ACROSS UNKNOWN SOUTH AMERICA 
body, except —if you are an expert—diagonally; then 
there is always a certain amount of swing and you are 
likely to tumble over at any moment; you can never 
keep the blankets in position, and you expose your entire 
body to the stings of the mosquitoes, flies, and other insects, 
and of the ants which crawl into your hammock by hun¬ 
dreds from the trees in which they swarm. Again, it was 
not uncommon when we camped to hear during the night 
a crash, followed immediately after by oaths. The tree 
to which one of the hammocks had been fastened had 
suddenly broken and let the man down with a bump. 
Then again, the mischievous ants took the greatest delight 
during the night in cutting the strings of the hammocks, 
and on several occasions my followers had nasty falls. 
Yet the Brazilians swear by hammocks. 
Another stream, two metres wide, coming from the 
north, entered the Arinos on the right bank. A number 
of ariranhas, attracted by the vivid red of the British 
flag which was flying at the stern of the canoe, followed 
us for some time and came courageously to the attack, 
showing their teeth fiercely at us and snarling frantically. 
Entire families of those delightful little creatures were 
seen, and they invariably gave us a similar hearty greeting. 
They followed us sometimes for hundreds and hundreds 
of metres, and became most excited when I took the flag 
and waved it at them, and sometimes placed it near the 
water in order to drive them frantic. 
We now had most beautiful forest on both sides. A 
stream five metres wide joined the Arinos on the left side 
from the west, forming a charming little waterfall as it 
entered the main stream. A little farther on the right was 
another streamlet, coming from the southeast. Generally, 
as in this case, when we reached tributary streams of any 
importance, gravel banks extended and blocked a great 
part, sometimes even half, of the main stream. 
A picturesque stream, eight metres wide, coming from 
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