28o Through the Brazilian Wilderness 



walked back to where Lobo's body lay. Sure enough he 

 found him, slain by two arrows. One arrow-head was in 

 him, and near by was a strange stick used in the very 

 primitive method of fishing of all these Indians. An- 

 tonio recognized its purpose. The Indians, who were ap- 

 parently two or three in number, had fled. Some beads 

 and trinkets were left on the spot to show that we were 

 not angry and were friendly. 



Meanwhile Cherrie stayed at the head and I at the 

 foot of the portage as guards. Luiz and Antonio Cor- 

 rea brought down one canoe safely. The next was the 

 new canoe, which was very large and heavy, being made 

 of wood that would not float. In the rapids the rope 

 broke, and the canoe was lost, Luiz being nearly drowned. 



It was a very bad thing to lose the canoe, but it was 

 even worse to lose the rope and pulleys. This meant 

 that it would be physically impossible to hoist big canoes 

 up even small hills or rocky hillocks, such as had been 

 so frequent beside the many rapids we had encountered. 

 It was not wise to spend the four days necessary to build 

 new canoes where we were, in danger of attack from 

 the Indians. Moreover, new rapids might be very near, 

 in which case the new canoes would hamper us. Yet 

 the four remaining canoes would not carry all the loads 

 and all the men, no matter how we cut the loads down ; 

 and we intended to cut ever3^hing down at once. We 

 had been gone eighteen days. We had used over a third 

 of our food. We had gone only 125 kilometres, and it 

 was probable that we had at least five times, perhaps six 

 or seven times, this distance still to go. We had taken 

 a fortnight to descend rapids amounting in the aggre- 



