
fluid that flowed from the wounds made by their axes. I tried it. The
taste was not unpleasant, but it left a sticky feeling in the mouth.
The helmsman of my boat, Luiz, a powerful negro, chopped into the
tree, balancing himself with springy ease on a slight scaffolding. The
honey was in a hollow, and had been made by medium-sized stingless
bees. At the mouth of the hollow they had built a curious entrance of
their own, in the shape of a spout of wax about a foot long. At the
opening the walls of the spout showed the wax formation, but elsewhere
it had become in color and texture indistinguishable from the bark of
the tree. The honey was delicious, sweet and yet with a tart flavor.
The comb differed much from that of our honey-bees. The honey-cells
were very large, and the brood-cells, which were small, were in a
single instead of a double row. By this tree I came across an example
of genuine concealing coloration. A huge tree-toad, the size of a
bullfrog, was seated upright--not squatted flat--on a big rotten limb.
It was absolutely motionless; the yellow brown of its back, and its
dark sides, exactly harmonized in color with the light and dark
patches on the log; the color was as concealing, here in its natural
surroundings, as is the color of our common wood-frog among the dead
leaves of our woods. When I stirred it up it jumped to a small twig,
catching hold with the disks of its finger-tips, and balancing itself
with unexpected ease for so big a creature, and then hopped to the
ground and again stood motionless. Evidently it trusted for safety to
escaping observation. We saw some monkeys and fresh tapir sign, and
Kermit shot a jacu for the pot.
At about three o'clock I was in the lead, when the current began to
run more quickly. We passed over one or two decided ripples, and then
heard the roar of rapids ahead, while the stream began to race. We
drove the canoe into the bank, and then went down a tapir trail, which
led alongside the river, to reconnoiter. A quarter of a mile's walk
showed us that there were big rapids, down which the canoes could not
go; and we returned to the landing. All the canoes had gathered there,
and Rondon, Lyra, and Kermit started down-stream to explore. They
returned in an hour, with the information that the rapids continued
for a long distance, with falls and steep pitches of broken water, and
that the portage would take several days. We made camp just above the
rapids. Ants swarmed, and some of them bit savagely. Our men, in
clearing away the forest for our tents, left several very tall and
slender accashy palms; the bole of this palm is as straight as an
arrow and is crowned with delicate, gracefully curved fronds. We had
come along the course of the river almost exactly a hundred
kilometres; it had twisted so that we were only about fifty-five
kilometres north of our starting-point. The rock was porphyritic.
The 7th, 8th, and 9th we spent in carrying the loads and dragging and
floating the dugouts past the series of rapids at whose head we had
stopped.
The first day we shifted camp a kilometre and a half to the foot of
this series of rapids. This was a charming and picturesque camp. It
was at the edge of the river, where there was a little, shallow bay
with a beach of firm sand. In the water, at the middle point of the
beach, stood a group of three burity palms, their great trunks rising
like columns. Round the clearing in which our tents stood were several
very big trees; two of them were rubber-trees. Kermit went down-stream
five or six kilometres, and returned, having shot a jacu and found
that at the point which he had reached there was another rapids,
almost a fall, which would necessitate our again dragging the canoes
over a portage. Antonio, the Parecis, shot a big monkey; of this I was
glad because portaging is hard work, and the men appreciated the
meat. So far Cherrie had collected sixty birds on the Duvida, all of
them new to the collection, and some probably new to science. We saw
the fresh sign of paca, agouti, and the small peccary, and Kermit with
the dogs roused a tapir, which crossed the river right through the
rapids; but no one got a shot at it.
Except at one or perhaps two points a very big dugout, lightly loaded,
could probably run all these rapids. But even in such a canoe it would
be silly to make the attempt on an exploring expedition, where the
loss of a canoe or of its contents means disaster; and moreover such a
canoe could not be taken, for it would be impossible to drag it over
the portages on the occasions when the portages became inevitable. Our
canoes would not have lived half a minute in the wild water.
On the second day the canoes and loads were brought down to the foot
of the first rapids. Lyra cleared the path and laid the logs for
rollers, while Kermit dragged the dugouts up the bank from the water
with block and tackle, with strain of rope and muscle. Then they
joined forces, as over the uneven ground it needed the united strength
of all their men to get the heavy dugouts along. Meanwhile the colonel
with one attendant measured the distance, and then went on a long
hunt, but saw no game. I strolled down beside the river for a couple
of miles, but also saw nothing. In the dense tropical forest of the
Amazonian basin hunting is very difficult, especially for men who are
trying to pass through the country as rapidly as possible. On such a
trip as ours getting game is largely a matter of chance.
