IN HUMBOLDT'S COUNTRY 423 
it had risen above 4 feet (since the 7th). On the 
19th and 20th it receded a few inches, but yesterday 
morning (21st) when we left it was again rising. 
We entered the Vasiva towards night of January 
21, and left it on the afternoon of the 25th. The 
first three days and nights were dreadfully rainy, 
and as the waters continued rising I saw it was 
hopeless to wait in expectation of the sandbanks 
becoming exposed. Our position was gloomy and 
lonely in the extreme. A singular circumstance 
occurred here. Every day towards evening, say 
from 4 to 5 o'clock, we were startled by. hear- 
ing the report of a musket in the forest on the 
opposite side of the river, which was here not more 
than eighty yards wide. It is scarcely possible to 
conceive the strangeness of such a sound, in so 
desolate a place, in forests which we knew scarcely 
any human being could penetrate, and especially 
one accustomed to use firearms. . . . 
My sailors, not being able to explain it in any 
other way, concluded it to be the Yamadu, in 
propria persona, who was hunting near us, and 
predicted that he would send us a terrible rain, or 
some other calamity. In reality, on the first two 
days, we had rain from 4 p.m. to midnight, and on 
the two following days from 7 or 8 p.m. throughout 
the night. ^ ... 
Ascent of the Pacimoni River 
On January 27, a little after noon, we entered 
the mouth of the Pacimoni. The river was wide, 
black, and still, and so continues for a long way up. 
^ This remarkable sound is explained later on in Chapter XXV. 
