DOWN AN UNKNOWN RIVER 297 



ing else than hunting them we might perchance have killed 

 something; but the chance was much too uncertain, the 

 work we were doing was too hard and wearing, and the 

 need of pressing forward altogether too great to permit 

 us to spend any time in such manner. The hunting had 

 to come in incidentally. This type of well-nigh impene- 

 trable forest is the one in which it is most difficult to get 

 even what little game exists therein. A couple of curas- 

 sows and a big monkey were killed by the colonel and 

 Kermit. On the day the monkey was brought in Lyra, 

 Kermit, and their four associates had spent from sunrise 

 to sunset in severe and at moments dangerous toil among 

 the rocks and in the swift water, and the fresh meat was 

 appreciated. The head, feet, tail, skin, and entrails were 

 boiled for the gaunt and ravenous dogs. The flesh gave 

 each of us a few mouthfuls; and how good those mouth- 

 fuls tasted ! 



Cherrie, in addition to being out after birds in every 

 spare moment, helped in all emergencies. He was a vet- 

 eran in the work of the tropic wilderness. We talked to- 

 gether often, and of many things, for our views of life, and 

 of a man's duty to his wife and children, to other men, and 

 to women, and to the state in peace and war, were in all 

 essentials the same. His father had served all through the 

 Civil War, entering an Iowa cavalry regiment as a private 

 and coming out as a captain; his breast-bone was shattered 

 by a blow from a musket-butt, in hand-to-hand fighting at 

 Shiloh. 



During this portage the weather favored us. We were 

 coming toward the close of the rainy season. On the last 

 day of the month, when we moved camp to the foot of the 



