276 THROUGH THE BRAZILIAN WILDERNESS 



the skin of our teeth, and managed to make the bank and 

 moor our dugouts. It was a narrow escape from grave dis- 

 aster. The second pair of lashed dugouts profited by our 

 experience, made the run — with risk, but with less risk — 

 and moored beside us. Then all the loads were taken out, 

 and the empty canoes were run down through the least 

 dangerous channels among the islands. 



This was a long portage, and we camped at the foot of 

 the rapids, having made nearly seven kilometres. Here a 

 little river, a rapid stream of volume equal to the Duvida 

 at the point where we first embarked, joined from the 

 west. Colonel Rondon and Kermit came to it first, and 

 the former named it Rio Kermit. There was in it a water- 

 fall about six or eight feet high, just above the junction. 

 Here we found plenty of fish. Lyra caught two pacu, 

 good-sized, deep-bodied fish. They were delicious eating. 

 Antonio the Parecis said that these fish never came up 

 heavy rapids in which there were falls they had to jump. 

 We could only hope that he was correct, as in that case 

 the rapids we would encounter in the future would rarely 

 be so serious as to necessitate our dragging the heavy dug- 

 outs overland. Passing the rapids we had hitherto en- 

 countered had meant severe labor and some danger. But 

 the event showed that he was mistaken. The worst rapids 

 were ahead of us. 



While our course as a whole had been almost due north, 

 and sometimes east of north, yet where there were rapids 

 the river had generally, although not always, turned west- 

 ward. This seemed to indicate that to the east of us there 

 was a low northward projection of the central plateau 

 across which we had travelled on mule-back. This is the 



