not very good
archery; when the bow was bent, it was at first held so that the arrow
pointed straight upwards and was then lowered so that the arrow was
aimed at the target. Several of the women had been taken from other
tribes, after their husbands or fathers had been killed; for the
Nhambiquaras are light-hearted robbers and murderers. Two or three
miserable dogs accompanied them, half-starved and mangy, but each
decorated with a collar of beads. The headmen had three or four wives
apiece, and the women were the burden-bearers, but apparently were not
badly treated. Most of them were dirty, although well-fed looking, and
their features were of a low type; but some, especially among the
children, were quite attractive.

From Bonofacio we went about seven miles, across a rolling prairie
dotted with trees and clumps of shrub. There, on February 24, we
joined Amilcar, who was camped by a brook which flowed into the
Duvida. We were only some six miles from our place of embarkation on
the Duvida, and we divided our party and our belongings. Amilcar,
Miller, Mello, and Oliveira were to march three days to the Gy-Parana,
and then descend it, and continue down the Madeira to Manaos. Rondon,
Lyra, the doctor, Cherrie, Kermit, and I, with sixteen paddlers, in
seven canoes, were to descend the Duvida, and find out whether it led
into the Gy-Parana, our purpose was to return and descend the Ananas,
whose outlet was also unknown. Having this in view, we left a
fortnight's provisions for our party of six at Bonofacio. We took with
us provisions for about fifty days; not full rations, for we hoped in
part to live on the country--on fish, game, nuts, and palm-tops. Our
personal baggage was already well cut down: Cherrie, Kermit, and I
took the naturalist's fly to sleep under, and a very light little tent
extra for any one who might fall sick. Rondon, Lyra, and the doctor
took one of their own tents. The things that we carried were
necessities--food, medicines, bedding, instruments for determining the
altitude and longitude and latitude--except a few books, each in small
compass: Lyra's were in German, consisting of two tiny volumes of
Goethe and Schiller; Kermit's were in Portuguese; mine, all in
English, included the last two volumes of Gibbon, the plays of
Sophocles, More's "Utopia," Marcus Aurelius, and Epictetus, the two
latter lent me by a friend, Major Shipton of the regulars, our
military attache at Buenos Aires.

If our can