On the following day Lyra and Kermit brought down the canoes and
loads, with hard labor, to the little beach by the three palms where
our tents were pitched. Many pacovas grew round about. The men used
their immense leaves, some of which were twelve feet long and two and
a half feet broad, to roof the flimsy shelters under which they hung
their hammocks. I went into the woods, but in the tangle of vegetation
it would have been a mere hazard had I seen any big animal. Generally
the woods were silent and empty. Now and then little troops of birds
of many kinds passed--wood-hewers, ant-thrushes, tanagers,
flycatchers; as in the spring and fall similar troops of warblers,
chickadees, and nuthatches pass through our northern woods. On the
rocks and on the great trees by the river grew beautiful white and
lilac orchids, the sobralia, of sweet and delicate fragrance. For the
moment my own books seemed a trifle heavy, and perhaps I would have
found the day tedious if Kermit had not lent me the Oxford Book of
French Verse. Eustache Deschamp, Joachim du Bellay, Ronsard, the
delightful La Fontaine, the delightful but appalling Villon, Victor
Hugo's "Guitare," Madame Desbordes-Valmore's lines on the little girl
and her pillow, as dear little verses about a child as ever were
written--these and many others comforted me much, as I read them in
head-net and gauntlets, sitting on a log by an unknown river in the
Amazonian forest.
On the 10th we again embarked and made a kilometre and a half,
spending most of the time in getting past two more rapids. Near the
first of these we saw a small cayman, a jacare-tinga. At each set of
rapids the canoes were unloaded and the loads borne past on the
shoulders of the camaradas; three of the canoes were paddled down by a
couple of naked paddlers apiece; and the two sets of double canoes
were let down by ropes, one of one couple being swamped but rescued
and brought safely to shore on each occasion. One of the men was upset
while working in the swift water, and his face was cut against the
stones. Lyra and Kermit did the actual work with the camaradas.
Kermit, dressed substantially like the camaradas themselves, worked in
the water, and, as the overhanging branches were thronged with crowds
of biting and stinging ants, he was marked and blistered over his
whole body. Indeed, we all suffered more or less from these ants;
while the swarms of biting flies grew constantly more numerous. The
termites ate holes in my helmet and also in the cover of my cot. Every
one else had a hammock. At this camp we had come down the river about
102 kilometres, according to the surveying records, and in height had
descended nearly 100 metres, as shown by the aneroid--although the
figure in this case is only an approximation, as an aneroid cannot be
depended on for absolute accuracy of results.
Next morning we found that during the night we had met with a serious
misfortune. We had halted at the foot of the rapids. The canoes were
moored to trees on the bank, at the tail of the broken water. The two
old canoes, although one of them was our biggest cargo-carrier, were
water-logged and heavy, and one of them was leaking. In the night the
river rose. The leaky canoe, which at best was too low in the water,
must have gradually filled from the wash of the waves. It sank,
dragging down the other; they began to roll, bursting their moorings;
and in the morning they had disappeared. A canoe was launched to look
for them; but, rolling over the boulders on the rocky bottom, they had
at once been riven asunder, and the big fragments that were soon
found, floating in eddies, or along the shore, showed that it was
useless to look farther. We called these rapids Broken Canoe Rapids.
It was not pleasant to have to stop for some days; thanks to the
rapids, we had made slow progress, and with our necessarily limited
supply of food, and no knowledge whatever of what was ahead of us, it
was important to make good time. But there was no alternative. We had
to build either one big canoe or two small ones. It was raining
heavily as the men started to explore in different directions for good
canoe trees. Three--which ultimately proved not very good for the
purpose--were found close to camp; splendid-looking trees, one of them
five feet in diameter three feet from the ground. The axemen
immediately attacked this one under the superintendence of Colonel
Rondon. Lyra and Kermit started in opposite directions to hunt. Lyra
killed a jacu for us, and Kermit killed two monkeys for the men.
Toward night fall it cleared. The moon was nearly full, and the
foaming river gleamed like silver.
