To the Amazon arid Home 339 



on the best terms, and the former are even more invet- 

 erate enemies of the wild Indians than are the latter. 



By mid-forenoon on April 26 we had passed the last 

 dangerous rapids. The paddles were plied with hearty- 

 good will, Cherrie and Kermit, as usual, working like the 

 camaradas, and the canoes went dancing down the broad, 

 rapid river. The equatorial forest crowded on either 

 hand to the water's edge ; and, although the river was fall- 

 ing, it was still so high that in many places little islands 

 were completely submerged, and the current raced among 

 the trunks of the green trees. At one o'clock we came to 

 the mouth of the Castanho proper, and in sight of the tent 

 of Lieutenant Pyrineus, with the flags of the United 

 States and Brazil flying before it ; and, with rifles firing 

 from the canoes and the shore, we moored at the landing 

 of the neat, soldierly, well-kept camp. The upper Ari- 

 puanan, a river of substantially the same volume as the 

 Castanho, but broader at this point, and probably of less 

 length, here joined the Castanho from the east, and the 

 two together formed what the rubber-men called the 

 lower Aripuanan. The mouth of this was indicated, and 

 sometimes named, on the maps, but only as a small and 

 unimportant stream. 



We had been two months in the canoes; from the 

 27th of February to the 26th of April. We had gone 

 over 750 kilometres. The river from its source, near 

 the thirteenth degree, to where it became navigable and 

 we entered it, had a course of some 200 kilometres — prob- 

 ably more, perhaps 300 kilometres. Therefore we had 

 now put on the map a river nearly 1,000 kilometres in 

 length of which the existence was not merely unknown 



