 Chapter 7. With a mule train across Namba, Keraland. Chapter 3. There were many swollen rivers to cross at this point of our journey. Some we waited at Fords. Some we crossed by root bridges. The larger ones, such as the Huina we crossed by ferry. And when the approaches were swampy, and the river broadened swift, many hours might be consumed beginning the mule train to lose bullocks in the ox cart over. We had few accidents, although we once lost a ferryload of provisions, which was quite a misfortune in a country where they could not be replaced. The past ridge was poor, and it was impossible to make long marches with our weakened animals. At one camp three Namba Kedras paid us a visit at breakfast time. They left their weapons behind them before they appeared, and shouted loudly while they were still hid by the forest, and it was only after repeated answering calls of welcome that they approached. Always in the wilderness friends proclaimed their presence. A silent advance marks a blow. Our visitors were men, and stark naked as usual. One seemed sick. He was thin, and his back was scarred with the marks of the grub of the loathsome burny fly. Indeed, all of them showed scars, chiefly from insect wounds. But the other two were in good condition, and although they ate greedily of the food offered them, they had with them a big-man dock cake, some honey, and a little fish. One of them wore a high helmet of Puma skin with a tail hanging down his back, handsome headgear which he gladly bartered for several strings of bright coral red beads. Around the upper arms of the two of them were bands bound so tightly as to cut into and to form the muscles, a singular custom seemingly not only purposeless but mischievous which is common among this tribe and many others. The Namba Kedras are a numerous tribe covering a large region, but they had no general organization. Each group of families acts for itself. Half a dozen years previously they had been very hostile, and Colonel Rondon had to guard his camp and exercise every precaution to guarantee his safety, while at the same time successfully endeavoring to avoid the necessity of himself shedding blood. Now they are, for the most part, friendly. But there are groups or individuals that are not. Several soldiers have been killed at these lonely stations, and while in some cases the attack may have been due to the soldiers having meddled with Namba Kedra women, in other cases the killing was entirely wanton and unprovoked. Sooner or later these criminals or outlaws will have to be brought to justice. It will not do to let their crimes go unpunished. Twice soldiers have deserted and fled to the Namba Kedras. The runaways were well received, were given wives and adopted into the tribe. The country when opened will be a healthy abode for white settlers, but pioneering in the wilderness is grim work for both man and beast. Continually, as we journeyed onward under the pitiless glare of the sun, or through blinding torrents of rain, we passed desolate little graves by the roadside. They marked the last resting places of men who had died by fever or dysentery or Namba Kedra arrows. We raised our hats as our mules plotted slowly by through the sand. On each grave was a frail wooden cross, and this and the paling roundabout were already stained by the weather as gray as the tree trunks of the stundered forest that stretched endlessly on every side. The skeletons of mules and oxen were frequent along the road. Now and then we came across a mule or ox which had been abandoned by Captain Amlicar's party ahead of us. The animal had been left with the hope that when night came it would follow along the trail to water. Sometimes it did so. Sometimes we found it dead or standing motionless waiting for death. From time to time we had to leave behind one of our own mules. It was not always easy to recognize what pastridge the mules would accept as good. One afternoon we pitched camp by a tiny rivulet in the midst of the scrubby upland forest. A camp, by the way, were the PMs, the small biting flies, were a torment during the hours of daylight. While after dark their places were more than taken by the diminutive gnats, which the Brazilians expressively termed pulvora or powder, and which get through the smallest meshes of a mosquito net, the feed was so scanty and the cover so dense at this spot that I thought we would have great difficulty in gathering the mules next morning. But we did not. A few hours later in the afternoon we camp by a beautiful open meadow. On one side ran a rapid brook with a waterfall eight feet high, under which we bathed and swam. Here the feed looked so good that we all expressed pleasure, but the mules did not like it and after nightfall they hiked back on the trail and it was a long and arduous work to gather the next morning. I have touched above on the insect pests. Men unused to the South American wilderness speak with awe of the danger they're in from jaguars, crocodiles, and poisonous snakes. In reality the danger from these sources is trivial, much less than the danger of being run down by an automobile at home. But at times the torment of insect plagues can hardly be exaggerated. There are many different species of mosquitoes, some of them bearers of disease. There are many different kinds of small, biting flies and gnats loosely grouped together under various titles. The ones more especially called PMs by my companions were somewhat like our northern black flies. They gorged themselves with blood. At the moment their bites did not hurt but they left an itching scar. Headnets and gloves are a protection but are not very comfortable in stifling hot weather. It is impossible to sleep without mosquito-bears. When settlers of the right type come into a new land they speedily learn to take the measures necessary to minimize the annoyance caused by all these pests. Those that are winged have plenty of kinsfolk in so much of the northern continent as it has not yet been subdued by man. But the most noxious of the South American ants have, thank heaven, no representatives in North America. At the camp of the PMs a column of the carnivorous foraging ants made its appearance before nightfall, and for a time we feared it might put us out of our tents for it went straight through the camp between the kitchen tent and our own sleeping tents. However the column turned neither to the right nor the left, streaming underreparably past for several hours and doing no damage except to the legs of any incautious man who walked near it. On the afternoon of February 15 we reached Camp Onovos. This place was utterly unlike the country we had been traversing. It was a large basin several miles across and traversed by several brooks. The brooks ran in deep swampy valleys occupied by a macted growth of tall tropical forest. Between them the ground rose in bold hills, bare of forest and covered with grass on which our jaded animals fed eagerly. On one of these rounded hills a number of buildings were ranged in a quadrangle for the past ridge at this spot is so good that it is permanently occupied. There are milk-cows and we got delicious fresh milk and there were goats, pigs, turkeys and chickens. Most of the buildings were made of upright poles with roofs of palm thatch. One or two were of native brick plastered with mud and before these there was an enclosure with a few ragged palms and some pineapple plants. Here we halted. Our attendance made two kitchens. One was out in the open air. One was under