IX 
AROUND SAO GABRIEL 
299 
his infancy to threading the forest and to spying 
out the game in and among the trees, which it 
requires an Indian's eye to do. 
The day was so far broken into by my morning's 
shooting that I could rarely get more than a short 
walk in the afternoon. The falls, too, became so 
dangerous that I could not venture into them with 
fewer than three Indians in my montaria, and rarely 
were so many to be had. Throughout the months 
of June and July there were really scarcely any 
flowers to be had ; not a tree was in flower in 
the great forest, and scarcely any in the gapo. 
There is scarcely any breadth of gapo here, con- 
sequently the herbaceous and woody twiners which 
I used to gather near the Barra by rowing about 
among the tree-tops are all but absent here. The 
trees of the gapo are just beginning to flower, and 
I think I am going up at a good time. 
My canoe gives signs of not holding together 
long. As I did not understand things of this kind 
at all, I relied entirely on Henrique in the pur- 
chasing of it ; but I afterwards found that the man 
who had it to sell was a much older friend of 
Henrique's than myself, and that I had been taken 
in considerably. Vessels built up here in Vene- 
zuela (as mine was) are not expected to last more 
than from three to five years ; mine is already three 
years old and will hardly last another year. 
My last dates from England are a year old. 
Neither newspapers nor anything else ever reach 
me now. I seem to have taken my last leave 
of civilisation. . . . 
