244 THROUGH THE BRAZILIAN WILDERNESS 



remaining eight camaradas there were sixteen in all 

 were equally divided between our two pairs of lashed canoes. 

 Although our personal baggage was cut down to the limit 

 necessary for health and efficiency, yet on such a trip as 

 ours, where scientific work has to be done and where food 

 for twenty-two men for an unknown period of time has 

 to be carried, it is impossible not to take a good deal of 

 stuff; and the seven dugouts were too heavily laden. 



The paddlers were a strapping set. They were expert 

 river-men and men of the forest, skilled veterans in wilder- 

 ness work. They were lithe as panthers and brawny as 

 bears. They swam like water-dogs. They were equally 

 at home with pole and paddle, with axe and machete; and 

 one was a good cook and others were good men around 

 camp. They looked like pirates in the pictures of Howard 

 Pyle or Maxfield Parrish; one or two of them were pirates, 

 and one worse than a pirate; but most of them were hard- 

 working, willing, and cheerful. They were white, or, 

 rather, the olive of southern Europe, black, copper- 

 colored, and of all intermediate shades. In my canoe Luiz 

 the steersman, the headman, was a Matto Grosso negro; 

 Julio the bowsman was from Bahia and of pure Portuguese 

 blood; and the third man, Antonio, was a Parcels Indian. 



The actual surveying of the river was done by Colonel 

 Rondon and Lyra, with Kermit as their assistant. Kermit 

 went first in his little canoe with the sighting-rod, on which 

 two disks, one red and one white, were placed a metre 

 apart. He selected a place which commanded as long 

 vistas as possible up-stream and down, and which there- 

 fore might be at the angle of a bend; landed; cut away 

 the branches which obstructed the view; and set up the 