a shelter of oxide. The view over the surrounding grassy hills riven by deep wooded valleys was lovely. The air was cool and fresh. We were not bothered by insects, although mosquitoes swarmed in every belt of timber. Yet there has been much fever at this beautiful and seemingly healthy place. Doubtless when settlement is sufficiently advanced a remedy will be developed. The geology of this neighborhood was interesting. Olivierra found fossil tree trunks which he believed to be of Cretaceous age. Here we found Amlakar and Mello, who had waited for us with the rear guard of their pack train, and we enjoyed our meeting with the two fine fellows, then whom no military service of any nation could produce more efficient men for this kind of difficult and responsible work. Next morning they mustered the soldiers, mule-tears and pack oxmen and marched off. Rhinish, the taxidermist, was with them. We followed in the late afternoon, camping after a few miles. We left the ox cart at Campos Novos, from thence the trail was only for pack animals. In this neighborhood the two naturalists found many birds, which we had not hitherto met. The most conspicuous was a huge oriole, the size of a small crow, with a naked face, a black and red bill, and godly variegated plumage of green, yellow, and chestnut. The interesting was the false bellbird, a gray bird with loud metallic notes. There was also a tiny soft-tailed woodpecker, no larger than a kinglet, a queer hummingbird with a slightly flexible bill, and many species of antthrush, caninger, mannequin, and toadie. Among these unfamiliar forms was a vario, looking much like our solitary vario. At one camp Cherie collected a dozen perching birds, miller a beautiful little rail, and kermit, with a small luger belt-rifle, a handsome curacao, nearly as big as a turkey, out of which after it had been skinned, the cook made a delicious conna, the thick Brazilian soup of fowl and rice, then which there is nothing better of its kind. All these birds were new to the collection. No naturalists had previously worked this region, so that the afternoon's work represented nine species new to the collection, six new genera, and a most excellent soup. Two days after leaving Campo Novos we reached Filahena, where there is a telegraph station. We camped once at a small river named by Colonel Rondon, the twelfth of October, because he reached it on the day Columbus discovered America. I had never before known what day it was, and once at the foot of a hill, which he named after Lyra, his companion in the exploration. The two days' march, really one full day and part of two others, was through beautiful country, and we enjoyed it thoroughly, although there were occasional driving rainstorms when the rain came in almost level sheets and drenched everyone and everything. The country was like that around Campo Novos and offered a striking contrast to the level barren sandy ways to the Shepado, which is a healthy region where great industrial centers can arise, but not suited for extensive agriculture as there are the whole inflats. For these forty-eight hours the trail climbed into and out of steep valleys and broad basins and up and down hills, and the deep valleys were magnificent woods in which giant rubber trees towered, while the huge leaves of the low-growing picova or wild banana were conspicuous in the undergrowth. Great as your butterflies flitted through the open, sunny glades, and the bellbirds sitting motionless uttered their ringing calls from the dark stillness of the columned groves. The hillsides of grassy pastures were else covered with low, open forest. A huge frog, brown above, with a light streak down each side, was found hiding under some sticks in a damp place in one of the improvised kitchens, and another frog with discs on his toes was caught on one of the tents. A coral snake puzzled us. Some coral snakes are harmless, others are poisonous, although not aggressive. The best authorities give an infallible recipe for distinguishing them by the pattern of the colors, but this particular specimen, although it corresponded exactly in color pattern with the description of the poisonous snakes, nevertheless had no poison fangs that even after the most minute examination we could discover. Miller and one of the dogs caught a sarriama, a big, long-legged, bustered-like bird, in rather a curious way. We were on the march, plodding along through as heavy a tropic downbore as it was our ill fortune to encounter. The sarriama, evidently as drenched and uncomfortable as we were, was hiding under a bush to avoid the pelting rain. The dog discovered it, and after the bird valiantly repelled him, Miller was able to seize it. Its stomach contained about a half pint of grass hoppers and beetles and young leaves. At Vilhaina there was a tame sarriama, much more familiar, and at home than any of the poultry. It was without the least fear of man or dog. The sarriama, like the screamer in the curacao, ought to be introduced into our barnyards and on our haunts. At any rate in the southern states it is a good-looking, friendly and attractive bird. Another bird we met is in some places far more intimate and domesticates itself. This is a pretty little honey-creeper. In Columbia Miller found the honey-creepers habitually coming inside the houses and hotels at mealtimes, hopping about the table and climbing into the sugar-bowl. Along this part of our march there was much of what at a hasty glance seemed to be volcanic rock. But Olivierra showed me that it was a kind of conglomerate, with bubbles or hollows in it, made of sand and iron-bearing earth. He said it was a superficial, quaternary deposit formed by erosion from the Cretaceous rocks and that there were no tertiary deposits. He described the geological structure of the lands through which we had passed as follows. The Pantanals were a Pliocene age. Along the upper Saiputuba, in the region of the Rapids, there were sandstones, shales and clays of the Permian Age. The rolling country east of this contained eruptive rocks, a peripheridic displace with zeolite, quartz and agate of Triassic age. With the Shepadoe of the Preces Plateau we came to a land of sand and clay, dotted with lumps of sandstone and pieces of petrified wood. This, according to Olivierra, is of Mesozoic age and possibly Cretaceous and similar to the South American Formation. There are geologists who consider it as of Permian age. At Vilhaina we were on a watershed which drained into the Gaipurana, which itself runs into the Madeira, nearly midway between its sources and its mouth. A little further along and northward we again came to streams running ultimately into the Tapaho and between them and close to them were streamlets which drained into Davida and the Anas, whose courses and outlets were unknown. This point is part of the divide between the basins of the Madeira and Tapaho. A singular topographical feature of the Plan Alto, the great interior sandy plateau of Brazil, is that of its westernmost end the southward flowing streams, instead of running into the Paraguay as they do further east from the headwaters of the Gaipur, which may perhaps be called the upper main stream of the Madeira. These westernmost streams from the southern edge of the plateau, therefore, begin by flowing south, then for a long stretch they flow southwest, then north, and finally northeast into the Amazon. According to some exceptionally good geological observers, this is probably due to the fact that in a remote geologic