THE RIVER OF DOUBT 251 



under than above water. Continually we found ourselves 

 travelling between stretches of marshy forest where for 

 miles the water stood or ran among the trees. Once we 

 passed a hillock. We saw brilliantly colored parakeets 

 and trogons. At last the slow current quickened. Faster 

 it went, and faster, until it began to run like a mill-race, 

 and we heard the roar of rapids ahead. We pulled to the 

 right bank, moored the canoes, and while most of the men 

 pitched camp two or three of them accompanied us to ex- 

 amine the rapids. We had made twenty kilometres. 



We soon found that the rapids were a serious obstacle. 

 There were many curls, and one or two regular falls, per- 

 haps six feet high. It would have been impossible to run 

 them, and they stretched for nearly a mile. The carry, 

 however, which led through woods and over rocks in a 

 nearly straight line, was somewhat shorter. It was not an 

 easy portage over which to carry heavy loads and drag 

 heavy dugout canoes. At the point where the descent was 

 steepest there were great naked flats of friable sandstone 

 and conglomerate. Over parts of these, where there was a 

 surface of fine sand, there was a growth of coarse grass. 

 Other parts were bare and had been worn by the weather 

 into fantastic shapes — one projection looked like an old- 

 fashioned beaver hat upside down. In this place, where 

 the naked flats of rock showed the projection of the ledge 

 through which the river had cut its course, the torrent 

 rushed down a deep, sheer-sided, and extremely narrow 

 channel. At one point it was less than two yards across, 

 and for quite a distance not more than five or six yards. 

 Yet only a mile or two above the rapids the deep, placid 

 river was at least a hundred yards wide. It seemed 



