r which to carry heavy loads and drag heavy dugout canoes. At the
point where the descent was steepest there were great naked flats of
friable sandstone and conglomerate. Over parts of these, where there
was a surface of fine sand, there was a growth of coarse grass. Other
parts were bare and had been worn by the weather into fantastic
shapes--one projection looked like an old-fashioned beaver hat upside
down. In this place, where the naked flats of rock showed the
projection of the ledge through which the river had cut its course,
the torrent rushed down a deep, sheer-sided, and extremely narrow
channel. At one point it was less than two yards across, and for quite
a distance not more than five or six yards. Yet only a mile or two
above the rapids the deep, placid river was at least a hundred yards
wide. It seemed extraordinary, almost impossible, that so broad a
river could in so short a space of time contract its dimensions to the
width of the strangled channel through which it now poured its entire
volume.

This has for long been a station where the Nhambiquaras at intervals
built their ephemeral villages and tilled the soil with the rude and
destructive cultivation of savages. There were several abandoned old
fields, where the dense growth of rank fern hid the tangle of burnt
and fallen logs. Nor had the Nhambiquaras been long absent. In one
trail we found what gypsies would have called a "pateran," a couple of
branches arranged crosswise, eight leaves to a branch; it had some
special significance, belonging to that class of signals, each with
some peculiar and often complicated meaning, which are commonly used
by many wild peoples. The Indians had thrown a simple bridge,
consisting of four long poles, without a hand-rail, across one of the
narrowest parts of the rock gorge through which the river foamed in
its rapid descent. This sub-tribe of Indians was called the Navaite;
we named the rapids after them, Navaite Rapids. By observation Lyra
found them to be (in close approximation to) latitude 11 degrees 44
minutes south and longitude 60 degrees 18 minutes west from Greenwich.

We spent March 3 and 4 and the morning of the 5th in portaging around
the rapids. The first night we camped in the forest beside the spot
where we had halted. Next morning we moved the baggage to the foot of
the rapids, where we intended to launch the canoes, and pitched our
tents on the open sandstone flat. It rained heavily. The little b