tural pergola, and through this tunnel of verdure in a golden
twilight flowed the green, pellucid river, beautiful in itself, but
marvelous from the strange tints thrown by the vivid light from above
filtered and tempered in its fall. Clear as crystal, motionless as a
sheet of glass, green as the edge of an iceberg, it stretched in front
of us under its leafy archway, every stroke of our paddles sending a
thousand ripples across its shining surface. It was a fitting avenue
to a land of wonders. All sign of the Indians had passed away, but
animal life was more frequent, and the tameness of the creatures showed
that they knew nothing of the hunter. Fuzzy little black-velvet
monkeys, with snow-white teeth and gleaming, mocking eyes, chattered at
us as we passed. With a dull, heavy splash an occasional cayman
plunged in from the bank. Once a dark, clumsy tapir stared at us from
a gap in the bushes, and then lumbered away through the forest; once,
too, the yellow, sinuous form of a great puma whisked amid the
brushwood, and its green, baleful eyes glared hatred at us over its
tawny shoulder. Bird life was abundant, especially the wading birds,
stork, heron, and ibis gathering in little groups, blue, scarlet, and
white, upon every log which jutted from the bank, while beneath us the
crystal water was alive with fish of every shape and color.

For three days we made our way up this tunnel of hazy green sunshine.
On the longer stretches one could hardly tell as one looked ahead where
the distant green water ended and the distant green archway began. The
deep peace of this strange waterway was unbroken by any sign of man.

"No Indian here. Too much afraid. Curupuri," said Gomez.

"Curupuri is the spirit of the woods," Lord John explained. "It's a
name for any kind of devil. The poor beggars think that there is
something fearsome in this direction, and therefore they avoid it."

On the third day it became evident that our journey in the canoes could
not last much longer, for the stream was rapidly growing more shallow.
Twice in as many hours we stuck upon the bottom. Finally we pulled the
boats up among the brushwood and spent the night on the bank of the
river. In the morning Lord John and I made our way for a couple of
miles through the forest, keeping parallel with the stream; but as it
grew ever shallower we returned and reported, what Professor Challenger
had already suspected, that we had reached the highest