292 
Worse Obstacles ihan Catabacis and Rapids. 
of fire had reached the bank, the noise of crackling grasses waking us 
from our sleep. We gazed calmly from out of our hammocks at the 
unloosened element — but then, there was an invincible enemy of the 
flames, the river, between us. 
828. The river maintained next day its winding course to the South- 
ward. After getting into the Rupununi the rapids and cataracts had 
indeed disappeared, but other difficulties opposed us in their stead. 
The mighty giants of the forest, which the floods during the rainy 
season had overturned and torn away with them in the upper reaches 
of the river, had stuck fast in these bends and upon the sandbanks, 
and in many places the uprooted trees were stacked one on top of the 
other so thickly that it seemed as if one of those tropical tornadoes 
had raged along the banks and thrown down everything in front of it. 
The stout branches, bereft of leaves, rose everywhere out of the water 
like mighty warnings of danger and formed at other points again 
regular abatis through the narrow openings of which the otherwise 
quiet ripples rolling towards them foamed like angered torrents. 
Though in such spots one lias to tight one’s way forwards, axe in hand, 
with every stroke of the paddles, the visible obstacles are nevertheless 
far from being so dangerous as those hidden and more isolated branches 
under water, because every careless bang against one of the latter, 
particularly when travelling down-stream, inevitably entails a leak, 
but often also the upset of the corial . To the tiresomeness of the 
present voyage was now added the doubly increased plague of sandflies 
which swarmed to a really awful degree. At sundown the tormentors 
disappeared as if by magic but at earliest sunrise they returned with 
never-satisfied greed for blood. 
829. In the course of the day we met a large corial with Macusis 
who wanted to take a trip down the river. We also heard from them 
that the Brazilians still retained possession of Pirara and that the 
whole of the Indians had left the village for which reason the Brazilian 
Domini, as almost all the tribes call a missionary, had withdrawn 
to his previous station, Fort Sao Joa'quim on the Rio Branco, where 
the commandant of Pirara, Captain Leal, was also at present stopping. 
830. Mount Apayabo-Optayo (Unnatural mother), the base of 
which was watered by the stream, might be about 1,500 feet above river 
level. The Macusis accompanying us from Haiowa told us many a 
remarkable thing about the two great cavities that are to be found on its 
Northern slope. For some time past the Rupununi had considerably 
narrowed its bed; here it had barely a breadth of 40 yards, and on the 
farther side of the streams Massuro and Bononi one of but 13 yards, 
whereupon it soon after resumed its previous width. 
831. The vegetation along the banks now became more luxuriant, the 
majestic Morn was not even wanting among the foliage trees, and the 
large beautiful violet flowers of the Cattleya superba Schomb. upon its 
branches, like the white and yellow blossoms of the Inga and Cassia 
bushes on the banks, the sweet-scented flowers of the Macliaerium 
Schomburgkii Benth., and the Gustavia pterocarpa Poit, overtopped by 
