afternoon tide, they ran up nearly twenty
miles. The current was almost as strong as the tide, and they had to
anchor against the ebb, or be swept out to sea quicker than they had
come in. The next morning they went on again, and were fifty miles up
the channel by nightfall. Away to right and left were masses of flat,
swampy land, the intersecting waterways reddening and glistening in the
setting sun.

The numerous channels and jutting stretches of land so broke the force
of the tide that hardly any headway was made the next day, and a
council was held to determine methods for further progress.

Captain Drake was of opinion that it was impossible to continue the
passage of the river in the ship. Rigorous questioning and
cross-questioning of Yacamo brought out further ugly reports of the
shifting nature of the river-bed, and of the frequency of shallows. A
stay of a couple of days in the anchorage was resolved upon, and during
that time exploration by means of boats was to be pushed along
vigorously.

But it was easier to decide this matter than to carry the decisions
into practice. Three boats were sent out the next day just after
sunrise. All pursued a more or less southerly course through the
channels, and by noon all three crews had lost themselves in the maze.
The waterways were all alike, muddy, tree-bordered, steamy,
oppressively malodorous, and swarming with reptiles. Moreover, they
laced and interlaced so frequently, crossing like the threads in a
woven fabric, that any idea of direction was impossible. The giant
trees shut in the channels from one another, and no boat's crew could
see many yards ahead. In the afternoon, gun-fire from the ship gave
the voyagers a cue to their whereabouts, and a guide back to safety.
The scheme of exploration in order to find a safe passage for the ship
had failed.

An anxious day followed. Would the mighty river never yield up its
golden secret? Were the adventurers to be baffled and foiled after
their thousands of leagues of journeying? The guide declared that the
Spaniards had got hundreds of miles farther up the river, but by means
of galleys of forty to sixty oars apiece. The _Golden Boar_ had no
such craft aboard. Three good ships' boats she had, the largest
capable of holding about a score of men with arms and provisions, the
others with capacity for about half that number. The largest boat was
fitted with a mast, and a gun might be mounted in the bow