ACROSS UNKNOWN SOUTH AMERICA 
As we got farther down I could perceive that the 
range extended much farther than I had seen earlier in 
the day; in fact, from the west-northwest it spread as far 
as east-southeast. 
Below the last rapid was an island of great beauty, 
Babin Island, 2,000 metres long. The river beyond that 
island formed two arms, one on each side of a triangular 
island located in the opening formed in the hill range by 
the river, where another strong rapid, in fact, a regular 
small waterfall, was to be found. 
It was very difficult to keep count of all the islands 
which we constantly passed, many elongated, others tri¬ 
angular, others rectangular, others of all kinds of irregular 
shapes. In my notebooks I endeavoured to map out 
the entire course of the river as well as I could, and I 
think that, considering the amount of other work I had 
to do and the difficulties encountered all the time, the map 
I made to the scale of one centimetre to a kilometre is 
as accurate as it could possibly be made with the means 
at my command. In places where I was uncertain I have 
left blanks in the map, and have not gone in for the usual 
method of certain geographers of filling up the space with 
all kinds of shadings in order to make it look pretty. 
We had gone that day forty-six kilometres, the current 
having been very strong all the time, which made up for 
the loss of time in dealing with the many rapids. 
I took altitude observations with the hypsometrical 
apparatus, water boiling at that spot at 210° 3%, the 
temperature of the air being 78° Fahrenheit. The mini¬ 
mum temperature during the night of July thirty-first 
was 63° Fahrenheit. 
We began our journey the next morning by going 
down a bad rapid and across an awe-inspiring whirlpool. 
There again we had to lead the empty canoe down with 
ropes, and even so we had difficulty in getting her through 
safely. 
102 
