312 IN THE WILDS OF SOUTH AMERICA 



The meaning of Mamore, which is a Yuracare word, is 

 "mother of the human race." They have a legend to the 

 effect that far away, at the source of the Sajta, which is the 

 beginning of the furthermost tributary of the mighty river, 

 there are three rocks of pyramidal shape that rise in ter- 

 races, one above the other, and in the heart of which the 

 stream rises. In the very beginning of things this rock 

 gave birth to the first people, for which reason it is called 

 "Mamore." Later the name was also given to the river 

 because its water, teeming with fish, supplied them with 

 food and offered an easy highway for the dissemination of 

 the race. 



Arrived at the point of embarkation, the men began to 

 load the five canoes which were waiting, and the women 

 built a fire and cooked lunch. In a short time everything 

 was ready and the canoes moved easily down-stream. The 

 paddlers were adepts at their work, and as a good deal of 

 rivalry existed between the different crews, they kept up 

 an almost continuous race, with the natural consequence 

 that we made good time. The scenery along the Chimore 

 is exactly like that on the upper courses of the many rivers 

 of tropical South America; there is the same monotony of 

 the yellow water highway, flanked by walls of deepest 

 green. One thing that impresses the traveller as much as 

 any other is the immensity of the silent, uninhabited areas; 

 and also their comparative worthlessness. For days and 

 even weeks one may enter deeper and deeper into the heart 

 of the undefiled wilderness, and see always the same dark 

 forest, the hurrying, mysterious streams, and the rafts of 

 low, threatening clouds; hear the annoying buzz and feel 

 the poisonous sting of the insect swarms, and swelter in the 

 humid, enervating climate. The greater part of this coun- 

 try can never be cultivated to any extent, as the annual 

 floods cover it to a depth of many feet; there are very few 

 eminences safe from the inundations, and these are of 

 inconsiderable size. The person who pictures the un- 

 trodden tropics as a paradise of fruits and flowers, teeming 



