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small stream joining the new river from 
the left in about 83° S. latitude. 
On the other hand, to the east of the 
new river, between it and the Tapajoz, 
it is quite possible that larger rivers 
exist. Indeed, Colonel Roosevelt’s nar- 
rative makes this very likely. In lati- 
tude 7° 34’ the new river was joined 
from the right by a stream of equal size. 
That this stream extended up at least 
as far as 8° 48’ had been established 
shortly before by the Amazonas Bound- 
ary Commission, which ascended to this 
latitude. It did not even seem unlikely 
that it might be the lower course of a 
river, named the Anands, whose head- 
waters the expedition had crossed before 
reaching the new river; in which case it 
would practically have the same length. 
This problem, we are told, may be 
solved soon, as one of Colonel Rondon’s 
subordinates was to attempt the descent 
of the Anands this year. 
The existence of another large river 
in this area is made plausible by a 
further reference in Colonel Roosevelt’s 
book. The year previous, he was told, 
five Indian rubber-gatherers were work- 
ing on the Canumaé in about 9° S. lati- 
tude, thus establishing that it extends 
at least as far south as this. Chandless’ 
survey did not go above 5° 17’, but the 
size of the river at this point —in 
contrast with the Abacaxis to the east, 
which, in 6° 12’, was a very small stream 
with the boughs of the trees on its banks 
joining overhead — made it probable 
that it rose far to the south. This 
supposition is expressed on various 
Brazilian maps, where the Canuma is 
made to drain the whole region between 
the Madeira and the Tapajoz and thus, 
indeed, to usurp the area which, it has 
developed, is tributary to the new river. 
The previous references to the activi- 
ties of the rubber-gatherers in this re- 
gion may have called up in the reader’s 
THE-AMERICAN MUSEUM JOURNAL 
mind the question how the expedition 
can be portrayed as having traversed 
unknown territory. It is true that the 
“unknown” river had been ascended 
for two-thirds of its length by these men 
on their search for rubber; the expedi- 
tion came across the first of them in 
10° 24’. Indeed, they had a name for it, 
calling it the Castanha above the con- 
fluence with the river joining it in 7° 34’, 
and the lower Aripuanan below this 
point; the right affluent entering here 
they termed the upper Aripuanan, con- 
sidering it the main stream. On the 
upper Aripuanan they had ascended to 
above 9°. But, to use Colonel Roose- 
velt’s words, “the governmental and 
scientific authorities, native and foreign, 
remained in complete ignorance”; no 
map conveyed an inkling of these facts 
except the location of the confluence of 
the Aripuanan with the Madeira. The 
reason is obvious. Pioneers, although 
often the first in a new region, generally 
do not bring back information which 
can be utilized geographically. In our 
own West many a miner has been the 
first white man to go up a mountain, 
valley or to cross a snowy pass; but the 
world at large knew nothing of the region 
until the surveyor had been there. 
Whenever a region is newly explored, 
the geographer’s first wish is to see an 
authentic map of it. In the present case 
he is doomed to some disappointment. 
Two of the three maps in Colonel 
Roosevelt’s book represent the new river 
in some detail. One is a sketch map on 
the scale of 105 miles to an inch showing 
the river by itself. While based on the 
astronomical positions given in the text, 
a certain stiffness of line and the lack 
of relation to the surrounding regions 
betoken an ungeographical hand. The 
other is a general map of Brazil on the 
scale of 240 miles to the inch prepared by 
the Brazilian Telegraphic Commission 