Our men were "regional volunteers," that is, they had enlisted in the
service of the Telegraphic Commission especially to do this wilderness
work, and were highly paid, as was fitting, in view of the toil,
hardship, and hazard to life and health. Two of them had been with
Colonel Rondon during his eight months' exploration in 1909, at which
time his men were regulars, from his own battalion of engineers. His
four aides during the closing months of this trip were Lieutenants
Lyra, Amarante, Alencarliense, and Pyrineus. The naturalist Miranda
Ribeiro also accompanied him. This was the year when, marching on foot
through an absolutely unknown wilderness, the colonel and his party
finally reached the Gy-Parana, which on the maps was then (and on most
maps is now) placed in an utterly wrong course, and over a degree out
of its real position. When they reached the affluents of the Gy-Parana
a third of the members of the party were so weak with fever that they
could hardly crawl. They had no baggage. Their clothes were in
tatters, and some of the men were almost naked. For months they had
had no food except what little game they shot, and especially the wild
fruits and nuts; if it had not been for the great abundance of the
Brazil-nuts they would all have died. At the first big stream they
encountered they built a canoe, and Alencarliense took command of it
and descended to map the course of the river. With him went Ribeiro,
the doctor Tanageira, who could no longer walk on account of the
ulceration of one foot, three men whom the fever had rendered unable
longer to walk, and six men who were as yet well enough to handle the
canoe. By the time the remainder of the party came to the next
navigable river eleven more fever-stricken men had nearly reached the
end of their tether. Here they ran across a poor devil who had for
four months been lost in the forest and was dying of slow starvation.
He had eaten nothing but Brazil-nuts and the grubs of insects. He
could no longer walk, but could sit erect and totter feebly for a few
feet. Another canoe was built, and in it Pyrineus started down-stream
with the eleven fever patients and the starving wanderer. Colonel
Rondon kept up the morale of his men by still carrying out the forms
of military discipline. The ragged bugler had his bugle. Lieutenant
Pyrineus had lost every particle of his clothing except a hat and a
pair of drawers. The half-naked lieutenant drew up his eleven fever
patients in line; the bugle sounded; every one came to attention; and
the haggard colonel read out the orders of the day. Then the dugout
with its load of sick men started down-stream, and Rondon, Lyra,
Amarante, and the twelve remaining men resumed their weary march. When
a fortnight later they finally struck a camp of rubber-gatherers three
of the men were literally and entirely naked. Meanwhile Amilcar had
ascended the Jacyparana a month or two previously with provisions to
meet them; for at that time the maps incorrectly treated this river as
larger, instead of smaller, than the Gy-Parana, which they were in
fact descending; and Colonel Rondon had supposed that they were going
down the former stream. Amilcar returned after himself suffering much
hardship and danger. The different parties finally met at the mouth of
the Gy-Parana, where it enters the Madeira. The lost man whom they had
found seemed on the road to recovery, and they left him at a ranch, on
the Madeira, where he could be cared for; yet after they had left him
they heard that he had died.
On the 12th the men were still hard at work hollowing out the hard
wood of the big tree, with axe and adze, while watch and ward were
kept over them to see that the idlers did not shirk at the expense of
the industrious. Kermit and Lyra again hunted; the former shot a
curassow, which was welcome, as we were endeavoring in all ways to
economize our food supply. We were using the tops of palms also. I
spent the day hunting in the woods, for the most part by the river,
but saw nothing. In the season of the rains game is away from the
river and fish are scarce and turtles absent. Yet it was pleasant to
be in the great silent forest. Here and there grew immense trees, and
on some of them mighty buttresses sprang from the base. The lianas and
vines were of every size and shape. Some were twisted and some were
not. Some came down straight and slender from branches a hundred feet
above. Others curved like long serpents around the trunks. Others were
like knotted cables. In the shadow there was little noise. The wind
rarely moved the hot, humid air. There were few flowers or birds.
Insects were altogether too abundant, and even when travelling slowly
it was impossible always to avoid them--not to speak of our constant
companions the bees, mosquitoes, and especially the boroshudas or
bloodsucking flies. Now while bursting through a tangle I disturbed a
nest of wasps, whose resentment was active; now I heedlessly stepped
among the outliers of a small party of the carnivorous foraging ants;
now, grasping a branch as I stumbled, I shook down a shower of fire-
ants; and among all these my attention was particularly arrested by
the bite of one of the giant ants, which stung like a hornet, so that
I felt it for three hours. The camarades generally went barefoot or
only wore sandals; and their ankles and feet were swollen and inflamed
from the bites of the boroshudas and ants, some being actually
incapacitated from work. All of us suffered more or less, our faces
and hands swelling slightly from the boroshuda bites; and in spite of
our clothes we were bitten all over our bodies, chiefly by ants and
the small forest ticks. Because of the rain and the heat our clothes
were usually wet when we took them off at night, and just as wet when
we put them on again in the morning.
