296 Through the BraziHan Wilderness 



body had enough. We would have welcomed that tapir. 

 So far the game, fish, and fruit had been too scarce to 

 be an element of weight in our food supply. In an 

 exploring trip like ours, through a difficult and utterly 

 unknown country, especially if densely forested, there is 

 little time to halt, and game cannot be counted on. It is 

 only in lands like our own West thirty years ago, like 

 South Africa in the middle of the last century, like East 

 Africa to-day that game can be made the chief food sup- 

 ply. On this trip our only substantial food supply from 

 the country hitherto had been that furnished'by the palm- 

 tops. Two men were detailed every day to cut down 

 palms for food. 



A kilometre and a half after leaving this camp we 

 came on a stretch of big rapids. The river here twists 

 in loops, and we had heard the roaring of these rapids 

 the previous afternoon. Then we passed out of earshot 

 of them ; but Antonio Correa, our best waterman, insisted 

 all along that the roaring meant rapids worse than any 

 we had encountered for some days. "I was brought up 

 in the water, and I know it like a fish, and all its sounds," 

 said he. He was right. We had to carry the loads 

 nearly a kilometre that afternoon, and the canoes were 

 pulled out on the bank so that they might be in readiness 

 to be dragged overland next day. Rondon, Lyra, Ker- 

 mit, and Antonio Correa explored both sides of the river. 

 On the opposite or left bank they found the mouth of a 

 considerable river, bigger than the Rio Kermit, flowing in 

 from the west and making its entrance in the middle of 

 the rapids. This river we christened the Taunay, in 

 honor of a distinguished Brazilian, an explorer, a soldier. 



