DOWN AN UNKNOWN RIVER 285 



wood. Others, including both palms and ordinary trees, 

 showed an even stranger peculiarity. The trunk, near the 

 base, but sometimes six or eight feet from the ground, was 

 split into a dozen or twenty branches or small trunks which 

 sloped outward in tent-like shape, each becoming a root. 

 The larger trees of this type looked as if their trunks were 

 seated on the tops of the pole frames of Indian tepees. At 

 one point in the stream, to our great surprise, we saw a 

 flying-fish. It skimmed the water like a swallow for over 

 twenty yards. 



Although we made only ten kilometres we worked hard 

 all day. The last canoes were brought down and moored 

 to the bank at nightfall. Our tents were pitched in the 

 darkness. 



Next day we made thirteen kilometres. We ran, all 

 told, a little over an hour and three-quarters. Seven hours 

 were spent in getting past a series of rapids at which the 

 portage, over rocky and difficult ground, was a kilometre 

 long. The canoes were run down empty — a hazardous run, 

 in which one of them upset. 



Yet while we were actually on the river, paddling and 

 floating down-stream along the reaches of swift, smooth 

 water, it was very lovely. When we started in the morn- 

 ing the day was overcast and the air was heavy with vapor. 

 Ahead of us the shrouded river stretched between dim 

 walls of forest, half-seen in the mist. Then the sun burned 

 up the fog, and loomed through it in a red splendor that 

 changed first to gold and then to molten white. In the 

 dazzling light, under the brilliant blue of the sky, every 

 detail of the magnificent forest was vivid to the eye: the 

 great trees, the network of bush ropes, the caverns of 



