re 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 m