All day on the 13th the men worked at the canoe, making good progress.
In rolling and shifting the huge, heavy tree-trunk every one had to
assist now and then. The work continued until ten in the evening, as
the weather was clear. After nightfall some of the men held candles
and the others plied axe or adze, standing within or beside the great,
half-hollowed logs, while the flicker of the lights showed the tropic
forest rising in the darkness round about. The night air was hot and
still and heavy with moisture. The men were stripped to the waist.
Olive and copper and ebony, their skins glistened as if oiled, and
rippled with the ceaseless play of the thews beneath.
On the morning of the 14th the work was resumed in a torrential tropic
downpour. The canoe was finished, dragged down to the water, and
launched soon after midday, and another hour or so saw us under way.
The descent was marked, and the swollen river raced along. Several
times we passed great whirlpools, sometimes shifting, sometimes
steady. Half a dozen times we ran over rapids, and, although they were
not high enough to have been obstacles to loaded Canadian canoes, two
of them were serious to us. Our heavily laden, clumsy dugouts were
sunk to within three or four inches of the surface of the river, and,
although they were buoyed on each side with bundles of burity-palm
branch-stems, they shipped a great deal of water in the rapids. The
two biggest rapids we only just made, and after each we had hastily to
push ashore in order to bail. In one set of big ripples or waves my
canoe was nearly swamped. In a wilderness, where what is ahead is
absolutely unknown, alike in terms of time, space, and method--for we
had no idea where we would come out, how we would get out, or when we
would get out--it is of vital consequence not to lose one's outfit,
especially the provisions; and yet it is of only less consequence to
go as rapidly as possible lest all the provisions be exhausted and the
final stages of the expedition be accomplished by men weakened from
semi-starvation, and therefore ripe for disaster. On this occasion, of
the two hazards, we felt it necessary to risk running the rapids; for
our progress had been so very slow that unless we made up the time, it
was probable that we would be short of food before we got where we
could expect to procure any more except what little the country in the
time of the rains and floods, might yield. We ran until after five, so
that the work of pitching camp was finished in the dark. We had made
nearly sixteen kilometres in a direction slightly east of north. This
evening the air was fresh and cool.
The following morning, the 15th of March, we started in good season.
For six kilometres we drifted and paddled down the swift river without
incident. At times we saw lofty Brazil-nut trees rising above the rest
of the forest on the banks; and back from the river these trees grow
to enormous proportions, towering like giants. There were great
rubber-trees also, their leaves always in sets of threes. Then the
ground on either hand rose into boulder-strewn, forest-clad hills and
the roar of broken water announced that once more our course was
checked by dangerous rapids. Round a bend we came on them; a wide
descent of white water, with an island in the middle, at the upper
edge. Here grave misfortune befell us, and graver misfortune was
narrowly escaped.
Kermit, as usual, was leading in his canoe. It was the smallest and
least seaworthy of all. He had in it little except a week's supply of
our boxed provisions and a few tools; fortunately none of the food for
the camaradas. His dog Trigueiro was with him. Besides himself, the
crew consisted of two men: Joao, the helmsman, or pilot, as he is
called in Brazil, and Simplicio, the bowsman. Both were negroes and
exceptionally good men in every way. Kermit halted his canoe on the
left bank, above the rapids, and waited for the colonel's canoe. Then
the colonel and Lyra walked down the bank to see what was ahead.