past the ocean sent an arm from the south between the Plan Alto and what is now the Andean chain. These rivers then emptied into the Andean Sea. The gradual upheaval of the soil has resulted in substituting dry land for this arm of the ocean and in reversing the course of what is now the Madeira, just as, according to these geologists in somewhat familiar fashion, the Amazon has been reversed, it having once been, at least for the upper two-thirds of its course, an affluent of the Andean Sea. From Vilhaina we traveled in a generally northward direction. For a few leagues we went across Shepato, the sands or clays of the nearly level Upland Plateau, grassy or covered with thin stunted forest, the same type of country that had been predominant ever since we ascended the Parisa's table-end on the morning of the third day after leaving the Sepatuba. Then, at about the point where the trail dipped into a basin containing the headsprings of the Inas, we left this type of country and began to march through thick forests not very high. There was little feed for the animals on the Shepato. There was less in the forest. Moreover, the continual heavy rains made the traveling difficult and laborious for them, and they weakened. However, a couple of marches before we reached Treburiti, where there is a big ranch with hundreds of cattle, we were met by ten fresh pack oxen, and our serious difficulties were over. There were PM's in plenty by day, but neither mosquitoes nor sand flies by night, and for us the trip was very pleasant, safe for moments of anxiety about the mules. The loose bullocks furnished us with an abundance of fresh beef, although as was inevitable under the circumstances of a decidedly tough quality. One of the biggest of the bullocks was attacked one night by a vampire bat, and the next morning his withers were literally bathed in blood. With the Shepato, we said good-bye to the curious, gregarious, and crepuscular or nocturnal spiders which he found so abundant along the line of the telegraph wire. They have offered one of the small problems with which the commission has had to deal. They are not common in the driest season. They swarm during the rains, and when their tough webs are wet, those that lead from the wire to the ground sometimes effectively short-circuit the wire. They have on various occasions caused a good deal of trouble in this manner. CHAPTER VII. The third night out from Vilhaina, we emerged for a moment from the endless, close-growing forest in which our poor animals got set scanty pickings, and came to a beautiful open country where grassy slopes dotted with occasional trees came down on either side of a little brook which was one of the headwaters of the duvitta. It was a pleasure to see the mules greedily bury their muzzles in the pastridge. Our tents were pitched in the open near a shady tree which sent out its low branches on every side. At this camp, Sherry shot a lark, very characteristic of the open, upland country, and Miller found two bats in the rotten wood of a dead log. He heard them squeaking and dug them out. He could not tell by what method they had gotten in. Here, Kermit, while a couple of miles from our tents, came across an encampment of Nambicaras. There were twenty or thirty of them, men, women, and a few children. Kermit, after the manner of honest folk and the wilderness, advanced ostentatiously in the open, calling out to give warning of his coming. Like surroundings may cause like manners. The early Saxons in England deemed it legal to kill any man who came through the woods without shouting or blowing a horn, and in Nambicaraland at the present time it is against etiquette and may be very unhealthy to come through the woods toward strangers without loudly announcing one's presence. The Nambicaras received Kermit with utmost cordiality and gave him pineapple wine to drink. They were stark naked, as usual. They had no hammocks or blankets, and their huts were flimsy shelters of palm branches, yet they were in fine condition. Half a dozen of the men and a couple of boys accompanied Kermit back to our camp, paying not the slightest heed to the rain which was falling. They were bold and friendly, good-natured, at least superficially, and very inquisitive. In feasting the long reeds thrust through holes in their lips did not seem to bother them, and they laughed at the suggestion of removing them. Evidently to have done so would have been rather bad manners, like using a knife as an aid in eating ice cream. They held two or three dances, and we were again struck by the rhythm and weird haunting melody of their chanting. After supper they danced beside the campfire, and finally, to their delight, most of the members of our own party, Americans and Brazilians enthusiastically joined the dance, while the Colonel and I furnished an appreciative and applauding audience. Next morning, when we were awakened by the chattering and screaming of the numerous macaws, parrots, and parakeets, we found that nearly all the Indians, men and women were gathered outside the tent. As far as clothing was concerned they were in the condition of Adam and Eve before the fall. One of the women carried a little squirrel monkey. She put it up the big tree some distance from the tents, and when she called it came scampering to her across the grass, ran up her and clung to her neck. They would have liked to pilfer, but as they had no clothes it was difficult for them to conceal anything. One of the women was observed to take a fork, but as she did not possess a rag of clothing of any kind, all she did was to try to bury the fork in the sand and then sit on it, and it was reclaimed without difficulty. One or two of the children were necklaces and bracelets made of the polished wood of the Tucum Palm and the mowers of small rodents. Next day's march led us across a hilly country of good pasture land. The valleys were densely wooded, palms of several kinds being conspicuous among the other trees, and the brooks at the bottoms we crossed at Fords are by the usual rude pole bridges. On the open pastures were occasional trees, usually slender bakaba palms, with heads which the winds had disheveled until they looked like mops. It was evidently a fine natural cattle country, and soon we began to see scores, perhaps hundreds of the cattle belonging to the government ranch at Traiburiti, which we reached in the early afternoon. It is beautifully situated, the view roundabout is lovely, and certainly the land will prove healthy when the settlements have been definitely established. Here we revel in the abundance of good fresh milk and eggs, and for dinner we had chicken kaha, and fat beef roasted on big wooden spits, and we even had watermelons. The latter were from seeds brought down by the American engineers who built the Madiera Maramor Railroad. A work which stands honorably distinguished among the many great and useful works done in the development of the tropics of recent years. Amlicar's pack oxen, which were nearly worn out, had been left in these fertile pastures. Most of the fresh oxen which he took in their places were unbroken, and there was a perfect circus before they were packed and marched off in every direction, said the gleeful narrators, there were bucking oxen and the sloads strewn on the ground. This cattle ranch is managed by the Colonel's uncle, his mother's brother, a hail old man of seventy, white-haired, but as active and vigorous as ever, with a fine, kindly, intelligent face. His name is Miguel