14 TlMEHRI. 
white water contrasting beautifully with the smooth- 
topped step-like layers of polished red, or more rarely 
pale green, jasper over which they flowed or fell. One 
stream, the Wayanock, its bed not of jasper but of ugly 
mud, had its banks well wooded, the trees meeting over 
its gloomy Styx-like waters ; otherwise hardly a tree was 
to be seen, except where in the valleys long lines of seta 
palms (Mauritia flexuosd) marked the moist bed of a 
stream. 
At last, at mid-day, we came to the Cotinga river just 
below Orinidouie cataracts, at a point where two coppices, 
one on either bank, faced each other, between which the 
stream ran, so broad and deep that to cross without a boat 
seemed hopeless. Yet to stay where we were seemed 
almost equally impossible on account of the enormous 
numbers cf sandflies which there, for the only time during 
our journey, filled the air and made life a burden. 
But some of our men saying they knew of a boat which 
they would fetch, we endured the sandflies as well as we 
were able for the rest of the afternoon ; and in the 
evening the boat was brought. 
The crossing of the river with all our baggage occu- 
pied an hour and a half the next morning before we 
could start once more on our savannah walk. Towards 
mid-day we ascended a very high grass hill and, resting 
just before reaching the summit, we saw a very beauti- 
ful scene. One of our party while in the valley below 
had carelessly thrown down in the dry grass the match 
with which he had lighted his pipe ; and now down in the 
valley below us already a great field of fire was moving 
almost as rapidly as the shadow of a flying cloud across 
the vast plain. 