Kermit took his canoe across to the island to see whether the descent
could be better accomplished on the other side. Having made his
investigation, he ordered the men to return to the bank he had left,
and the dugout was headed up-stream accordingly. Before they had gone
a dozen yards, the paddlers digging their paddles with all their
strength into the swift current, one of the shifting whirlpools of
which I have spoken came down-stream, whirled them around, and swept
them so close to the rapids that no human power could avoid going over
them. As they were drifting into them broadside on, Kermit yelled to
the steersman to turn her head, so as to take them in the only way
that offered any chance whatever of safety. The water came aboard,
wave after wave, as they raced down. They reached the bottom with the
canoe upright, but so full as barely to float, and the paddlers urged
her toward the shore. They had nearly reached the bank when another
whirlpool or whirling eddy tore them away and hurried them back to
midstream, where the dugout filled and turned over. Joao, seizing the
rope, started to swim ashore; the rope was pulled from his hand, but
he reached the bank. Poor Simplicio must have been pulled under at
once and his life beaten out on the boulders beneath the racing
torrent. He never rose again, nor did we ever recover his body. Kermit
clutched his rifle, his favorite 405 Winchester with which he had done
most of his hunting both in Africa and America, and climbed on the
bottom of the upset boat. In a minute he was swept into the second
series of rapids, and whirled away from the rolling boat, losing his
rifle. The water beat his helmet down over his head and face and drove
him beneath the surface; and when he rose at last he was almost
drowned, his breath and strength almost spent. He was in swift but
quiet water, and swam toward an overhanging branch. His jacket
hindered him, but he knew he was too nearly gone to be able to get it
off, and, thinking with the curious calm one feels when death is but a
moment away, he realized that the utmost his failing strength could do
was to reach the branch. He reached, and clutched it, and then almost
lacked strength to haul himself out on the land. Good Trigueiro had
faithfully swum alongside him through the rapids, and now himself
scrambled ashore. It was a very narrow escape. Kermit was a great
comfort and help to me on the trip; but the fear of some fatal
accident befalling him was always a nightmare to me. He was to be
married as soon as the trip was over; and it did not seem to me that I
could bear to bring bad tidings to his betrothed and to his mother.
Simplicio was unmarried. Later we sent to his mother all the money
that would have been his had he lived. The following morning we put on
one side of the post erected to mark our camping-spot the following
inscription, in Portuguese:
"IN THESE RAPIDS DIED POOR SIMPLICIO."
On an expedition such as ours death is one of the accidents that may
at any time occur, and narrow escapes from death are too common to be
felt as they would be felt elsewhere. One mourns sincerely, but
mourning cannot interfere with labor. We immediately proceeded with
the work of the portage. From the head to the tail of this series of
rapids the distance was about six hundred yards. A path was cut along
the bank, over which the loads were brought. The empty canoes ran the
rapids without mishap, each with two skilled paddlers. One of the
canoes almost ran into a swimming tapir at the head of the rapids; it
went down the rapids, and then climbed out of the river. Kermit
accompanied by Joao, went three or four miles down the river, looking
for the body of Simplicio and for the sunk canoe. He found neither.
But he found a box of provisions and a paddle, and salvaged both by
swimming into midstream after them. He also found that a couple of
kilometres below there was another stretch of rapids, and following
them on the left-hand bank to the foot he found that they were worse
than the ones we had just passed, and impassable for canoes on this
left-hand side.
We camped at the foot of the rapids we had just passed. There were
many small birds here, but it was extremely difficult to see or shoot
them in the lofty tree tops, and to find them in the tangle beneath if
they were shot. However, Cherrie got four species new to the
collection. One was a tiny hummer, one of the species known as
woodstars, with dainty but not brilliant plumage; its kind is never
found except in the deep, dark woods, not coming out into the
sunshine. Its crop was filled with ants; when shot it was feeding at a
cluster of long red flowers. He also got a very handsome trogon and an
exquisite little tanager, as brilliant as a cluster of jewels; its
throat was lilac, its breast turquoise, its crown and forehead topaz,
while above it was glossy purple-black, the lower part of the back
ruby-red. This tanager was a female; I can hardly imagine that the
male is more brilliantly colored. The fourth bird was a queer hawk of
the genus ibycter, black, with a white belly, naked red cheeks and
throat and red legs and feet. Its crop was filled with the seeds of
fruits and a few insect remains; an extraordinary diet for a hawk.
The morning of the 16th was dark and gloomy. Through sheets of
blinding rain we left our camp of misfortune for another camp where
misfortune also awaited us. Less than half an hour took our dugouts to
the head of the rapids below. As Kermit had already explored the left-
hand side, Colonel Rondon and Lyra went down the right-hand side and
found a channel which led round the worst part, so that they deemed it
possible to let down the canoes by ropes from the bank. The distance
to the foot of the rapids was about a kilometre. While the loads were
being brought down the left bank, Luiz and Antonio Correa, our two
best watermen, started to take a canoe down the right side, and
Colonel Rondon walked ahead to see anything he could about the river.