Evangelista. He is a native Amato Grosso of practically pure Indian blood and was dressed in the ordinary costume of the Capicolo, hat, shirt, trousers, and no shoes or stockings. Within the last year he had killed three jaguars which had been living on the mules. As long as they could get mules, they did not at this station molest the cattle. It was with this uncle's father, Colonel Rondon's own grandfather, that Colonel Rondon as an orphan spent the first seven years of his life. His father died before he was born and his mother when he was only a year old. He lived on his grandfather's cattle ranch some fifty miles from Cayaba. When he went to live in Cayaba, with kinsmen on his father's side, from whom he took the name Rondon, his own father's name was Desilva. He studied in the Cayaba government school and at sixteen was inscribed as one of the instructors. Then he went to Rio, served for a year in the army as an enlisted man in the ranks and succeeded finally in getting into the military school. After five years as a pupil, he served three years as a professor of mathematics in the school and then as a lieutenant of engineers in the Brazilian army. He came back to his home in Matogrosso and began his life work of exploring the wilderness. Next day we journeyed to the telegraph station at Bonifacio through alternate spells of glaring sunshine and heavy rain. On the way we stopped at an aldea village of Nambercaras. We first met a couple of men going to hunt with bows and arrows longer than themselves. A rather comely young woman carrying on her back a wicker work basket or creel supported by a forehead band and accompanied by a small child was with them. At the village there were a number of men, women and children. Although as completely naked as the others we had met the members of this band were more ornamented with beads and were earrings made from the inside of muscle shells or very big snail shells. They were more hairy than the ones we had so far met. The women, but not the men, completely removed the hair from their bodies and looked more instead of less and decent in consequence. The chief whose body was painted red with a juice or fruit had what could fairly be styled a mustache and imperial and one old man looked somewhat like a hairy anew or perhaps even more like an Australian black fellow. My companion told me that this probably represented an infusion of Negro blood and possibly a mulatto blood from runway slaves of the old days when some of the motto grossle mines were worked by slave labor. They also thought it possible that this infiltration of African Negroes might be responsible for the curious shape of the bigger huts which are utterly unlike their flimsy ordinary shelters and bore no resemblance in shape to those of other Indian tribes of this region whereas they were not unlike the ordinary beehive huts of the agricultural African Negroes. There were in this village several huts or shelters open at the sides and two of the big huts. These were of closely woven thatch circular in outline with a rounded dome and two doors a couple of feet high opposite each other and no other opening. There were fifteen or twenty people to each hut. Inside were their implements and utensils such as wicker baskets some of them filled with pineapples, gourds, fire sticks, wooden knives, wooden mortars and a board for grating mandock made of a thick slab of wood inset with sharp points of harder wood. From the Brazilians one or two of them had obtained blankets and one a hammock and they had also obtained knives which they sorely needed for they were not even in the stone age. One woman shielded herself from the rain by holding a green palm branch down her back. Another had on her head what we first thought to be a monkey skin headdress but it was a little live black monkey. It stayed habitually with its head above her forehead and its arms and legs spread so that it laid molded to the shape of her head but both woman and monkey showed some reluctance about having their photographs taken. Bonifacio consisted of several thatched one room cabins connected by a stockade which was extended to form an enclosure behind them. A number of tame parrots and parakeets of several different species scrambled over the roofs and entered the houses and the open pastures nearby were the curious extensive burrows of a gopher rat which ate the roots of grass not emerging to eat the grass but pulling it into the burrows by the roots. These burrows bore a close likeness to those of our pocket gophers. Miller found the animals difficult to trap. Finally by the aid of Colonel Rondon several Indians and two or three of our men he dug one out. From the central shaft several surface galleries radiated running for many rods about a foot below the surface with at intervals of a half dozen yards mounds where loose earth had been expelled. The central shaft ran straight down for about eight feet then laterally for about fifteen feet to a kind of chamber. The animal dug hard to escape but when taken and put on the surface of the ground it moved slowly and awkwardly. It showed vicious courage. In looks it closely resembled our pocket gophers but it had no pockets. This was one of the most interesting small mammals that we secured. After breakfast in Bonifacio a number of mambacaras men women and children strolled in. The men gave us an exhibition of not very good archery. When the bow was bent it was at first held so the arrow pointed straight upwards and then was lowered so the arrow was aimed at the target. Several of the women had been taken from other tribes after their husbands or fathers had been killed for the nambaharas or light-hearted robbers and murders. Two or three miserable dogs accompanied them half starved and mangy but each decorated with the collar of beads. The headsmen had three or four wives apiece and the women were the burden bearers but apparently were not badly treated. Most of them were dirty although well fed looking and their features were of a low type but some especially among the children were quite attractive. From Bonifacio we went about seven miles across a rolling prairie dotted with trees and clumps of shrub. There on February 24 we joined Amlicar who was camped by a brook which flowed into the Davida. We were only some six miles from our place of embarkation on the Davida and we divided our party in our belongings. Amlicar, Miller, Mello, and Liviaira were to march three days to the Guy Parana then descend it and continue down the Mediara to Maños. Rondon, Lyra, the doctor, Cherie, Kermit, and I with sixteen paddlers in seven canoes were to descend the Davida to find out whether it led into the Guy Parana. Our purpose was to return and descend the Anas whose outlet was also unknown. Having this in view we left a fortnight's provisions for our party of six at Bonifacio. We took with us provisions for about fifty days not full rations for we hoped in part to live on the country on fish, game, nuts, and palm tops. Our personal baggage was already well cut down. Cherie, Kermit, and I took the naturalist fly to sleep under and a very light little tent extra for anyone who might fall sick. Rondon, Lyra, and the doctor took one of their own tents. The things that we carried were necessities, food, medicines, bedding, instruments for determining the altitude and longitude and latitude, except a few books, each in small compass. Lyras were in German consisting of two tiny volumes of Geth and Schiller. Kermits were in Portuguese, mine