DOWN AN UNKNOWN RIVER 313 



On the loth we repeated the proceedings : a short quick 

 run; a few hundred metres' portage, occupying, however, 

 at least a couple of hours; again a few minutes' run; again 

 other rapids. We again made less than five kilometres; in 

 the two days we had been descending nearly a metre for 

 every kilometre we made in advance; and it hardly seemed 

 as if this state of things could last, for the aneroid showed 

 that we were getting very low down. How I longed for 

 a big Maine birch-bark, such as that in which I once went 

 down the Mattawamkeag at high water! It would have 

 slipped down these rapids as a girl trips through a country 

 dance. But our loaded dugouts would have shoved their 

 noses under every curl. The country was lovely. The 

 wide river, now in one channel, now in several channels, 

 wound among hills; the shower-freshened forest glistened 

 in the sunlight; the many kinds of beautiful palm-fronds 

 and the huge pacova-leaves stamped the peculiar look of 

 the tropics on the whole landscape — it was like passing 

 by water through a gigantic botanical garden. In the 

 afternoon we got an elderly toucan, a piranha, and a rea- 

 sonably edible side-necked river-turtle; so we had fresh 

 meat again. We slept as usual in earshot of rapids. We 

 had been out six weeks, and almost all the time we had 

 been engaged in wearily working our way down and past 

 rapid after rapid. Rapids are by far the most dangerous 

 enemies of explorers and travellers who journey along these 

 rivers. 



Next day was a repetition of the same work. All the 

 morning was spent in getting the loads to the foot of the 

 rapids at the head of which we were encamped, down which 

 the canoes were run empty. Then for thirty or forty 



