LAST NIGHT IN CAMP 319 



had narrowly escaped with his life. I was glad, indeed, 

 that the fine and gallant fellow had escaped. The 

 Canadian canoe had done very well. We were no less 

 rejoiced to learn that Amilcar, the head of the party 

 that went down the Gy-Parana, was also all right, 

 although his canoe, too, had been upset in the rapids, 

 and his instruments and all his notes lost. He had 

 reached Manaos on April 10. Fiala had gone home. 

 Miller was collecting near Manaos. He had been doing 

 capital work. 



The piranhas were bad here, and no one could bathe. 

 Cherrie, while standing in the water close to the shore, 

 was attacked and bitten ; but with one bound he was 

 on the bank before any damage could be done. 



We spent a last night under canvas, at Pyrineus's 

 encampment. It rained heavily. Next morning we 

 all gathered at the monument which Colonel Rondon 

 had erected, and he read the orders of the day. These 

 recited just what had been accomplished : set forth the 

 fact that we had now by actual exploration and investiga- 

 tion discovered that the river whose upper portion had 

 been called the Dtivida on the maps of the Telegraphic 

 Commission and the unknown major part of which we 

 had just traversed, and the river known to a few rubber- 

 men, but to no one else, as the Castanho, and the lower 

 part of the river known to the rubber-men as the 

 Aripuanan (which did not appear on the maps save as 

 its mouth was sometimes indicated, with no hint of its 

 size) were all parts of one and the same river, and that 

 by order of the Brazilian Government this river, the 

 largest affluent of the Madeira, with its source near the 

 thirteenth degree and its mouth a little south of the 

 fifth degree, hitherto utterly unknown to cartographers, 

 and in large part utterly unknown to any save the 



