3IO Through the Brazilian Wilderness 



disease and starvation. Wholesale disasters to South 

 American exploring parties have been frequent. The 

 first recent effort to descend one of the unknown rivers 

 to the Amazon from the Brazilian highlands resulted in 

 such a disaster. It was undertaken in 1889 by a party 

 about as large as ours under a Brazilian engineer officer, 

 Colonel Telles Peres. In descending some rapids they 

 lost everything — canoes, food, medicine, implements — 

 everything. Fever smote them, and then starvation. All 

 of them died except one officer and two men, who were 

 rescued months later. Recently, in Guiana, a wilder- 

 ness veteran, Andre, lost two-thirds of his party by star- 

 vation. Genuine wilderness exploration is as dangerous 

 as warfare. The conquest of wild nature demands the 

 utmost vigor, hardihood, and daring, and takes from the 

 conquerors a heavy toll of life and health. 



Lyra, Kermit, and Cherrie, with four of the men, 

 worked the canoes half-way down the canyon. Again 

 and again it was touch and go whether they could get by 

 a given point. At one spot the channel of the furious 

 torrent was only fifteen yards across. One canoe was 

 lost, so that of the seven with which we had started only 

 two were left. Cherrie labored with the other men at 

 times, and also stood as guard over them, for, while actu- 

 ally working, of course no one could carry a rifle. Ker- 

 mit's experience in bridge building was invaluable in 

 enabling him to do the rope work by which alone it was 

 possible to get the canoes down the canyon. He and 

 Lyra had now been in the water for days. Their clothes 

 were never dry. Their shoes were rotten. The bruises 

 on their feet and legs had become sores. On their bodies 