He was accompanied by one of our three dogs, Lobo. After walking about
a kilometre he heard ahead a kind of howling noise, which he thought
was made by spider-monkeys. He walked in the direction of the sound
and Lobo ran ahead. In a minute he heard Lobo yell with pain, and
then, still yelping, come toward him, while the creature that was
howling also approached, evidently in pursuit. In a moment a second
yell from Lobo, followed by silence, announced that he was dead; and
the sound of the howling when near convinced Rondon that the dog had
been killed by an Indian, doubtless with two arrows. Probably the
Indian was howling to lure the spider-monkeys toward him. Rondon fired
his rifle in the air, to warn off the Indian or Indians, who in all
probability had never seen a civilized man, and certainly could not
imagine that one was in the neighborhood. He then returned to the foot
of the rapids, where the portage was still going on, and, in company
with Lyra, Kermit, and Antonio Parecis, the Indian, walked back to
where Lobo's body lay. Sure enough he found him, slain by two arrows.
One arrow-head was in him, and near by was a strange stick used in the
very primitive method of fishing of all these Indians. Antonio
recognized its purpose. The Indians, who were apparently two or three
in number, had fled. Some beads and trinkets were left on the spot to
show that we were not angry and were friendly.
Meanwhile Cherrie stayed at the head and I at the foot of the portage
as guards. Luiz and Antonio Correa brought down one canoe safely. The
next was the new canoe, which was very large and heavy, being made of
wood that would not float. In the rapids the rope broke, and the canoe
was lost, Luiz being nearly drowned.
It was a very bad thing to lose the canoe, but it was even worse to
lose the rope and pulleys. This meant that it would be physically
impossible to hoist big canoes up even small hills or rocky hillocks,
such as had been so frequent beside the many rapids we had
encountered. It was not wise to spend the four days necessary to build
new canoes where we were, in danger of attack from the Indians.
Moreover, new rapids might be very near, in which case the new canoes
would hamper us. Yet the four remaining canoes would not carry all the
loads and all the men, no matter how we cut the loads down; and we
intended to cut everything down at once. We had been gone eighteen
days. We had used over a third of our food. We had gone only 125
kilometres, and it was probable that we had at least five times,
perhaps six or seven times, this distance still to go. We had taken a
fortnight to descend rapids amounting in the aggregate to less than
seventy yards of fall; a very few yards of fall makes a dangerous
rapid when the river is swollen and swift and there are obstructions.
We had only one aneroid to determine our altitude, and therefore could
make merely a loose approximation to it, but we probably had between
two and three times this descent in the aggregate of rapids ahead of
us. So far the country had offered little in the way of food except
palm-tops. We had lost four canoes and one man. We were in the country
of wild Indians, who shot well with their bows. It behooved us to go
warily, but also to make all speed possible, if we were to avoid
serious trouble.
The best plan seemed to be to march thirteen men down along the bank,
while the remaining canoes, lashed two and two, floated down beside
them. If after two or three days we found no bad rapids, and there
seemed a reasonable chance of going some distance at decent speed, we
could then build the new canoes--preferably two small ones, this time,
instead of one big one. We left all the baggage we could. We were
already down as far as comfort would permit; but we now struck off
much of the comfort. Cherrie, Kermit, and I had been sleeping under a
very light fly; and there was another small light tent for one person,
kept for possible emergencies. The last was given to me for my cot,
and all five of the others swung their hammocks under the big fly.
This meant that we left two big and heavy tents behind. A box of
surveying instruments was also abandoned. Each of us got his personal
belongings down to one box or duffel-bag--although there was only a
small diminution thus made; because we had so little that the only way
to make a serious diminution was to restrict ourselves to the clothes
on our backs.
The biting flies and ants were to us a source of discomfort and at
times of what could fairly be called torment. But to the camaradas,
most of whom went barefoot or only wore sandals--and they never did or
would wear shoes--the effect was more serious. They wrapped their legs
and feet in pieces of canvas or hide; and the feet of three of them
became so swollen that they were crippled and could not walk any
distance. The doctor, whose courage and cheerfulness never flagged,
took excellent care of them. Thanks to him, there had been among them
hitherto but one or two slight cases of fever. He administered to each
man daily a half-gram--nearly eight grains--of quinine, and every
third or fourth day a double dose.
