THE ROOSEVELT EXPEDITION 205 



leo we proceeded to the end. of the line on the daily work- 

 train, and pitched camp on the bank of a small stream, the 

 Rio Negro. 



Our camp was merely a rough shed built of sheets of 

 corrugated iron supported on poles driven into the ground. 

 The river-water was salt and unfit for use, so each morning 

 several large jugs of fresh drinking-water were sent in from 

 Porto Gallileo, together with a supply of provisions. All 

 about lay marshes, swamps, and large grass-covered areas, 

 the latter type of country predominating. 



The Rio Negro teemed with a species of piranha. They 

 are deep-bodied and blunt-nosed, and the jaws are armed 

 with sharp, triangular teeth. Although they grow to a 

 length of eighteen inches in the Orinoco and some of the 

 other large South American rivers, those we found in the 

 Rio Negro did not exceed eight inches in length; but they 

 travelled in enormous schools, and made up in numbers 

 what they lacked in size. During the hours of late after- 

 noon, when our day's work was over, I tried many experi- 

 ments with the piranhas. They have a bad reputation and 

 are known to attack animals much larger than themselves, 

 and even human beings who enter the water. Usually they 

 are slow to attack unless their appetite has been whetted 

 by a taste of blood from a wound; then, however, their 

 work is done with lightning-like quickness, and unless the 

 luckless victim succeeds in reaching the shore immediately 

 nothing but the skeleton will remain within a very short 

 time. If I fished with a hook and line baited with any 

 kind of raw meat the fish would scarcely wait for the bait 

 to sink below the surface of the water. The number caught 

 depended entirely upon the amount of time spent in fish- 

 ing. The bodies of large mammals, such as monkeys, after 

 we had skinned them, were thrown into the stream; in- 

 stantly the ravenous hordes charged the spot and tore 

 greedily at the bloody flesh; so great were their numbers 

 that they threw one another out of the water in their mad 

 struggles to reach the gory repast. On several occasions 



