CHAP. IV] COLONEL RONDON'S WORK 125 



and again his whole party was reduced almost to the 

 last extremity by starvation, disease, hardship, and the 

 overexhaustion due to wearing fatigues. In dealing 

 with the wild, naked savages he showed a combination 

 of fearlessness, wariness, good judgment, and resolute 

 patience and kindliness. The result was that they ulti- 

 mately became his firm friends, guarded the telegraph- 

 lines, and helped the few soldiers left at the isolated, 

 widely separated little posts. He and his assistants 

 explored, and mapped for the first time, the Juruena 

 and the Gy-Parana, two important affluents of the 

 Tapajos and the Madeira respectively. The Tapajos 

 and the Madeira, like the Orinoco and Rio Negro, have 

 been highways of travel for a couple of centuries. The 

 Madeira (as later the Tapajos) was the chief means of 

 ingress, a century and a half ago, to the little Portu- 

 guese settlements of this far interior region of Brazil ; 

 one of these little towns, named Matto Grosso, being 

 the original capital of the province. It has long been 

 abandoned by the Government, and practically so by 

 its inhabitants, the ruins of palace, fortress, and church 

 now rising amid the rank, tropical luxuriance of the 

 wild forest. The mouths of the main affluents of these 

 highway rivers were as a rule well known. But in 

 many cases nothing but the mouth was known. The 

 river itself was not known, and it was placed on the 

 map by guesswork. Colonel Rondon found, for example, 

 that the course of the Gy-Parana was put down on the 

 map two degrees out of its proper place. He with his 

 party was the first to find out its sources, the first to 

 traverse its upper course, the first to map its length. 

 He and his assistants performed a similar service for 

 the Juruena, discovering the sources, discovering and 

 descending some of the branches, and for the first time 



