ACROSS UNKNOWN SOUTH AMERICA 
there to make the fortunes of a hundred thousand farmers 
— yet there was not a soul! There was good grazing, 
plenty of water. There were no roads, no trails, it is true, 
but with a little enterprise it would be easy to make them. 
With a railway passing through, that now wasted land 
should become the richest on earth. 
In a depression (elevation 2,450 feet) we came to a 
streamlet also flowing north, which had made the soil 
extremely swampy. We had endless trouble in getting 
across, the animals sinking and sticking in the black mud 
up to their necks. One of the mules, more reckless than 
the others, actually disappeared, baggage and all, while 
madly struggling to extricate itself from the sucking 
slush and mud. It took all our efforts combined to save 
that animal. By the time we had all got across, men, 
animals, and baggage were a sight worth looking at — all 
filthy, absolutely smothered in black mud. 
We rose upon yet another dome and then descended 
to the Rio Manso or Rio das Mortes, the head-waters of 
which were not far from there, to the southwest, in the 
Serra da Chapada. The river was there only fifteen metres 
wide, but too deep and rapid for the animals to ford, so 
we had to follow its bank in order to find a suitable spot. 
The River das Mortes flowed, roughly, first in an easterly 
then in a northeasterly direction, and soon, swollen by 
innumerable streams, became the most powerful tributary 
of the Araguaya River, which it met almost opposite the 
centre of the great island of Bananal. In fact, one might 
almost consider the head-waters of the Rio das Mortes as 
the secondary sources of the great Araguaya. The Rio 
das Mortes flowed, at the particular spot where we met 
it, due north, along the edge of the great dome. The 
elevation of the top edge was 2,470 feet. 
We camped that night on the Riberao do Boi, a swift 
torrent tributary of the Rio das Mortes (elevation 2,250 
feet), having marched thirty kilometres that day. The 
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