130 THROUGH THE BRAZILIAN WILDERNESS 



found, for example, that the course of the Gy-Parana was 

 put down on the map two degrees out of its proper place. 

 He, with his party, was the first to find out its sources, 

 the first to traverse its upper course, the first to map its 

 length. He and his assistants performed a similar service 

 for the Juruena, discovering the sources, discovering and 

 descending some of the branches, and for the first time 

 making a trustworthy map of the main river itself, until 

 its junction with the Tapajos. Near the watershed be- 

 tween the Juruena and the Gy-Parana he established his 

 farthest station to the westward, named Jose Bonofacio, 

 after one of the chief republican patriots of Brazil. A 

 couple of days' march northwestward from this station, 

 he in 1909 came across a part of the stream of a river 

 running northward between the Gy-Parana and the Ju- 

 ruena; he could only guess where it debouched, believing 

 it to be into the Madeira, although it was possible that 

 it entered the Gy-Parana or Tapajos. The region through 

 which it flows was unknown, no civilized man having ever 

 penetrated it; and as all conjecture as to what the river 

 was, as to its length, and as to its place of entering into 

 some highway river, was mere guesswork, he had entered 

 it on his sketch maps as the Rio da Duvida, the River of 

 Doubt. Among the officers of the Brazilian Army and the 

 scientific civilians who have accompanied him there have 

 been not only expert cartographers, photographers, and 

 telegraphists, but astronomers, geologists, botanists, and 

 zoologists. Their reports, published in excellent shape by 

 the Brazilian Government, make an invaluable series of 

 volumes, reflecting the highest credit on the explorers, and 

 on the government itself. Colonel Rondon's own accounts 



