278 DOWN AN UNKNOWN RIVER [chap, ix 



calendar months coincided. We had used up over half 

 our provisions. We had come only a trifle over 

 160 kilometres, thanks to the character and number of 

 the rapids. We believed we had three or four times 

 the distance yet to go before coming to a part of the 

 river where we might hope to meet assistance, either 

 from rubber-gatherers or from Pyrineus, if he were 

 really coming up the river which we were going down. 

 If the rapids continued to be as they had been it could 

 not be much more than three weeks before we were in 

 straits for food, aside from the ever-present danger of 

 accident in the rapids ; and if our progress were no faster 

 than it had been — and we were straining to do our best 

 — ^we would in such event still have several hundreds of 

 kilometres of unknown river before us. We could not 

 even hazard a guess at what was in front. The river 

 was now a really big river, and it seemed impossible 

 that it could flow either into the Gy-Parana or the 

 Tapajos. It was possible that it went into the Canuma, 

 a big affluent of the Madeira low down, and next to the 

 Tapajos. It was more probable that it was the head- 

 waters of the Aripuanan, a river which, as I have said, 

 was not even named on the excellent English map of 

 Brazil I carried. Nothing but the mouth had been 

 known to any geographer ; but the lower course had 

 long been known to rubber-gatherers, and recently a 

 commission from the Government of Amazonas had 

 part-way ascended one branch of it — not as far as the 

 rubber-gatherers had gone, and, as it turned out, not 

 the branch we came down. 



Two of our men were down with fever. Another 

 man, Julio, a fellow of powerful frame, was utterly 

 worthless, being an inborn, lazy shirker with the heart 

 of a ferocious cur in the body of a buUock. The others 



