152 UP THE RIVER OF TAPIRS [chap, v 



oppressively hot, and we slept well. By five o'clock 

 next morning we had each drunk a cup of delicious 

 Brazilian coffee, and the boats were under way. 



All day we steamed slowly up-stream. We passed 

 two or three fazendas. At one, where we halted to get 

 milk, the trees were overgrown with pretty little yellow 

 orchids. At dark we moored at a spot where there 

 were no branches to prevent our placing the boats 

 directly alongside the bank. There were hardly any 

 mosquitoes. Most of the party took their hammocks 

 ashore, and the camp was pitched amid singularly beau- 

 tiful surroundings. The trees were wawasa palms, some 

 with the fronds cresting very tall trunks, some with 

 the fronds — seemingly longer — rising almost from the 

 ground. The fronds were of great length ; some could 

 not have been less than fifty feet long. Bushes and 

 tall grass, dew-drenched and glittering with the green 

 of emeralds, grew in the open spaces between. We left 

 at sunrise the following morning. One of the sailors 

 had strayed inland. He got turned round and could 

 not find the river ; and we started before discovering 

 his absence. We stopped at once, and with much diffi- 

 culty he forced his way through the vine-laced and 

 thorn-guarded jungle toward the sound of the launch's 

 engines and of the bugle which was blown. In this 

 dense jungle, when the sun is behind clouds, a man 

 without a compass who strays a hundred yards from 

 the river may readily become hopelessly lost. 



As we ascended the river the wawasa palms became 

 constantly more numerous. At this point, for many 

 miles, they gave their own character to the forest on 

 the river-banks. Everywhere their long, curving fronds 

 rose among the other trees, and in places their lofty 

 trunks made them hold their heads higher than the 



