THE RAPIDS AND CANYONS OF THE URUBAMBA 19 



tory is difficult enough for men with capital; for men with- 

 out capital it is impossible. Such men either become affiliated 

 with organized companies or get out of the region when they 

 can. A few, made desperate by risks and losses, cheat and steal 

 their way to rubber. Two years before our trip an Italian had 

 murdered two Frenchmen just below the Pongo and stolen their 

 rubber cargo, whereupon he was shot by Machigangas under the 

 leadership of Domingo, the chief who was with us on a journey 

 from Pongo de Mainique to the mouth of the Timpia. After- 

 ward they brought his skull to the top of a pass along the forest 

 trail and set it up on a cliff at the very edge of Machiganga-land 

 as a warning to others of his kind. 



At Mulanquiato we secured five Machigangas and a boy inter- 

 preter, and on August 17 made the last and most difficult portion 

 of our journey. We found these Indians much more skilful than 

 our earlier boatmen. Well-trained, alert, powerful, and with ex- 

 cellent team-play, they swept the canoe into this or that thread 

 of the current, and took one after another of the rapids with the 

 greatest confidence. No sooner had we passed the Sintulini rapids, 

 fully a mile long, than we reached the mouth of the Pomareni. 

 This swift tributary comes in almost at right angles to the main 

 river and gives rise to a confusing mass of standing waves and 

 conflicting currents rendered still more difficult by the whirlpool 

 just below the junction. So swift is the circling current of the 

 maelstrom that the water is hollowed out like a great bowl, a really 

 formidable point and one of our most dangerous passages ; a little 

 too far to the right and we should be thrown over against the cliff- 

 face; a little too far to the left and we should be caught in the 

 whirlpool. Once in the swift current the canoe became as help- 

 less as a chip. It was turned this way and that, each turn head- 

 ing it apparently straight for destruction. But the Indians had 

 judged their position well, and though we seemed each moment in 

 a worse predicament, we at last skimmed the edge of the whirl- 

 pool and brought our canoe to shore just beyond its rim. 



A little farther on we came to the narrow gateway of the 

 Pongo, where the entire volume of the river flows between cliffs 



