e ranges of low mountains about the
height of the lower ridges of the Alleghenies. Their sides were steep
and they were covered with the matted growth of the tropical forest.
Our next camping-place, at the foot of the gorge, was almost beneath
us, and from thence the river ran in a straight line, flecked with
white water, for about a kilometre. Then it disappeared behind and
between mountain ridges, which we supposed meant further rapids. It
was a view well worth seeing; but, beautiful although the country
ahead of us was, its character was such as to promise further
hardships, difficulty, and exhausting labor, and especially further
delay; and delay was a serious matter to men whose food supply was
beginning to run short, whose equipment was reduced to the minimum,
who for a month, with the utmost toil, had made very slow progress,
and who had no idea of either the distance or the difficulties of the
route in front of them.

There was not much life in the woods, big or little. Small birds were
rare, although Cherrie's unwearied efforts were rewarded from time to
time by a species new to the collection. There were tracks of tapir,
deer, and agouti; and if we had taken two or three days to devote to
nothing else than hunting them we might perchance have killed
something; but the chance was much too uncertain, the work we were
doing was too hard and wearing, and the need of pressing forward
altogether too great to permit us to spend any time in such manner.
The hunting had to come in incidentally. This type of well nigh
impenetrable forest is the one in which it is most difficult to get
even what little game exists therein. A couple of curassows and a big
monkey were killed by the colonel and Kermit. On the day the monkey
was brought in Lyra, Kermit, and their four associates had spent from
sunrise to sunset in severe and at moments dangerous toil among the
rocks and in the swift water, and the fresh meat was appreciated. The
head, feet, tail, skin, and entrails were boiled for the gaunt and
ravenous dogs. The flesh gave each of us a few mouthfuls; and how good
those mouthfuls tasted!

Cherrie, in addition to being out after birds in every spare moment,
helped in all emergencies. He was a veteran in the work of the tropic
wilderness. We talked together often, and of many things, for our
views of life, and of a man's duty to his wife and children, to other
men, and to women, and to the state in peace and war, were in all