up the River of Tapirs i6i 



leaves, tall trees with foliage as delicate as lace, trees with 

 buttressed trunks, trees with boles rising smooth and 

 straight to lofty heights, all woven together by a tangle 

 of vines, crowded down to the edge of the river. Their 

 drooping branches hung down to the water, forming a 

 screen through which it was impossible to see the bank, 

 and exceedingly difficult to penetrate to the bank. Rarely 

 one of them showed flowers — ^large white blossoms, or 

 small red or yellow blossoms. More often the lilac flow- 

 ers of the begonia-vine made large patches of color. In- 

 numerable epiph)rtes covered the limbs, and even grew on 

 the roughened trunks. We saw little bird life — a darter 

 now and then, and kingfishers flitting from perch to perch. 

 At long intervals we passed a ranch. At one the large, 

 red-tiled, whitewashed house stood on a grassy slope be- 

 hind mango-trees. The wooden shutters were thrown 

 back from the imglazed windows, and the big rooms were 

 utterly bare — ^not a book, not an ornament. A palm, 

 loaded with scores of the pendulous nests of the trou- 

 pials, stood near the door. Behind were orange-trees and 

 coffee-plants, and near by fields of bananas, rice, and 

 tobacco. The sallow foreman was courteous and hospi- 

 table. His dark-skinned women-folk kept in the furtive 

 background. Like most of the ranches, it was owned by 

 a company with headquarters at Caceres. 



The trip was pleasant and interesting, although there 

 was not much to do on the boat. It was too crowded to 

 move around save with a definite purpose. We enjoyed 

 the scenery; we talked — in English, Portuguese, bad 

 French, and broken German. Some of us wrote. Fiala 

 made sketches of improved tents, hammocks, and other 