all in English included the last two volumes of Gibbon, the Plays Esophocles, Moors Utopia, Marcus Aurelas, and Epiticus. The two latter lent me by a friend, Major Shipton of the Regulars, our military attaché at Buenos Aires. If our canoe voyage was prosperous we would gradually lighten the loads by eating the provisions. If we met with accidents such as losing canoes and men in the rapids, or losing men in encounters with Indians, or if we encountered over much fever and dysentery the loads would lighten themselves. We were all armed. We took no cartridges for sport. Sherry had some to be used sparingly for collecting specimens. The others were to be used unless in the unlikely event of having to repel an attack only to procure food. The food and the arms we carried represented all reasonable precautions against suffering and starvation. But, of course, if the course of the river proved very long and difficult, if we lost our boats or our falls or in rapids, or had to make too many and too long portages, or were brought to a halt by impassable swamps, then we would have to reckon with starvation as a possibility. Anything might happen. We were about to go into the unknown and no one could say what it held. The first four days before we struck the upper rapids and during which we made nearly 70 kilometers, or, of course, not included, when I speak of our making our way down the rapids, I hope that this year the anos or pineapple will also be put on the map. One of Colonel Rondon's subordinates is to attempt to descend to the river. We pass the headwaters of the pineapple on the high plateau. For a possible we pass its mouth, although it is also possible that it empties into the conima or topaho, but it will not be put on the map until someone descends and finds out where, as a matter of fact, it really does go. It would be well if a geographical society of standing would investigate the formal and official charges made by Colonel Rondon, an officer and a gentleman at the highest repute against Mr. Savage Landor. Colonel Rondon, in an official report to the Brazilian government, has written a scathing review of Mr. He states that Mr. Savage Landor did not perform and did not even attempt to perform the work he had contracted to do in exploration for the Brazilian government. Mr. Landor had asserted and promised that he would go through a known country along the line of 11 degrees latitude south, and, as Colonel Rondon states, it was because of this proposal of his that the Brazilian government gave him material financial assistance in advance. However, Colonel Rondon sets forth that Mr. Landor did not keep his word or make any serious effort to fulfill his moral obligation to do so as he said he would do. In a letter to me under the date May 1, 1914, a letter which has been published in full in France, Colonel Rondon goes at length into the question of what territory Mr. Landor had traversed. Colonel Rondon states that accepting on one occasion when Mr. Landor, wandering off a beaten trail, immediately got lost and shortly returned to his starting point without making any discoveries, he kept to old, well-traveled routes. One sentence of the Colonel's letter to me runs as follows. I can guarantee to you that in Brazil Mr. Landor did not cross a hands-breadth of land that had not been explored, the greater part of it many centuries ago. As regards Mr. Landor's soul and grief experience in leaving a beaten route, Colonel Rondon states that at Salmanuel, Mr. Landor engaged from Senor José Sotero Barreto, the Revenue Officer of Mato Grosso at Salmanuel, a guide to lead him across a well-traveled trail which connects the Tapajeros with a Madillera via the Conema. The guide however got lost, and after a few days they all returned to the point of departure instead of going through to the Conema. Senor Barreto, a gentleman of high standing, related this last incident to Fiala when Fiala descended the Tapahoe. And by the way, Fiala's trip down the Papagal, Urena and Tapahoe was definitely more important than all the work Mr. Landor did in South America put together. Lieutenant's Pyranus and Mello, mentioned in the body of this work, informed me that they accompanied Mr. Landor on most of his overland trip before he embarked on the Arranos, and that he simply followed the High Road or El Satelegraph line, and furthermore, Colonel Rondon states that the Indians whom Mr. Landor encountered in photograph were those educated at the missions. Colonel Rondon's official reports the Brazilian government and his letter to me are of interest to all geographers and other scientific men who have any concern with the alleged discoveries of Mr. Landor. They contain very grave charges, with which is not necessary for me to deal. Suffice it to say that Mr. Landor's accounts of his alleged exploration cannot be considered as entitlement to the slightest serious consideration until he has satisfactorily and in detail answered Colonel Rondon, and this he has thus far signally failed to do. Fortunately there are numerous examples of exactly the opposite type of work. From the days of Humboldt and Spix and Martius to the present time, German explorers have borne a conspicuous part in the exploration of South America as representatives of the men and women who have done such capital work who have fronted every hazard in hardship and labored in the scientific spirit and who have greatly added to our fund of geographic, biologic, and ethnographic knowledge I may mention Ms. Nethledge and Herr Karl von Dyshnen. are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Through the Brazilian Wilderness by Theodor Roosevelt Chapter 8 The River of Doubt Part 1 On February the 27th, 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 Guy 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 doggots swung into the stream, Amilcar and Miller and all the others of the Guy Parana party, were on the banks and the bridge, to the way far well, and wish us good bye 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, one minute latitude, south, and 60 degrees, 15 minutes longitude west of Greenwich. Our general course was to be northward, towards the equator, by waterway through the vast forest. We had seven canoes, all of them doggots. 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 one of the others. Kermit with two paddlers went in the smallest as the good canoes. Colonel Rondon and Lira with three other paddlers in the next largest, and the doctor Cherry 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 22 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 doggots 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 lice as panthers and browning as beers. They swam like water dogs. 