258 THROUGH THE BRAZILIAN WILDERNESS 



I stirred it up it jumped to a small twig, catching hold 

 with the disks of its finger-tips, and balancing itself with 

 unexpected ease for so big a creature, and then hopped to 

 the ground and again stood motionless. Evidently it trusted 

 for safety to escaping observation. We saw some monkeys 

 and fresh tapir sign, and Kermit shot a jacu for the pot. 



At about three o'clock I was in the lead, when the cur- 

 rent began to run more quickly. We passed over one or 

 two decided ripples, and then heard the roar of rapids 

 ahead, while the stream began to race. We drove the canoe 

 into the bank, and then went down a tapir trail, which 

 led alongside the river, to reconnoitre. A quarter of a 

 mile's walk showed us that there were big rapids, down 

 which the canoes could not go; and we returned to the 

 landing. All the canoes had gathered there, and Rondon, 

 Lyra, and Kermit started down-stream to explore. They 

 returned in an hour, with the information that the rapids 

 continued for a long distance, with falls and steep pitches 

 of broken water, and that the portage would take several 

 days. We made camp just above the rapids. Ants 

 swarmed, and some of them bit savagely. Our men, in 

 clearing away the forest for our tents, left several very 

 tall and slender accashy palms; the bole of this palm is as 

 straight as an arrow and is crowned with delicate, grace- 

 fully curved fronds. We had come along the course of the 

 river almost exactly a hundred kilometres; it had twisted 

 so that we were only about fifty-five kilometres north of 

 our starting-point. The rock was porphyritic. 



The 7th, 8th, and 9th we spent in carrying the loads 

 and dragging and floating the dugouts past the series of 

 rapids at whose head we had stopped. 



