294 Through the BraziUan Wilderness 



white. In the dazzling light, under the brilliant blue of 

 the sky, every detail of the magnificent forest was vivid 

 to the eye: the great trees, the network of bush ropes, 

 the caverns of greenery, where thick-leaved vines covered 

 all things else. Wherever there was a hidden bowlder 

 the surface of the current was broken by waves. In one 

 place, in midstream, a pyramidal rock thrust itself six 

 feet above the surface of the river. On the banks we 

 found fresh Indian sign. 



At home in Vermont Cherrie is a farmer, with a farm 

 of six hundred acres, most of it woodland. As we sat at 

 the foot of the rapids, watching for the last dugouts with 

 their naked paddlers to swing into sight round the bend 

 through the white water, we talked of the northern spring 

 that was just beginning. He sells cream, eggs, poultry, 

 potatoes, honey, occasionally pork and veal; but at this 

 season it was the time for the maple-sugar crop. He has 

 a sugar orchard, where he taps twelve hundred trees and 

 hopes soon to tap as many more in addition. Said Cher- 

 rie: "It's a busy time now for Fred Rice" — ^Fred Rice is 

 the hired man, and in sugar time the Cherrie boys help 

 him with enthusiasm, and, moreover, are paid with exact 

 justice for the work they do. There is much wild life 

 about the farm, although it is near Brattleboro. One 

 night in early spring a bear left his tracks near the sugar- 

 house ; and now and then in summer Cherrie has had to 

 sleep in the garden to keep the deer away from the beans, 

 cabbages, and beets. 



There was not much bird life in the forest, but Cherrie 

 kept getting species new to the collection. At this camp 

 he shot an interesting little ant-thrush. It was the size 



