166 
THE GOLDEN RIVER. 
anything else. But I do not think any of 
us regards the expedition as a failure. 
We made our journey as planned, with one 
exception. To pull the trolley, instead of 
peons we got a mule. You never saw a more 
amiable, industrious and adaptable animal. 
With the hunter on his back, and with one end 
of a raw-hide rope tied to his saddle and the 
other to the trolley, he pulled that trolley, 
containing our provisions, our kit, our rifles 
and very often ourselves, up those forty kilo¬ 
metres and back without a hesitation or a 
stumble, now swimming a river with the docility 
of a dog, now wading through marsh up to his 
hocks and now tripping delicately over the 
rotten remains of what once were sleepers. He 
was a remarkable animal. 
It was a hot afternoon when we started in 
the launch. The Pilcomayo runs into the 
Paraguay just opposite Asuncion. It is a 
curious river: it must be not far from a 
thousand miles long and yet it is no bigger than 
the Thames at Oxford. Coming as we did from 
the broad, rocky, clear-flowing Parana, the 
Pilcomayo was a strange contrast. It corre¬ 
sponded more nearly to my idea of a tropical 
river. It was slow and turgid, full of sunken 
trees, with mysterious swampy backwaters 
where the water stood several feet up the trunks, 
and unknown river plants grew. The banks 
were neither so high nor so thick as those of the 
