250 IN THE WILDS OF SOUTH AMERICA 



cies, representing as many families; there were files of 

 black howlers, the males jet-black, while the females are 

 of a straw-color, moving leisurely through the branches; 

 troops of dainty squirrel-monkeys, with deep-chestnut 

 backs, grayish heads, and white faces, scampered over the 

 tops of the lower trees. Black spider-monkeys sat in the 

 highest crotches and gazed down at us in stupid perplexity, 

 and once we startled a family of woolly little night-monkeys 

 of a grayish color, which had selected a thick clump of over- 

 hanging vegetation as their diurnal sleeping-place. Large 

 flocks of blue-and-yellow macaws, flying two by two, crossed 

 the river high overhead, doubtless on their way to some 

 choice feeding-ground. Kingfishers sped away in front of 

 the hurrying batelao, and from the depths of the woods 

 came the muffled sound of an ivory-bill's tapping on a hol- 

 low trunk. 



That night we reached the junction of the rivers Com- 

 memoracao and Pimento, Bueno, the latter a stream not 

 less than a thousand yards wide, with a great volume of 

 water. The river formed by the confluence of these two 

 streams is known as the Gy-Parana. We had covered a 

 distance of eighty kilometres. In ascending, it had taken 

 the batelao nineteen days to cover the same stretch of river 

 that we had just descended in one day. 



Of course, the surveying canoes could not travel at this 

 rapid pace, so the two parties became separated. In the 

 very beginning Captain Amilcar's party had suffered an 

 accident which came near ending fatally for several of the 

 men in his canoe. Their work necessitated frequent halts, 

 and to bring the dugouts to a stop while racing down-stream 

 was no easy task; so they had adopted the method of driv- 

 ing them into the vegetation and then holding on to the 

 branches while a sight was taken with the telemeter. On 

 one of these occasions a bushmaster fully seven feet long 

 was shaken from the overhanging brush and fell into the 

 canoe ; the panic-stricken crew leaped into the water. Cap- 

 tain Amilcar retained his presence of mind and shot the 



