CHAPTER XI 
The Tucano — Fish of the Araguaya River — A Bad Shot — 
A Strange Sight 
I SEEMED to have no luck on that journey. Every¬ 
thing went wrong all the time. Everything seemed to 
stand in my way to prevent my progress. My men 
were demoralized, my mules and horses in a pitiable condi¬ 
tion. I called a halt of two or three days in order that we 
might shoe the animals again and rearrange the pack- 
saddles. We had, of course, a good supply of new shoes, 
but the work of shoeing so many animals was hard, 
especially as I had to do most of it myself, with Alcides 
and Filippe, the other men being absolutely useless. Add 
to this a stifling temperature of 90° Fahrenheit. 
To make things worse there came a downpour such 
as I have seldom seen, and which lasted for two entire 
days. That was the dry season, too! The house in 
which we had put up, and through the roof of which we 
could admire the stars at our ease while in bed, was 
turned into a regular swimming-tank when the rain came. 
We had a good deal of trouble to keep our things dry, 
propping them up on improvised stands of stones which 
we removed from the crumbling walls of the building. 
Fortunately, most of my pack-saddle cases were air and 
water tight, so that the contents could not be injured. 
The wind blew with great fury—at the rate of 460 
metres a minute, to be strictly accurate. 
There was a humble hamlet at Rio Grande or Porto 
do Castanho, on the Matto Grosso side, where we had 
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