ACROSS UNKNOWN SOUTH AMERICA 
was forced against the rapid. There was a good drop in 
the level of the river at that rapid, and it was a nasty place 
indeed for us to go through. We got tossed about, 
splashed all over, but we came out of it all the same, amid 
the wildly excited yells of my men. They were beginning 
to think that they were the greatest navigators that had 
ever lived, and they never let an opportunity pass of 
reminding each other of that fact. 
I halted in the middle of the day to take the usual 
observations for latitude and longitude (latitude 8° 47'.5 
south; longitude 58° 39' west), but I was interrupted in 
my work by another heavy rain-storm, which broke and 
drenched us once more. After that dense clouds as black 
as ink covered the entire sky for the whole afternoon. We 
were now in the rainy season. Terrific gusts preceded 
these rain-storms, and were most troublesome to us. 
After negotiating the bad rapids, the river went 
through a basin of boulders of broken foliated rock. 
There were three small channels. Then beyond, the entire 
river was forced through a rocky channel from thirty-five 
to forty metres wide, the water rushing through with 
incredible force on a steep gradient until half-way down 
the channel, where it actually ran uphill for fifty metres or 
so, so great was the impetus it had received on its rapid 
descent to that point. 
You can well imagine what a pleasant job it was for 
us to convey the canoe along with ropes over so delightful 
a spot. Owing to our insufficient food, our strength had 
greatly diminished. The ropes we had used on the many 
rapids were now half-rotted and tied up in innumerable 
knots. Moreover, the banks of sharp cutting rock were 
of great height, and our ropes were not long enough to 
be used separately, so that we decided to use only one 
long rope made up of all the ropes we possessed tied 
together. To make matters more difficult, the channel 
was not perfectly straight, but described two or three 
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