2IO Through the Brazilian Wilderness 



waters of a little brook. It was at the spot where nearly 

 seven years previously Rondon and Lyra had camped on 

 the trip when they discovered Utiarity Falls and pene- 

 trated to the Juruena. When they reached this place 

 they had been thirty-six hours without food. They killed 

 a bush deer — a small deer — ^and ate literally every particle. 

 The dogs devoured the entire skin. For much of the 

 time on this trip they lived on wild fruit, and the two 

 dogs that remained alive would wait eagerly under the 

 trees and eat the fruit that was shaken down. 



In the late afternoon the piums were rather bad at this 

 camp, but we had gloves and head-nets, and were not 

 bothered; and although there were some mosquitoes we 

 slept well under our mosquito-nets. The frogs in the 

 swamp uttered a peculiar, loud shout. Miller told of a 

 little tree-frog in Colombia which swelled itself out with 

 air until it looked like the frog in ^sop's fables, and then 

 brayed like a mule; and Cherrie told of a huge frog in 

 Guiana that uttered a short, loud roar. 



Next day the weather was still fair. Our march lay 

 through country like that which we had been traversing 

 for ten days. Skeletons of mules and oxen were more 

 frequent; and once or twice by the wayside we passed 

 the graves of officers or men who had died on the road. 

 Barbed wire encircled the desolate little mounds. We 

 camped on the west bank of the Burity River. Here there 

 is a balsa, or ferry, run by two Parecis Indians, as em- 

 ployees of the Telegraphic Commission, imder the colonel. 

 Each had a thatched house, and each had two wives — ^all 

 these Indians are pagans. All were dressed much like 

 the poorer peasants of the Brazilian back country, and 



