and
that the portage would take several days. We made camp just above the
rapids. Ants swarmed, and some of them bit savagely. Our men, in
clearing away the forest for our tents, left several very tall and
slender accashy palms; the bole of this palm is as straight as an
arrow and is crowned with delicate, gracefully curved fronds. We had
come along the course of the river almost exactly a hundred
kilometres; it had twisted so that we were only about fifty-five
kilometres north of our starting-point. The rock was porphyritic.

The 7th, 8th, and 9th we spent in carrying the loads and dragging and
floating the dugouts past the series of rapids at whose head we had
stopped.

The first day we shifted camp a kilometre and a half to the foot of
this series of rapids. This was a charming and picturesque camp. It
was at the edge of the river, where there was a little, shallow bay
with a beach of firm sand. In the water, at the middle point of the
beach, stood a group of three burity palms, their great trunks rising
like columns. Round the clearing in which our tents stood were several
very big trees; two of them were rubber-trees. Kermit went down-stream
five or six kilometres, and returned, having shot a jacu and found
that at the point which he had reached there was another rapids,
almost a fall, which would necessitate our again dragging the canoes
over a portage. Antonio, the Parecis, shot a big monkey; of this I was
glad because portaging is hard work, and the men appreciated the
meat. So far Cherrie had collected sixty birds on the Duvida, all of
them new to the collection, and some probably new to science. We saw
the fresh sign of paca, agouti, and the small peccary, and Kermit with
the dogs roused a tapir, which crossed the river right through the
rapids; but no one got a shot at it.

Except at one or perhaps two points a very big dugout, lightly loaded,
could probably run all these rapids. But even in such a canoe it would
be silly to make the attempt on an exploring expedition, where the
loss of a canoe or of its contents means disaster; and moreover such a
canoe could not be taken, for it would be impossible to drag it over
the portages on the occasions when the portages became inevitable. Our
canoes would not have lived half a minute in the wild water.

On the second day the canoes and loads were brought down to the foot
of the first rapids. Lyra cleared the path and laid the logs for
rollers, while Kermit drag