Across Nhambiquara Land 221 



the rainy season, when the amount of baggage that can be 

 taken is strictly limited, entails not only a good deal of 

 work, but also the exercise of considerable ingenuity if 

 the writing and photographing, and especially the preser- 

 vation, of the specimens are to be done in satisfactory 

 shape. 



At the telegraph office we received news that the voy- 

 age of Lauriado and Fiala down the Papagaio had opened 

 with a misadventure. In some bad rapids, not many 

 miles below the falls, two of the canoes had been upset, 

 half of their provisions and all of Fiala's baggage lost, 

 and Fiala himself nearly drowned. The Papagaio is 

 known both at the source and the mouth; to descend it 

 did not represent a plunge into the unknown, as in the case 

 of the Diivida or the Ananas ; but the actual water work, 

 over the part that was unexplored, offered the same pos- 

 sibilities of mischance and disaster. It is a hazardous 

 thing to descend a swift, unknown river rushing through 

 an uninhabited wilderness. To descend or ascend the or- 

 dinary great highway rivers of South America, such as 

 the Amazon, Paraguay, Tapajos, and, in its lower course, 

 the Orinoco, is now so safe and easy, whether by steam- 

 boat or big, native cargo-boat, that people are apt to for- 

 get the very serious difficulties offered by the streams, 

 often themselves great rivers, which run into or form the 

 upper courses of these same water highways. Few 

 things are easier than the former feat, and few more diffi- 

 cult than the latter ; and experience in ordinary travelling 

 on the lower courses of the rivers is of no benefit what- 

 ever in enabling a man to form a judgment as to what can 

 be done, and how to do it, on the upper courses. Failure 



