ACROSS UNKNOWN SOUTH AMERICA 
altogether some 120 pounds in weight. My men had 
wasted so much food, and so much had been spoiled by 
constant immersions — many of the tinned meats had 
been altogether spoiled by the tins having got rusty and 
gradually perforated — that I was beginning to feel 
rather anxious in case our journey should last longer than 
I expected. Unfortunately, we had lost most of our salt, 
and we had no way of preserving the fish, which we had 
to leave on the banks, absolutely wasted. In order, how¬ 
ever, to show how lazy my men were, it is enough to say 
that, rather than take the slight trouble of placing some 
pieces of the excellent fish on board the canoe instead of 
trusting entirely to the luck we might have in fishing the 
next evening, they had to go the entire day without food. 
For some reason or other we could not get a single fish 
to bite, and we did not find a single bird or monkey to 
shoot. 
I was rather interested to observe, in looking over my 
notes, that nearly all the rocky barriers we had met 
stretching across the river extended from southeast to 
northwest. I believe that similar barriers stretched in 
the same direction in the other southern tributaries of 
the Amazon, the Xingu and the Madeira rivers, but, 
curiously enough, this was not the case with the river 
Araguaya. 
We had made our camp that particular night on a 
beach of white sand, which I found perfectly delicious, 
but which my men hated, as there were no trees on which 
they could hang their hammocks. They did not like to go 
into the luxuriant forest of the beautiful island, as they 
were afraid to go too far away from me, and I did 
not wish to go too far away from the canoe, which we 
had beached on the gravel bank, in case the river should 
rise suddenly or something should happen to make her 
float away. As I have said, I never, during the entire 
journey, let that canoe go out of my sight for one single 
110 
