THE HIGHLAND WILDERNESS 181 



thereby doing more effective work. The rest of us con- 

 tinued with the mule-train, as was necessary. 



It was always a picturesque sight when camp was 

 broken, and again at nightfall when the laden mules came 

 stringing in and their burdens were thrown down, while 

 the tents were pitched and the fires lit. We breakfasted 

 before leaving camp, the aluminum cups and plates being 

 placed on ox-hides, round which we sat, on the ground or 

 on camp-stools. We fared well, on rice, beans, and crack- 

 ers, with canned corned beef, and salmon or any game 

 that had been shot, and coffee, tea, and matte. I then 

 usually sat down somewhere to write, and when the mules 

 were nearly ready I popped my writing-materials into my 

 duffel-bag — war-sack, as we would have called it in the 

 old days on the plains. I found that the mules usually 

 arrived so late in the afternoon or evening that I could 

 not depend upon being able to write at that time. Of 

 course, if we made a very early start I could not write at 

 all. At night there were no mosquitoes. In the daytime 

 gnats and sand-flies and horse-flies sometimes bothered us 

 a little, but not much. Small stingless bees lit on us in 

 numbers and crawled over the skin, making a slight tick- 

 ling; but we did not mind them until they became very 

 numerous. There was a good deal of rain, but not enough 

 to cause any serious annoyance. 



Colonel Rondon and Lieutenant Lyra held many dis- 

 cussions as to whither the Rio da Duvida flowed, and where 

 its mouth might be. Its provisional name — "River of 

 Doubt" — was given it precisely because of this ignorance 

 concerning it; an ignorance which it was one of the pur- 

 poses of our trip to dispel. It might go into the Gy- 



