A SERIES OF RAPIDS 301 



however, at least a couple of hours ; again a few minutes 

 run ; again other rapids. We again made less than five 

 kilometres ; in the two days we had been descending 

 nearly a metre for every kilometre we made in advance ; 

 and it hardly seemed as if this state of things could last, 

 for the aneroid showed that we were getting very low 

 down. How I longed for a big Maine birch-bark, such 

 as that in which I once went down the Mattawamkeag 

 at high water ! It would have slipped down these rapids 

 as a girl trips through a country-dance. But our loaded 

 dugouts would have shoved their noses under every curl. 

 The country was lovely. The wide river, now in one 

 channel, now in several channels, wound among hiUs ; 

 the shower-freshened forest glistened in the sunlight ; 

 the many kinds of beautiful palm-fronds and the huge 

 pacova-leaves stamped the peculiar look of the tropics 

 on the whole landscape — it was like passing by water 

 through a gigantic botanical garden. In the afternoon 

 we got an elderly toucan, a piranha, and a reasonably 

 edible side- necked river-turtle ; so we had fresh meat 

 again. We slept as usual in earshot of rapids. We had 

 been out six weeks, and almost all the time we had been 

 engaged in wearily working our way down and past 

 rapid after rapid. Rapids are by far the most dangerous 

 enemies of explorers and travellers who journey along 

 these rivers. 



Next day was a repetition of the same work. All the 

 morning was spent in getting the loads to the foot of 

 the rapids at the head of which we were encamped, 

 down which the canoes were run empty. Then for 

 thirty or forty minutes we ran down the swift, twisting 

 river, the two lashed canoes almost coming to grief at 

 one spot where a swirl of the current threw them against 

 some trees on a small submerged island. Then we came 



