3o6 Through the BraziHan Wilderness 



Cherrie, in addition to being out after birds in every 

 spare moment, helped in all emergencies. He was a vet- 

 eran in the work of the tropic wilderness. We talked 

 together often, and of many things, for our views of life, 

 and of a man's duty to his wife and children, to other 

 men, and to women, and to the state in peace and war, 

 were in all essentials the same. His father had served 

 all through the Civil War, entering an Iowa cavalry 

 regiment as a private and coming out as a captain; his 

 breast-bone was shattered by a blow from a musket-butt, 

 in hand-to-hand fighting at Shiloh. 



During this portage the weather favored us. We 

 were coming toward the close of the rainy season. On 

 the last day of the month, when we moved camp to the 

 foot of the gorge, there was a thunder-storm ; but on the 

 whole we were not bothered by rain until the last night, 

 when it rained heavily, driving under the fly so as to wet 

 my cot and bedding. However, I slept comfortably 

 enough, rolled in the damp blanket. Without the blanket 

 I should have been uncomfortable; a blanket is a neces- 

 sity for health. On the third day Lyra and Kermit, 

 with their daring and hard-working watermen, after 

 wearing labor, succeeded in getting five canoes through 

 the worst of the rapids to the chief fall. The sixth, 

 which was frail and weak, had its bottom beaten out on 

 the jagged rocks of the broken water. On this night, 

 although I thought I had put my clothes out of reach, 

 both the termites and the carregadores ants got at them, 

 ate holes in one boot, ate one leg of my drawers, and 

 riddled my handkerchief ; and I now had nothing to re- 

 place anything that was destroyed. 



