ans had axes and knives; and
there were old fields in which maize, beans, and cotton had been
grown. The forest dripped and steamed. Rubber-trees were plentiful. At
one point the tops of a group of tall trees were covered with yellow-
white blossoms. Others bore red blossoms. Many of the big trees, of
different kinds, were buttressed at the base with great thin walls of
wood. Others, including both palms and ordinary trees, showed an even
stranger peculiarity. The trunk, near the base, but sometimes six or
eight feet from the ground, was split into a dozen or twenty branches
or small trunks which sloped outward in tent-like shape, each becoming
a root. The larger trees of this type looked as if their trunks were
seated on the tops of the pole frames of Indian tepees. At one point
in the stream, to our great surprise, we saw a flying fish. It skimmed
the water like a swallow for over twenty yards.

Although we made only ten kilometres we worked hard all day. The last
canoes were brought down and moored to the bank at nightfall. Our
tents were pitched in the darkness.

Next day we made thirteen kilometres. We ran, all told, a little over
an hour and three-quarters. Seven hours were spent in getting past a
series of rapids at which the portage, over rocky and difficult
ground, was a kilometre long. The canoes were run down empty--a
hazardous run, in which one of them upset.

Yet while we were actually on the river, paddling and floating
downstream along the reaches of swift, smooth water, it was very
lovely. When we started in the morning the day was overcast and the
air was heavy with vapor. Ahead of us the shrouded river stretched
between dim walls of forest, half seen in the mist. Then the sun
burned up the fog, and loomed through it in a red splendor that
changed first to gold and then to molten white. In the dazzling light,
under the brilliant blue of the sky, every detail of the magnificent
forest was vivid to the eye: the great trees, the network of bush
ropes, the caverns of greenery, where thick-leaved vines covered all
things else. Wherever there was a hidden boulder the surface of the
current was broken by waves. In one place, in midstream, a pyramidal
rock thrust itself six feet above the surface of the river. On the
banks we found fresh Indian sign.

At home in Vermont Cherrie is a farmer, with a farm of six hundred
acres, most of it woodland. As we sat at the foot of the rapids,
watching for the last dug