RESOURCES OF THE COUNTRY 279 



were good men, some of them very good indeed. They 

 were under the immediate supervision of Pedrinho 

 Craveiro, who was first-class in every way. 



This camp was very lovely. It was on the edge of a 

 bay, into which the river broadened immediately below 

 the rapids. There was a beach of white sand, where we 

 bathed and washed our clothes. All around us, and 

 across the bay, and on both sides of the long water- 

 street made by the river, rose the splendid forest. There 

 were flocks of parakeets, coloured green, blue, and red. 

 Big toucans called overhead, lustrous green-black in 

 colour, with white throats, red gorgets, red-and-yellow 

 tail coverts, and huge black-and-yellow biUs. Here the 

 soil was fertile ; it will be a fine site for a coiFee-plantation 

 when this region is open to settlement. Surely such a 

 rich and fertile land cannot be permitted to remain idle, 

 to lie as a tenantless wilderness, while there are such 

 teeming swarms of human beings in the overcrowded, 

 overpeopled countries of the Old World. The very 

 rapids and waterfalls which now make the navigation of 

 the river so difficult and dangerous would drive electric 

 troUeys up and down its whole length and far out on 

 either side, and run miUs and factories, and lighten the 

 labour on farms. With the incoming of settlement and 

 with the steady growth of knowledge how to fight and 

 control tropical diseases, fear of danger to health would 

 vanish. A land like this is a hard land for the first 

 explorers, and perhaps for their immediate followers, 

 but not for the people who come after them. 



In mid-afternoon we were once more in the canoes ; 

 but we had paddled with the current only a few minutes, 

 we had gone only a kilometre, when the roar of rapids 

 in front again forced us to haul up to the bank. As 

 usual, Rondon, Lyra, and Kermit, with Antonio Correa, 



