Down an Unknown River 293 



trees were covered with yellow-white blossoms. Others 

 bore red blossoms. Many of the big trees, of different 

 kinds, were buttressed at the base with great thin walls of 

 wood. Others, including both palms and ordinary trees, 

 showed an even stranger peculiarity. The trunk, near 

 the base, but sometimes six or eight feet from the ground, 

 was split into a dozen or twenty branches or small trunks 

 which sloped outward in tent-like shape, each becoming 

 a root. The larger trees of this type looked as if their 

 trunks were seated on the tops of the pole frames of 

 Indian tepees. At one point in the stream, to our great 

 surprise, we saw a flying-fish. It skimmed the water like 

 a swallow for over twenty yards. 



Although we made only ten kilometres we worked 

 hard all day. The last canoes were brought down and 

 moored to the bank at nightfall. Our tents were pitched 

 in the darkness. 



Next day we made thirteen kilometres. We ran, all 

 told, a little over an hour and three-quarters. Seven 

 hours were spent in getting past a series of rapids at 

 which the portage, over rocky and difficult ground, was 

 a kilometre long. The canoes were run down empty — 

 a hazardous run, in which one of them upset. 



Yet while we were actually on the river, paddling and 

 floating down-stream along the reaches of swift, smooth 

 water, it was very lovely. When we started in the morn- 

 ing the day was overcast and the air was heavy with 

 vapor. Ahead of us the shrouded river stretched be- 

 tween dim walls of forest, half-seen in the mist. Then 

 the sun burned up the fog, and loomed through it in a 

 red splendor that changed first to gold and then to molten 



