248 THROUGH THE BRAZILIAN WILDERNESS 



volume of water, the river widened without losing its 

 depth. It was so high that it had overflowed and stood 

 among the trees on the lower levels. Only the higher 

 stretches were dry. On the sheer banks where we landed 

 we had to push the canoes for yards or rods through the 

 branches of the submerged trees, hacking and hewing. 

 There were occasional bays and ox-bows from which the 

 current had shifted. In these the coarse marsh grass grew 

 tall. 



This evening we made camp on a flat of dry ground, 

 densely wooded, of course, directly on the edge of the 

 river and five feet above it. It was fine to see the speed 

 and sinewy ease with which the choppers cleared an open 

 space for the tents. Next morning, when we bathed before 

 sunrise, we dived into deep water right from the shore, 

 and from the moored canoes. This second day we made 

 sixteen and a half kilometres along the course of the river, 

 and nine kilometres in a straight line almost due north. 



The following day, March i, there was much rain — 

 sometimes showers, sometimes vertical sheets of water. 

 Our course was somewhat west of north and we made 

 twenty and a half kilometres. We passed signs of Indian 

 habitation. There were abandoned palm-leaf shelters on 

 both banks. On the left bank we came to two or three 

 old Indian fields, grown up with coarse fern and studded 

 with the burned skeletons of trees. At the mouth of a 

 brook which entered from the right some sticks stood in 

 the water, marking the site of an old fish-trap. At one 

 point we found the tough vine hand-rail of an Indian 

 bridge running right across the river, a couple of feet above 

 it. Evidently the bridge had been built at low water. 



