298 Through the BraziHan Wilderness 



Gy-Parana or the Tapajos. It was possible that it went 

 into the Canuma, a big affluent of the Madeira low down, 

 and next to the Tapajos. It was more probable that it 

 was the headwaters of the Aripuanan, a river which, as 

 I have said, was not even named on the excellent English 

 map of Brazil I carried. Nothing but the mouth had 

 been known to any geographer; but the lower course had 

 long been known to rubber-gatherers, and recently a com- 

 mission from the government of Amazonas had part- 

 way ascended one branch of it — ^not as far as the rubber- 

 gatherers had gone, and, as it turned out, not the branch 

 we came down. 



Two of our men were down with fever. Another 

 man, Julio, a fellow of powerful frame, was utterly 

 worthless, being an inborn, lazy shirk with the heart of 

 a ferocious cur in the body of a bullock. The others were 

 good men, some of them very good indeed. They were 

 under the immediate supervision of Pedrinho Craveiro, 

 who was first-class in every way. 



This camp was very lovely. It was on the edge of a 

 bay, into which the river broadened immediately below 

 the rapids. There was a beach of white sand, where we 

 bathed and washed our clothes. All around us, and 

 across the bay, and on both sides of the long water-street 

 made by the river, rose the splendid forest. There were 

 flocks of parakeets colored green, blue, and red. Big 

 toucans called overhead, lustrous green-black in color, 

 with white throats, red gorgets, red-and-yellow tail co- 

 verts, and huge black-and-yellow bills. Here the soil was 

 fertile ; it will be a fine site for a coffee-plantation when 

 this region is open to settlement. Surely such a rich and 



