ACROSS UNKNOWN SOUTH AMERICA 
from pieces of hard wood. With great yells of excitement 
from my men we launched her once more in the river. 
My men boasted how clever they had been to take the 
heavy canoe over the hill. There was really nothing 
Brazilians could not do when they wished! 
Those forty hours of steady hard work out of the 
forty-eight hours we had stopped at the falls had seen us 
over that obstacle, and we were now ready to proceed once 
more by water. 
We had suffered a great deal during those terrible 
hours from the bees, mosquitoes, hornets, plums, ants, and 
all kinds of other insects which stung us all over. A 
glance at the photographs of the canoe being taken across 
the forest, which illustrate this volume, will show all my 
men — I, naturally, not appearing, as I was taking the 
photographs — with their heads wrapped up in towels, 
notwithstanding the great heat, in order to avoid the 
unbearable torture as much as possible. 
The minimum temperature during the night of 
August third had been 61° Fahrenheit; during the night 
of August fourth 72° Fahrenheit. During the day the 
temperature was 88° Fahrenheit in the shade, but the air 
was quite stifling, as the sky was overcast with heavy 
clouds. 
I took careful observations for latitude and longitude 
in order to fix exactly the position of the great falls. The 
latitude was 8° 51'.1 south; the longitude 58° 50' west. 
The whirlpool and eddies which extended for 1,000 
metres below the great fall were formidable. Never in 
my life have I seen waters so diabolical. They filled one 
absolutely with terror as one looked at them. 
The river flowed there to bearings magnetic 120°; 
then to 140° bearings magnetic for 3,000 metres, where 
it was comparatively smooth. To the southeast of us was 
a hill range fully 600 feet high. What appeared to me to 
be a small tributary seemed to enter the river on the left, 
178 