The following morning Colonel Rondon, Lyra, Kermit, Cherrie, and nine
of the camaradas started in single file down the bank, while the
doctor and I went in the two double canoes, with six camaradas, three
of them the invalids with swollen feet. We halted continually, as we
went about three times as fast as the walkers; and we traced the
course of the river. After forty minutes' actual going in the boats we
came to some rapids; the unloaded canoes ran them without difficulty,
while the loads were portaged. In an hour and a half we were again
under way, but in ten minutes came to other rapids, where the river
ran among islands, and there were several big curls. The clumsy,
heavily laden dugouts, lashed in couples, were unwieldy and hard to
handle. The rapids came just round a sharp bend, and we got caught in
the upper part of the swift water and had to run the first set of
rapids in consequence. We in the leading pair of dugouts were within
an ace of coming to grief on some big boulders against which we were
swept by a cross current at the turn. All of us paddling hard--
scraping and bumping--we got through by the skin of our teeth, and
managed to make the bank and moor our dugouts. It was a narrow escape
from grave disaster. The second pair of lashed dugouts profited by our
experience, and made the run--with risk, but with less risk--and
moored beside us. Then all the loads were taken out, and the empty
canoes were run down through the least dangerous channels among the
islands.
This was a long portage, and we camped at the foot of the rapids,
having made nearly seven kilometres. Here a little river, a rapid
stream of volume equal to the Duvida at the point where we first
embarked, joined from the west. Colonel Rondon and Kermit came to it
first, and the former named it Rio Kermit. There was in it a waterfall
about six or eight feet high, just above the junction. Here we found
plenty of fish. Lyra caught two pacu, good-sized, deep-bodied fish.
They were delicious eating. Antonio the Parecis said that these fish
never came up heavy rapids in which there were falls they had to jump.
We could only hope that he was correct, as in that case the rapids we
would encounter in the future would rarely be so serious as to
necessitate our dragging the heavy dugouts overland. Passing the
rapids we had hitherto encountered had meant severe labor and some
danger. But the event showed that he was mistaken. The worst rapids
were ahead of us.
While our course as a whole had been almost due north, and sometimes
east of north, yet where there were rapids the river had generally,
although not always, turned westward. This seemed to indicate that to
the east of us there was a low northward projection of the central
plateau across which we had travelled on mule-back. This is the kind
of projection that appears on the maps of this region as a sierra.
Probably it sent low spurs to the west, and the farthest points of
these spurs now and then caused rapids in our course (for the rapids
generally came where there were hills) and for the moment deflected
the river westward from its general downhill trend to the north. There
was no longer any question that the Duvida was a big river, a river of
real importance. It was not a minor affluent of some other affluent.
But we were still wholly in the dark as to where it came out. It was
still possible, although exceedingly improbable, that it entered the
Gy-Parana, as another river of substantially the same size, near its
mouth. It was much more likely, but not probable, that it entered the
Tapajos. It was probable, although far from certain, that it entered
the Madeira low down, near its point of junction with the Amazon. In
this event it was likely, although again far from certain, that its
mouth would prove to be the Aripuanan. The Aripuanan does not appear
on the maps as a river of any size; on a good standard map of South
America which I had with me its name does not appear at all, although
a dotted indication of a small river or creek at about the right place
probably represents it. Nevertheless, from the report of one of his
lieutenants who had examined its mouth, and from the stories of the
rubber-gatherers, or seringueiros, Colonel Rondon had come to the
conclusion that this was the largest affluent of the Madeira, with
such a body of water that it must have a big drainage basin. He
thought that the Duvida was probably one of its head streams--although
every existing map represented the lay of the land to be such as to
render impossible the existence of such a river system and drainage
basin. The rubber-gatherers reported that they had gone many days'
journey up the river, to a point where there was a series of heavy
rapids with above them the junction point of two large rivers, one
entering from the west. Beyond this they had difficulties because of
the hostility of the Indians; and where the junction point was no one
could say. On the chance Colonel Rondon had directed one of his
subordinate officers, Lieutenant Pyrineus, to try to meet us, with
boats and provisions, by ascending the Aripuanan to the point of entry
of its first big affluent. This was the course followed when Amilcar
had been directed to try to meet the explorers who in 1909 came down
the Gy-Parana. At that time the effort was a failure, and the two
parties never met; but we might have better luck, and in any event the
chance was worth taking.
