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 THE RIVER OF DOUBT 257 ( 



sting of a small scorpion, and pained severely for a couple 

 of hours. This half-day we made twelve kilometres. 



On the following day we made nineteen kilometres, the 

 river twisting in every direction, but in its general course 

 running a little west of north. Once we stopped at a bee- 

 tree, to get honey. The tree was a towering giant, of the 

 kind called milk-tree, because a thick milky juice runs freely 

 from any cut. Our camaradas eagerly drank the white 

 fluid that flowed from the wounds made by their axes. I 

 tried it. The taste was not unpleasant, but it left a sticky 

 feeling in the mouth. The helmsman of my boat, Luiz, a 

 powerful negro, chopped into the tree, balancing himself 

 with springy ease on a slight scaffolding. The honey was 

 in a hollow, and had been made by medium-sized stingless 

 bees. At the mouth of the hollow they had built a curious 

 entrance of their own, in the shape of a spout of wax about 

 a foot long. At the opening the walls of the spout showed 

 the wax formation, but elsewhere it had become in color 

 and texture indistinguishable from the bark of the tree. 

 The honey was delicious, sweet and yet with a tart fla- 

 vor. The comb differed much from that of our honey-bees. 

 The honey-cells were very large, and the brood-cells, which 

 were small, were in a single instead of a double row. By this 

 tree I came across an example of genuine concealing colora- 

 tion. A huge tree-toad, the size of a bullfrog, was seated 

 upright — not squatted flat — on a big rotten limb. It was 

 absolutely motionless; the yellow brown of its back, and 

 its dark sides, exactly harmonized in color with the light 

 and dark patches on the log; the color was as concealing, 

 here in its natural surroundings, as is the color of our com- 

 mon wood-frog among the dead leaves of our woods. When 