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. So they looked like pirates in the pictures of Howard Pyle or Maxfield Terish. One or two of them were pirates, and one was 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, Louise, the steersman, the headman, was a motto grosso negro. Julio, the bonesman, was from Bahia, and of pure Portuguese blood, and the third man, Antonio, was a parochist Indian. The actual surveying of the river was done by Colonel Rondon and Lira, with Kermit as their assistant. Kermit went first in his little canoe with the sighting rod, on which two discs, one red and one white, were placed a meter apart. He selected a place which commanded as long with us as possible upstream and down, and which therefore might be at the angle of a bend. Landed, cut away the branches which obscured the view, and set up the sighting pole, incidentally encountering maribundi wasps, and swarms of biting and stinging ants. Lira, from his station upstream, with his telemetro, established the distance, while Colonel Rondon, with the compass, took their direction, and made the records. Then they moved on to the point Kermit had left, and Kermit established a new point within his 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 kilometers. My canoe ran ahead of the surveying canoes. The hate of the water made the going easy, for most of the snacks 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 soarny, slender stem boritana pounds, which love the wet, they were often, although plunged beneath the river, in full and vigorous grouse, their stems curving upward, and their frowned crowned tops shaking 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. Messes 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 and the banks. There were not many birds, and for most part the forest was silent. Rarely we heard strange calls from the depths of the woods, or saw a cork morant or abyss. 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 X-men cleared the 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 tapered trails, but there was no fresh sign. Before nightfall the surveyors arrived. There were a few pimps 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, uncrawled our faces, and hence there 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, and hour later the two pairs of lashed canoes pushed out. I kept our canoe to let cherry collect, for in the early hours we could hear a number of birds in the woods nearby. The most interesting birds he showed were a cuttinga, brilliant turquoise blue with a magnetic purple throat, and a big woodpecker, black above and cinnamon below, with an entirely red neck and head. It was almost noon before we started. We saw a few more birds. There were fresh tapper and paka tracks at one point where we landed. Once we heard howler monkeys from the depths of the forest, and once we saw a big otter in my stream. 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 the 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 purity, with its stiff fronts like enormous fans, and the handsome species of bakaba was very long, gracefully curving fronts. In places the palms stood close together, towering and slender. Their stems astately color-made, their fronts an arched fretwork against the sky. Butterflies of many hues flattered 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 Bandera, which we had crossed toward its head, some 10 days before, on our road to Bonofakio. The Nambikaras had then told Colonel Rondon that it flound 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 hoeing. There were occasional bays and oxbows, from which the current had shifted. In seas 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. The second day we made sixteen and a half kilometers along the course of the river and nine kilometers in a straight line almost due north. The following day, March the first, 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 kilometers. We passed signs of Indian habitation. There were abandoned palm leaf shelters in both banks. On the left bank we came to two or three old Indian fields, grown up with coarse fern and studded with the burnt 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 wine handrail 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 wines had been stretched as a handrail, necessary with such precarious footing. The rise of the river had swept away its bridge, but the props and the rope handrail remained. In the afternoon, from the boat, Jerry shot a large dark grey monkey with a prehensile tail. It was very good eating. We camped on a dry leather space, but a few feet above and closed beside the river, so that our swimming bath was handy. The trees were cleared and camped with orderly hurry. One of the men almost stepped on a poisonous crow 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 wipers, 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 hounds really confer on it a concealing coloration. In the dark untangled 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 mold 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 gyararaca and other dangerous snakes of the genus Lahekes. In the same place, however, we found a striking example of genuine protective or mimetic coloration and shape. A rather large insect larvae, 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 mibred 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 a leaf, projected in front. We were still in the Brazilian highlands. The forest did not team 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 every single silent. At this camp the Caragador's 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 headnets when we brought our skin specimens. End of Chapter 8, Part 1 Chapter 8, Part 2 Of Through the Brazilian Wilderness This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Through the Brazilian Wilderness by Theodore Roosevelt Chapter 8 The River of Doubt, Part 2 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 traveling between stretches of marshy forest, where for miles the water stood or ran among the trees. Once we passed the 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 20 kilometers. We soon found that the rapids were a serious obstacle. There were many girls, 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 the nearly straight line, was somewhat shorter. It was not an easy portage, over which to carry heavy loads and drag heavy dog-node canoes. At the point where the descent was steepest, there were great naked flats of priable sandstone and conglomerate. Over parts of these, where there was the surface of fine sand, there was a grove 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 horse, the torrent rushed down a deep, shear-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 though broad a river could in so short a space of time contract its dimensions to the of the strangled channel through which it now poured its entire volume. This has for long been a station where the Nambiquaras at intervals built their ephemeral villages and tilled the soil with the root and destructive cultivation of savages. There were several abandoned old fields where the dense groves of rank fern hid the tangle of burnt and fallen logs, nor had the Nambiquaras 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 handrail, across one of the nervous parts of the rock gorge, through which the river formed in its rapid descent. This sub-tribe of Indians was called the Navaita. We named the rapids after them, Navaita 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 much the third and fourth, and the morning of the fifth, 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 stank badly. We were bitten by huge horse flies, the size of bumblebees. More serious annoyance was caused by the pium and boro-shuda flies, during the hours of daylight, and by the pole water the sand flies after dark. There were a few mosquitoes. The boro-shudas were the worst pests. They brought the blood at once, and left marks that last for weeks. I did my writing in headnet and gauntlets. Fortunately we had with us several bottles of flydope, so named on the level, put up with the rest of our medicine, by Dr. Alexander Lumbert. 