ver towards the sea. Here the men had to be careful, for at any moment
the boats might capsize against a grounded tree trunk. Deep pools also
were found, and the current ran at the rate of 2-1/2 feet a second, and
they often had the help of the wind.

They soon learned to know by the changed appearance of the forest where
they could land. Where the royal crowns of foliaged trees reared their
waving canopy above the palms they could be sure of finding dry ground;
but if the palms with verdant luxuriance raised their plumes above low
brushwood, they might be sure that the bank was flooded by the river.

If the voyage on the capricious river was dangerous, the Spaniards were
still more disturbed by Indians, who came paddling up in their canoes
and showered poisoned arrows on the boats. To get through in safety, the
explorers had to avoid the banks as much as possible.

At the end of May they drifted past the mouth of the Rio Negro, which
discharges a large volume of water, for it collects streams from
Venezuela and Guiana, and from the wet _llanos_, or open plains, north
of the Amazons River. Where the great tributary is divided by islands it
attains a breadth of as much as thirty miles.

Here Orellana stayed several weeks with friendly Indians, who lived in
pretty huts under the boughs of bananas. The vessels were repaired, and
provisions taken on board--maize, chickens, turtles, and fish. There
were swarms of edible turtles, and the Indians caught them and collected
their eggs; and the fish were abundant and various--no wonder, when two
thousand species of fish live in the basin of the Amazons.

Shortly afterwards they glided past the mouth of the Madeira, a mile and
a half broad, which discharges a volume of water little inferior to that
of the main river. For the Madeira has its sources far to the south, and
descends partly from the _cordilleras_ of Peru and Bolivia, partly from
the plateau of Brazil.

Woods and no end of water, month after month! The heat is the same all
the year round--not very excessive, seldom 104 deg., but still oppressive
and enervating because of the humidity of the air. Yet the voyage was
not monotonous. Leaning against the masts and gunwale, or leisurely
moving the oars, the soldiers could observe the dolphins leaping in the
river, the sudden darts of the alligators as they hunted the fish
through the water, or the clumsy movements of the manati, one of the
Sirenia, as it cropped grass at