TROUBLESOME INSECTS 
was passed in mid-stream, was surrounded by a giant 
crown of pyramidal rocks of great height emerging in 
sharp points from the water. We had gone but 6,000 
metres of that distance when we came to an island on the 
right side with a gorgeous spit, also of musical sand, 800 
metres long. The island itself was only 700 metres long 
including the sand spit, Kuvera Island. We were then 
in an immense basin with leaden waters as still as those of 
a pond. 
We made our camp in a most picturesque spot, an 
immense beach forming innumerable indentations, really 
like small dunes of sand deposited by water. The 
accurate elevation of that place was, according to the 
observations taken with the hypsometrical apparatus, 967 
feet, water boiling at that spot at 210° 3%, and the 
temperature of the atmosphere being 72%° Fahrenheit. 
The indented beach, not unlike a giant double-comb, was 
at the beginning of a great island which I named James 
Dewar Island, in honour of the great discoverer of liquid 
air. The minimum temperature during the night of July 
twenty-ninth was 55 ° Fahrenheit. 
Since we had come to the enormous sand accumula¬ 
tions along the stream the troublesome insects which 
worried us day and night seemed to have doubled or 
trebled in numbers, and we suffered positive torture from 
them, especially when we landed anywhere. 
We left fairly early in the morning, finding soon 
afterwards a group of sharply pointed rocks, some above 
the surface of the stream, some, the most dangerous, just 
under the surface. Another basin, 1,000 metres broad, 
was crossed, which contained two islets and a number of 
rocks forming a barrier from southwest to northeast. 
Two kilometres farther along another immense barrier of 
rocks and numberless islets, obstructed the river from 
southwest to northeast, so that for a little time we could 
not see which way the stream flowed out of it at all. 
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