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 my new mosquitoes and gnats get through headnets 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 cherry'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 doocuts was labor. The biggest of the two waterlogged ones was the heaviest. Lira 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 doocuts 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 downhill and relatively easy. Looking at the way the work was done, at the goodwill, the endurance, and the bull-like strengths of the camaradas, and at the intelligence and the unvariate 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, at 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 imposters 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 unthroden, or even in the unfrequented wilderness, risk to the canoe is a serious matter. This particular portage at Navaita Rapids was far from being unusually difficult, yet it not only cost two and a half days of severe and incessant labour, 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 as 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 waterlogged canoes filled and went to the bottom, and there was more work in rising it. We were still wholly unable to tell where we were going or what lay ahead of us. Around the campfire, 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 Jaiparana high up or low down, or go north to the Madeira, or bend eastward, and enter the Tipajos, or fall into the Canuma, and finally through one of its mouths enter the Amazon Direct. Lira inclined to the first, and called Nelrondon to the second of these propositions. We did not know whether we had one hundred or eight hundred kilometers 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 downstream again, early in the afternoon of March the 5th. 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 slide 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 downstream would have taken us a week if we had been going up. The course wound hither and dither, 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 the throes 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 Cherry shot a jackel, a handsome bird somewhat akin to but much smaller than a turkey. After Cherry had taken its skin its body made an excellent kanja. We saw parties of monkeys and the false bell birds 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 a kermit. It was almost like the sting of a small scorpion, and pain severely for a couple of hours. This half day we made twelve kilometers. On the following day we made nineteen kilometers, 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, Louise, 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 honeybees. The honey cells were very large, and the broad 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-tod, 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 a scum-ceiling 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 discs of its fingertips, 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 pepper sign, and Kermit shot a jacquo 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 decide-triples, and then heard of the roar of rapids ahead, while the stream began to race. We drove the canoe into the bank, and then went down a tapper trail, which led alongside the river to Reconointer. 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 downstream 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, and swarmed, and some of them bit savagely. Our men, in clearing away the forest for our tents, left several worry-tall and slender akashi palms. The bowl of this palm is as striped as an arrow, and is crowned with delicate graceful curved thorns. We had come along the course of the river, almost exactly a hundred kilometers. It had twisted so that we were only about 55 kilometers north of our starting point. The rock was for ferretic. The seventh, eighths, and ninths we spent in carrying the loads and dragging and floating the dugots past the series of rapids at whose head we had stopped. The first day we shifted camp a kilometer and a half to the foot of the 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 purity palms, their great trunks rising like columns. Around the clearing, in which our tents stood, were several very big trees. Two of them were rubber trees. Kermit went downstream five or six kilometers, and returned, having shot a jackal, 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 Zeparekis shot a big monkey. Of this I was glad, because portaging is hard work, and the men appreciated the beat. So far Cherry had collected sixty birds on the duvita, all of them new to the collection, and some probably new to science. We saw the fresh sign of Paka, a gooty and the small peccary, and Kermit with the dogs rose 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 dugote 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. Lira cleared the path and laid the logs for rollers, while Kermit dragged the good dockets 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 kneaded the united strength of all their men to get the heavy dockets along. Meanwhile the colonel with one attendant measured the distance, and then went on a long hunt, but saw no gain. 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 Lira and Kermit brought down the canoes and loads with hard labour, to the little beach by the three palms where our tents were pitched. Many pakovas grew round about. The men used their immense leaves, some of which were 12 feet long and two and a half feet broad, to roof the flimsy shutters 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 heavers, antthrushes, tenagers, flycatchers, as in the spring and fall, similar troops of warblers, chickadees, and nut hatches, passed through our northern woods. On the rocks and on the great trees of the river grew beautiful white and lilac orchids, the sobralia of sweet and delicate fragrance. For the moment my own books seemed a travel heavy, and perhaps I would have found the day tedious. If Kermit had not lent me the Oxford book of French words, or a starch de champ, Joachim de Belet, Ronsard, the delightful Lafontaine, the delightful but appalling William, Victor Hugo's guitar, Madame de Spordes, Balmor'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 headnets and gauntlets, sitting on a log by an unknown river in the Amazonian forest. Chapter 8 Part 3 Of Through the Brazilian Wilderness This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Through the Brazilian Wilderness by Theodore Roosevelt. Chapter 3 The River of Doubt, Part 3 On the tenths we again embarked and made a kilometer and a half, spending most of the time in getting past two more rapids. Near the first of these we saw a small caiman, a jacar 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 thrown to the 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 coat. Everyone else had a hammock. At this camp we had come down the river about 102 kilometers, according to the surveying records, and in height had descended nearly 100 meters, 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 houted 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 waterlogged 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 mornings they had disappeared. A canoe was launched to look for them, but rolling over the boulders of the rocky bottom, they had at once been driven 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 the camp, splendid looking trees, one of them five feet in diameter, three feet from the ground. The X-men immediately attacked this one under the