ACROSS UNKNOWN SOUTH AMERICA 
more difficult to traverse than the Brazilian forests, and 
those who assert the Brazilian forests to be impenetrable 
say so only because they do not know what they are 
talking about. Even when it comes to actually chopping 
down trees in the Brazilian forests, one blow with the axe 
or with the knife will easily cut down a fair-sized tree. 
As I have already stated elsewhere, most of the Brazilian 
forest trees have no resistance whatever. They are full 
of water, and, with a judicious blow, can be cut almost as 
easily as celery. Many are the trees also, the inside of 
which near the ground has been eaten up entirely by ants, 
and it was not uncommon when you leant heavily against 
a tree that you and the tree tumbled down. Ants do not 
seem to attack lactiferous trees, such as those producing 
rubber, which therefore flourished in that particular 
region. 
Most of the trees in that particular part of the forest 
were small in diameter, and had branches or leaves at 
only a very great height. That was why the forests in 
Brazil looked so extraordinarily clean beneath, in contrast 
to the equatorial forest in such countries as Central Africa 
or the Philippine Islands. The wonderful cleanliness of 
the river, to which I have so often alluded, was a great 
contrast to the masses of floating decomposing vegetation 
which is always to be seen in the African rivers. 
The minimum temperature during the night of July 
thirteenth was 51 ° F ahrenheit. During that night we were 
suddenly roused by our dogs barking furiously. We 
heard strange noises, as if people were trying to run away 
quickly through the forest. Indians had, much to our 
surprise, come quite close to our camp, and had it not been 
for the alarm given by the dogs we should most likely have 
been attacked by them. In the morning we heard in the 
distance their war-cries and piercing ululations, which rent 
the air. Judging merely by the noise they made, there 
must have been from thirty to fifty of them. My men 
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