ACROSS UNKNOWN SOUTH AMERICA 
seen alone or in couples, or perhaps occasionally in flocks 
of three or four. 
What spare moments I had in Castanho, after the 
storm was over, I spent on the banks of the river, gazing 
at the magnificent stream. 
Looking south, a low hill range could be seen in the 
distance, with a conical summit rising slightly above the 
range — the Serra do Cayapo. It was there, as I have 
said, that the great Araguaya had its birth. It was inter¬ 
esting to note that the head waters of the Araguaya, 
flowing north, of course, had their birth within an infini¬ 
tesimal distance of those of two such immense rivers as 
the Inducassu and the Sucuru, flowing into the Parana, 
and also near the somewhat unknown Taquary River, 
flowing into the Paraguay. 
It would be possible, although perhaps expensive, by 
means of raised artificial lakes and locks, actually to join 
at least one of these southern great rivers to the great 
Araguaya, and thus, barring some troublesome rapids, 
form a continuous waterway from south to north across 
South America, from Buenos Aires, roughly in latitude 
34° 5' south, to Para, in latitude 1° 27' 6" south. Imagine 
a distance by river extending for 33° 37' 54" (or 3,737 
kilometres) in a straight line, as the crow flies, and not 
less than double that distance if we include the constant 
turns and deviations in the various connected rivers. 
Easier still and less expensive it would be to connect 
by rail the last two navigable points of those two streams. 
That will certainly be done some day, when those aban¬ 
doned regions are eventually populated and properly 
developed. 
There were some rocky falls just below Porto 
Castanho which prevented navigation as far as the place 
where we crossed the Araguaya; otherwise the river was 
navigable from those falls as far as Concei^ao. 
The formation of the clouds over the great Araguaya 
146 
