A RED-LETTER DAY 303 



where we did not hear the rapids. The silence was 

 soothing and restful. The following day, April 14, we 

 made a good run of some thirty-two kilometres. We 

 passed a little river which entered on our left. We ran 

 two or three light rapids, and portaged the loads by 

 another. The river ran in long and usually tranquil 

 stretches. In the morning when we started the view 

 was lovely. There was a mist, and for a couple of miles 

 the great river, broad and quiet, ran between the high 

 walls of tropical forest, the tops of the giant trees 

 showing dim through the haze. Different members 

 of the party caught many fish, and shot a monkey and 

 a couple of jacu-tinga — birds akin to a turkey, but the 

 size of a fowl — so we again had a camp of plenty. The 

 dry season was approaching, but there were still heavy, 

 drenching rains. On this day the men found some new 

 nuts of which they liked the taste ; but the nuts proved 

 unwholesome and half of the men were very sick and 

 unable to work the following day. In the balsa only 

 two were left fit to do anything, and Kermit plied a 

 paddle all day long. 



Accordingly, it was a rather sorry crew that embarked 

 the following morning, April 15. But it turned out a 

 red-letter day. The day before, we had come across 

 cuttings, a year old, which were probably but not 

 certainly made by pioneer rubber-men. But on this 

 day — during which we made twenty-five kilometres — 

 after running two hours and a half we found on the left 

 bank a board on a post, with the initials J. A., to show 

 the farthest-up point which a rubber-man had reached 

 and claimed as his own. An hour farther down we 

 came on a newly-built house in a little planted clearing ; 

 and we cheered heartily. No one was at home, but the 

 house, of palm-thatch, was clean and cool. A couple of 



