HEADWATERS OF THE PARAGUAY 129 



he made his way through to the Madeira and completed 

 the telegraph-line across. The officers and men of the 

 Brazilian Army and the civilian scientists who followed 

 him shared the toil and the credit of the task. Some of 

 his men died of beriberi; some were killed or wounded by 

 the Indians; he himself almost died of fever; again and 

 again his whole party was reduced almost to the last ex- 

 tremity by starvation, disease, hardship, and the over- 

 exhaustion due to wearing fatigues. In dealing with the 

 wild, naked savages he showed a combination of fearless- 

 ness, wariness, good judgment, and resolute patience and 

 kindliness. The result was that they ultimately became 

 his firm friends, guarded the telegraph-lines, and helped 

 the few soldiers left at the isolated, widely separated little 

 posts. He and his assistants explored, and mapped for 

 the first time, the Juruena and the Gy-Parana, two impor- 

 tant affluents of the Tapajos and the Madeira respectively. 

 The Tapajos and the Madeira, like the Orinoco and Rio 

 Negro, have been highways of travel for a couple of cen- 

 turies. The Madeira (as later the Tapajos) was the chief 

 means of ingress, a century and a half ago, to the little 

 Portuguese settlements of this far interior region of Brazil; 

 one of these little towns, named Matto Grosso, being the 

 original capital of the province. It has long been aban- 

 doned by the government, and practically so by its inhabi- 

 tants, the ruins of palace, fortress, and church now rising 

 amid the rank tropical luxuriance of the wild forest. The 

 mouths of the main affluents of these highway rivers were 

 as a rule well known. But in many cases nothing but the 

 mouth was known. The river itself was not known, and 

 it was placed on the map by guesswork. Colonel Rondon 



