298 THROUGH THE BRAZILIAN WILDERNESS 



gorge, there was a thunder-storm; but on the whole we 

 were not bothered by rain until the last night, when it 

 rained heavily, driving under the fly so as to wet my cot 

 and bedding. However, I slept comfortably enough, rolled 

 in the damp blanket. Without the blanket I should have 

 been uncomfortable; a blanket is a necessity for health. 

 On the third day Lyra and Kermit, with their daring and 

 hard-working watermen, after wearing labor, succeeded in 

 getting five canoes through the worst of the rapids to the 

 chief fall. The sixth, which was frail and weak, had its 

 bottom beaten out on the jagged rocks of the broken water. 

 On this night, although I thought I had put my clothes 

 out of reach, both the termites and the carregadores ants 

 got at them, ate holes in one boot, ate one leg of my drawers, 

 and riddled my handkerchief; and I now had nothing to 

 replace anything that was destroyed. 



Next day Lyra, Kermit, and their camaradas brought 

 the five canoes that were left down to camp. They had in 

 four days accomplished a work of incredible labor and of 

 the utmost importance; for at the first glance it had seemed 

 an absolute impossibility to avoid abandoning the canoes 

 when we found that the river sank into a cataract-broken 

 torrent at the bottom of a canyon-like gorge between steep 

 mountains. On April 2 we once more started, wondering 

 how soon we should strike other rapids in the mountains 

 ahead, and whether in any reasonable time we should, as 

 the aneroid indicated, be so low down that we should nec- 

 essarily be in a plain where we could make a journey of at 

 least a few days without rapids. We had been exactly a 

 month going through an uninterrupted succession of rapids. 

 During that month we had come only about no kilometres, 