superintendents of Col. Rondon. Lira and Kermit started in opposite directions to hunt. Lira killed a jackal for us, and Kermit killed two monkeys for the men. Toward nightfall 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 Col. Rondon during his eight-month exploration in 1909, at which time his men were regulars, from his own battalion of engineers. His four aides during the closing month of this trip were Loitnans Lira, Amarante, Alen Carliense, and Pirineus. The naturalist Miranda Ribeiro also accompanied him. This was the year when, marching on food, through an absolutely unknown wilderness, the colonel and his party finally reached the Gaiparana, which on the maps was then, and in most maps is now, placed in an utterly wrong course, and over a degree out of its real position. When they reached the affluence of the Gaiparana, 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 games 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 Alen Carliense took command of it, and descended to map the course of the river. With him went Ribeiro, that Dr. Tanagira, who could no longer walk on account of the alteration of one food. 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 Pirineus started downstream, 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 burglar had his bugle. Leutnant Pirineus had lost every particle of his clothing, except a hat and a pair of drawers. The half-naked Leutnant drew up his eleven fever patients in line. The bugle sounded. Everyone came to attention, and the haggard colonel read out the orders of the day. Then the do-got, with its load of sick men, started downstream, and Rondon, Lira, Amarante and the twelve remaining men resumed their weary march. When a quarter-night later they finally struck a camp of rubber-gatherers, three of the men were literally and entirely naked. Meanwhile Amilcar had ascended the Jacqui Parana, 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 Jacqui 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 Jacqui Parana, where it entered the Madeira. The lost men, 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 twelfth the men were still hard at work, hollowing out the hard wood of the big tree, with eggs and adds, while watch and ward were kept over them to see that the idlers did not shirk at the expense of the industrious. Kermit and Lira again hunted, the former shot a carousel, which was welcome, as we were endeavoring in all ways to economize our food supply. We were using the tops of towns 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 a 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 and around the trunks. Others were like knotted cables. In the shadows 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 traveling slowly it was impossible always to avoid them, not to speak of our constant companions, the bees, mosquitoes, and especially the borosudas 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 borosudas and ants, some being actually incapacitated from work. All of us suffered more or less, our faces and hands swelling slightly from the borosudas bites, and in spite of our closes 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 thirteenths the man worked at the canoe, making good progress, enrolling and shifting the huge heavy tree trunk everyone had to assist now and then. The work continued until ten in the evening as the water was clear. After nightfall some of the men held candles and the others plied eggs or aides, 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 thues beneath. On the morning of the fourteenths 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 underway. 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 doggots 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 purity-palmed branch stems, they shipped a great deal of water in the rapids. The two biggest rapids were only just made, and after each we had hastily to push ashore in order to bale. 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 would accept 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 kilometers in a direction slightly east of north. This evening the air was fresh and cool. The following morning, the fifteenth of march, we started in good season. For six kilometers we drifted and paddled down the swift river without instant. 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 of Isar hind rose into boulder-strewn forest-gled hills, on the roar of broken water announced, that once more our course was checked by dangerous rapids. Around a bend we came on them, a wide descent of white water with an island on the middle, at the upper edge. Here a grave misfortune befell us, and grave misfortune was narrowly escaped. Germit, as usual, was leading in his canoe. It was the smallest and least sea-worthy of all. He had in it little except a weak supply of our boxed provisions and a few tools. Fortunately none of the food for the camaradas. His dog Triguero was with him. Besides himself the crew consisted of two men, Joao, the hamsman or pilot, as he is called in Brazil, and Simplicil, the boasman. Both were negroes and exceptionally good men in every way. Germit halted his canoe on the left bank above the rapids, and waited for the colonel's canoe. Then the colonel and lira walked down the bank to see what was ahead. Germit 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 dugote was headed upstream 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 downstream, 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, Germit 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 towards 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 dugote filled and turned over. Jawao, 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. Germit 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 unswift with 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 a curious calm one feels when death is but a moment away, he realized that the utmost his failing strengths 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 triguero had faithfully swam alongside him through the rapids, and now himself scrambled ashore. It was a very narrow escape. Germit 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 portages. 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 mourned sincerely, but mourning cannot interfere with labor. We immediately proceeded with the work of the portage. From the head to the tail of the series of rapids the distance was about 600 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. Germit accompanied by Joel 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 in the midstream after them. He also found that a couple of kilometers below there was another stretch of rapids and following them on the left hand back to the food 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 treetops and to find them in the tangle beneath it if they were shot. However, Cherry got four species new to the collection. One was a tiny hammer, one of the species known as wood stars with dandy 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 exquisite little tenager as brilliant as a cluster of jewels its throat was lilac its breast turkeys its crown and forehead topas while above it was glossy purple back the lower part of the back ruby red this tenager was a female I can hardly imagine that the male is more brilliantly colored. The fourth bird was a queer hawk of the genus epicter black with a white belly and egg-thread 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. End of chapter 8 part 3