104 
THE GOLDEN RIVER. 
anyone : ask the pilot who steers the lumbering 
Ibera, as she slowly noses her way up the rush¬ 
ing river, with a great barge or two lashed to 
her already portly side : ask the captain of any 
of the busy and dirty little tugs which tow down 
a string of lighters laden with yerba grown in 
Paraguay or Matto Grosso : ask the men who 
float down the rafts of cedar or lapacho, 
carrying perhaps great squared logs of that 
strange wood, quebracho, which is so heavy 
that it sinks in water : ask any of them. Know 
it? Why, of course they know it, just as they 
know a hundred other points of difficulty and 
danger : just as they know the dread remolinos 
of Santa Catarina : his career would be short 
on the Alto-Parana who did not. You will 
have no difficulty in finding it. So go there. 
But do not go when the river is high. Go when 
the water is low enough, and this shall be to you 
for a sign :—the long reef of dark rock, jutting 
out on the Misiones shore, should be bare to its 
base; and mark this, the water should be so low 
that you should just be able to get your boat so 
far across that, if you open your shoulders and 
cast your longest, your spoon pitches fair into 
the smooth racing water which makes an 
immense Y between the two tumbling streams. 
That is all I shall tell you. I shall not deprive 
you of the joy of discovery. And when you 
have cast, look out: he may take directly the 
spoon hits the water. But this is going too fast. 
