rapids came just round a sharp bend, and we got caught in
the upper part of the swift water and had to run the first set of
rapids in consequence. We in the leading pair of dugouts were within
an ace of coming to grief on some big boulders against which we were
swept by a cross current at the turn. All of us paddling hard--
scraping and bumping--we got through by the skin of our teeth, and
managed to make the bank and moor our dugouts. It was a narrow escape
from grave disaster. The second pair of lashed dugouts profited by our
experience, and made the run--with risk, but with less risk--and
moored beside us. Then all the loads were taken out, and the empty
canoes were run down through the least dangerous channels among the
islands.

This was a long portage, and we camped at the foot of the rapids,
having made nearly seven kilometres. Here a little river, a rapid
stream of volume equal to the Duvida at the point where we first
embarked, joined from the west. Colonel Rondon and Kermit came to it
first, and the former named it Rio Kermit. There was in it a waterfall
about six or eight feet high, just above the junction. Here we found
plenty of fish. Lyra caught two pacu, good-sized, deep-bodied fish.
They were delicious eating. Antonio the Parecis said that these fish
never came up heavy rapids in which there were falls they had to jump.
We could only hope that he was correct, as in that case the rapids we
would encounter in the future would rarely be so serious as to
necessitate our dragging the heavy dugouts overland. Passing the
rapids we had hitherto encountered had meant severe labor and some
danger. But the event showed that he was mistaken. The worst rapids
were ahead of us.

While our course as a whole had been almost due north, and sometimes
east of north, yet where there were rapids the river had generally,
although not always, turned westward. This seemed to indicate that to
the east of us there was a low northward projection of the central
plateau across which we had travelled on mule-back. This is the kind
of projection that appears on the maps of this region as a sierra.
Probably it sent low spurs to the west, and the farthest points of
these spurs now and then caused rapids in our course (for the rapids
generally came where there were hills) and for the moment deflected
the river westward from its general downhill trend to the north. There
was no longer any question that the Duvida was a big river, a riv