On the morning following our camping by the mouth of the Rio Kermit,
Colonel Rondon took a good deal of pains in getting a big post set up
at the entry of the smaller river into the Duvida. Then he summoned
me, and all the others, to attend the ceremony of its erection. We
found the camaradas drawn up in line, and the colonel preparing to
read aloud "the orders of the day." To the post was nailed a board
with "Rio Kermit" on it; and the colonel read the orders reciting that
by the direction of the Brazilian Government, and inasmuch as the
unknown river was evidently a great river, he formally christened it
the Rio Roosevelt. This was a complete surprise to me. Both Lauro
Miller and Colonel Rondon had spoken to me on the subject, and I had
urged, and Kermit had urged, as strongly as possible, that the name be
kept as Rio da Duvida. We felt that the "River of Doubt" was an
unusually good name; and it is always well to keep a name of this
character. But my kind friends insisted otherwise, and it would have
been churlish of me to object longer. I was much touched by their
action, and by the ceremony itself. At the conclusion of the reading
Colonel Rondon led in cheers for the United States and then for me and
for Kermit; and the camaradas cheered with a will. I proposed three
cheers for Brazil and then for Colonel Rondon, and Lyra, and the
doctor, and then for all the camaradas. Then Lyra said that everybody
had been cheered except Cherrie; and so we all gave three cheers for
Cherrie, and the meeting broke up in high good humor.
Immediately afterward the walkers set off on their march downstream,
looking for good canoe trees. In a quarter of an hour we followed with
the canoes. As often as we overtook them we halted until they had
again gone a good distance ahead. They soon found fresh Indian sign,
and actually heard the Indians; but the latter fled in panic. They
came on a little Indian fishing village, just abandoned. The three
low, oblong huts, of palm leaves, had each an entrance for a man on
all fours, but no other opening. They were dark inside, doubtless as a
protection against the swarms of biting flies. On a pole in this
village an axe, a knife, and some strings of red beads were left, with
the hope that the Indians would return, find the gifts, and realize
that we were friendly. We saw further Indian sign on both sides of the
river.
After about two hours and a half we came on a little river entering
from the east. It was broad but shallow, and at the point of entrance
rushed down, green and white, over a sharply inclined sheet of rock.
It was a lovely sight and we halted to admire it. Then on we went,
until, when we had covered about eight kilometres, we came on a
stretch of rapids. The canoes ran them with about a third of the
loads, the other loads being carried on the men's shoulders. At the
foot of the rapids we camped, as there were several good canoe trees
near, and we had decided to build two rather small canoes. After dark
the stars came out; but in the deep forest the glory of the stars in
the night of the sky, the serene radiance of the moon, the splendor of
sunrise and sunset, are never seen as they are seen on the vast open
plains.
The following day, the 19th, the men began work on the canoes. The
ill-fated big canoe had been made of wood so hard that it was
difficult to work, and so heavy that the chips sank like lead in the
water. But these trees were araputangas, with wood which was easier to
work, and which floated. Great buttresses, or flanges, jutted out from
their trunks at the base, and they bore big hard nuts or fruits which
stood erect at the ends of the branches. The first tree felled proved
rotten, and moreover it was chopped so that it smashed a number of
lesser trees into the kitchen, overthrowing everything, but not
inflicting serious damage. Hardworking, willing, and tough though the
camaradas were, they naturally did not have the skill of northern
lumberjacks.
We hoped to finish the two canoes in three days. A space was cleared
in the forest for our tents. Among the taller trees grew huge-leafed
pacovas, or wild bananas. We bathed and swam in the river, although in
it we caught piranhas. Carregadores ants swarmed all around our camp.
As many of the nearest of their holes as we could we stopped with
fire; but at night some of them got into our tents and ate things we
could ill spare. In the early morning a column of foraging ants
appeared, and we drove them back, also with fire. When the sky was not
overcast the sun was very hot, and we spread out everything to dry.
There were many wonderful butterflies round about, but only a few
birds. Yet in the early morning and late afternoon there was some
attractive bird music in the woods. The two best performers were our
old friend the false bellbird, with its series of ringing whistles,
and a shy, attractive ant-thrush. The latter walked much on the
ground, with dainty movements, curtseying and raising its tail; and in
accent and sequence, although not in tone or time, its song resembled
that of our white-throated sparrow.
It was three weeks since we had started down the River of Doubt. We
had come along its winding course about 140 kilometres, with a descent
of somewhere in the neighborhood of 124 metres. It had been slow
progress. We could not tell what physical obstacles were ahead of us,
nor whether the Indians would be actively hostile. But a river
normally describes in its course a parabola, the steep descent being
in the upper part; and we hoped that in the future we should not have
to encounter so many and such difficult rapids as we had already
encountered, and that therefore we would make better time--a hope
destined to failure.