THROUGH THE COASTAL WILDERNESS. 223 



called them Salaver. In addition to other very slender fish, 

 there were numbers of little fresh-water prawns shooting 

 about among the maze of fanwort beneath the pads. The 

 glint of strange shapes came to us — tiny Cyclops and others 

 which the human eye was powerless to name without a 

 microscope. We sat in the darkness listening to the sounds 

 of the swampy jungle. Not a mosquito hummed, and the 

 frogs eclipsed all other, lesser noises, calling in basso and 

 treble, with tinkling bells and a clear ringing chime like the 

 ffiolian singing of a telegraph wire. 



Marciano climbed back to his seat in the stern, gave an 

 order and the paddles pushed sluggishly through the pads, 

 carrying fear and tumult to thousands of little aquatic lives. 

 The next four hours we shall never forget as long as we live. 

 On and on we went through the pitchy darkness, guided 

 solely by the light of the little bow lantern. The bush ropes 

 ahead stood out in sharp silhouette like giant serpents coiled 

 in mid-air across our path. The night seemed to press 

 in on our tiny atom of life. The shadows of the waving 

 arms of the paddlers were thrown on the foliage behind 

 the boat, looking like some huge spider-like thing forever 

 following it. The sheets and drops of water thrown up by 

 the Indians gleamed like molten silver. 



The open savannas increased in size and extended farther on 

 each side than the shaft of electric light could carry. Great 

 tufts of pampas grass towered high above our heads, drooping 

 gracefully outward in all directions. The channel narrowed 

 and the lily blossoms increased until the water was thickly 

 studded with them. Their odor hung heavy on the air and 

 when one of the blossoms itself was smelled, the perfume was 

 as sweet and as overpowering as chloroform. During the 

 day they had been all but odorless. For miles we pushed 

 through the tangle of water plants; in places the men having 

 to drag and push the boat over the reeds and grasses, crushing 



