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Senhor Caripe told us many strange adventures of rub- 

 ber-workers he had met or employed. One of his men, 

 working on the Gy-Parana, got lost and after twenty-eight 

 days found himself on the Madeirainha, which he thus 

 discovered. He was in excellent health, for he had means 

 to start a fire, and he found abundance of Brazil-nuts and 

 big land-tortoises. Senhor Caripe said that the rubber- 

 men now did not go above the ninth degree, or thereabouts, 

 on the upper Aripuanan proper, having found the rubber 

 poor on the reaches above. A year previously five rubber- 

 men, Mundurucu Indians, were working on the Canuma 

 at about that level. It is a difficult stream to ascend or 

 descend. They made excursions into the forest for days 

 at a time after caoutchouc. On one such trip, after fifteen 

 days they, to their surprise, came out on the Aripuanan. 

 They returned and told their "patron" of their discovery; 

 and by his orders took their caoutchouc overland to the 

 Aripuanan, built a canoe, and ran down with their caout- 

 chouc to Manaos. They had now returned and were 

 working on the upper Aripuanan. The Mundurucus and 

 Brazilians are always on the best terms, and the former 

 are even more inveterate enemies of the wild Indians than 

 are the latter. 



By mid-forenoon on April 26 we had passed the last 

 dangerous rapids. The paddles were plied with hearty 

 good will, Cherrie and Kermit, as usual, working like the 

 camaradas, and the canoes went dancing down the broad, 

 rapid river. The equatorial forest crowded on either hand 

 to the water's edge; and, although the river was falling, 

 it was still so high that in many places little islands were 

 completely submerged, and the current raced among the 



