stantly more desirous of economizing the strength of the men. One
day more would complete a month since we had embarked on the Duvida as
we had started in February, the lunar and calendar months coincided.
We had used up over half our provisions. We had come only a trifle
over 160 kilometres, thanks to the character and number of the rapids.
We believed we had three or four times the distance yet to go before
coming to a part of the river where we might hope to meet assistance,
either from rubber-gatherers, or from Pyrineus, if he were really
coming up the river which we were going down. If the rapids continued
to be as they had been it could not be much more than three weeks
before we were in straits for food, aside from the ever-present danger
of accident in the rapids; and if our progress were no faster than it
had been--and we were straining to do our best--we would in such event
still have several hundreds of kilometres of unknown river before us.
We could not even hazard a guess at what was in front. The river was
now a really big river, and it seemed impossible that it could flow
either into the Gy-Parana or the Tapajos. It was possible that it went
into the Canuma, a big affluent of the Madeira low down, and next to
the Tapajos. It was more probable that it was the headwaters of the
Aripuanan, a river which, as I have said, was not even named on the
excellent English map of Brazil I carried. Nothing but the mouth had
been known to any geographer; but the lower course had long been known
to rubber-gatherers, and recently a commission from the government of
Amazonas had partway ascended one branch of it--not as far as the
rubber-gatherers had gone, and, as it turned out, not the branch we
came down.

Two of our men were down with fever. Another man, Julio, a fellow of
powerful frame, was utterly worthless, being an inborn, lazy shirk
with the heart of a ferocious cur in the body of a bullock. The others
were good men, some of them very good indeed. They were under the
immediate supervision of Pedrinho Craveiro, who was first-class in
every way.

This camp was very lovely. It was on the edge of a bay, into which the
river broadened immediately below the rapids. There was a beach of
white sand, where we bathed and washed our clothes. All around us, and
across the bay, and on both sides of the long water-street made by the
river, rose the splendid forest. There were flocks of parakeets
colored green, blue, and red.