The River of Doubt 253 



went down the sky cleared. The stars were brilliant 

 overhead, and the new moon hung in the west. It was 

 a pleasant night, the air almost cool, and we slept soundly. 

 Next morning the two surveying canoes left imme- 

 diately after breakfast. An hour later the two pairs of 

 lashed canoes pushed off. I kept our canoe to let Cherrie 

 collect, for in the early hours we could hear a number of 

 birds in the woods near by. The most interesting birds 

 he shot were a cotinga, brilliant turquoise-blue with a 

 magenta-purple throat, and a big woodpecker, black above 

 and cinnamon below with an entirely red head and neck. 

 It was almost noon before we started. We saw a few 

 more birds ; there were fresh tapir and paca tracks at one 

 point where we landed; once we heard howler monkeys 

 from the depth of the forest, and once we saw a big otter 

 in midstream. As we drifted and paddled down the 

 swirling brown current, through the vivid rain-drenched 

 green of the tropic forest, the trees leaned over the river 

 from both banks. When those that had fallen in the 

 river at some narrow point were very tall, or where it 

 happened that two fell opposite each other, they formed 

 barriers which the men in the leading canoes cleared with 

 their axes. There were many palms, both the burity 

 with its stiff fronds like enormous fans, and a handsome 

 species of bacaba, with very long, gracefully curving 

 fronds. In places the palms stood close together, tower- 

 ing and slender, their stems a stately colonnade, their 

 fronds an arched fretwork against the sky. Butterflies 

 of many hues fluttered over the river. The day was over- 

 cast, with showers of rain. When the sun broke through 

 rifts in the clouds, his shafts turned the forest to gold. 



