one of them
five feet in diameter three feet from the ground. The axemen
immediately attacked this one under the superintendence of Colonel
Rondon. Lyra and Kermit started in opposite directions to hunt. Lyra
killed a jacu for us, and Kermit killed two monkeys for the men.
Toward night fall it cleared. The moon was nearly full, and the
foaming river gleamed like silver.

Our men were "regional volunteers," that is, they had enlisted in the
service of the Telegraphic Commission especially to do this wilderness
work, and were highly paid, as was fitting, in view of the toil,
hardship, and hazard to life and health. Two of them had been with
Colonel Rondon during his eight months' exploration in 1909, at which
time his men were regulars, from his own battalion of engineers. His
four aides during the closing months of this trip were Lieutenants
Lyra, Amarante, Alencarliense, and Pyrineus. The naturalist Miranda
Ribeiro also accompanied him. This was the year when, marching on foot
through an absolutely unknown wilderness, the colonel and his party
finally reached the Gy-Parana, which on the maps was then (and on most
maps is now) placed in an utterly wrong course, and over a degree out
of its real position. When they reached the affluents of the Gy-Parana
a third of the members of the party were so weak with fever that they
could hardly crawl. They had no baggage. Their clothes were in
tatters, and some of the men were almost naked. For months they had
had no food except what little game they shot, and especially the wild
fruits and nuts; if it had not been for the great abundance of the
Brazil-nuts they would all have died. At the first big stream they
encountered they built a canoe, and Alencarliense took command of it
and descended to map the course of the river. With him went Ribeiro,
the doctor Tanageira, who could no longer walk on account of the
ulceration of one foot, three men whom the fever had rendered unable
longer to walk, and six men who were as yet well enough to handle the
canoe. By the time the remainder of the party came to the next
navigable river eleven more fever-stricken men had nearly reached the
end of their tether. Here they ran across a poor devil who had for
four months been lost in the forest and was dying of slow starvation.
He had eaten nothing but Brazil-nuts and the grubs of insects. He
could no longer walk, but could sit erect and totter feebly for a few
feet. Another canoe was built, and i