300 DOWN AN UNKNOWN RIVER [chap, ix 



been killed by the two men it had attacked. They 

 were fishing in a canoe when it rose from the bottom — 

 for it is a ground fish — and, raising itself half out of the 

 water, lunged over the edge of the canoe at them, with 

 open mouth. They killed it with their falcons, as 

 machetes are called in Brazil. It was taken round the 

 city in triumph in an ox-cart ; the doctor saw it, and 

 said it was three metres long. He said that swimmers 

 feared it even more than the big cayman, because they 

 could see the latter, whereas the former lay hid at the 

 bottom of the water. Colonel Rondon said that, in 

 many villages where he had been on the lower ]\Iadeu-a, 

 the people had built stockaded enclosures in the water 

 in which they bathed, not venturing to swiva. in the 

 open water for fear of the piraiba and the big cayman. 



Next day, April 8, we made five kilometres only, as 

 there was a succession of rapids. We had to carry the 

 loads past two of them, but ran the canoes without 

 difficulty, for on the west side were long canals of 

 swift water through the forest. The river had been 

 higher, but was still very high, and the current raced 

 round the many islands that, at this point, divided the 

 channel. At four we made camp at the head of another 

 stretch of rapids, over which the Canadian canoes would 

 have danced without shipping a teaspoonful of water, 

 but which our dugouts could only run empty. Cherrie 

 killed three monkeys and Lyra caught two big piranhas, 

 so that we were again all of us well provided with dinner 

 and breakfast. When a number of men, doing hard 

 work, are most of the time on half-rations, they grow 

 to take a lively interest in any reasonably full meal that 

 does arrive. 



On the 10th we repeated the proceedings : a short 

 quick run ; a few hundred metres' portage, occupying. 



