ith open mouth. They killed it with their falcons, as machetes
are called in Brazil. It was taken round the city in triumph in an
oxcart; the doctor saw it, and said it was three metres long. He said
that swimmers feared it even more than the big cayman, because they
could see the latter, whereas the former lay hid at the bottom of the
water. Colonel Rondon said that in many villages where he had been on
the lower Madeira the people had built stockaded enclosures in the
water in which they bathed, not venturing to swim in the open water
for fear of the piraiba and the big cayman.

Next day, April 8, we made five kilometres only, as there was a
succession of rapids. We had to carry the loads past two of them, but
ran the canoes without difficulty, for on the west side were long
canals of swift water through the forest. The river had been higher,
but was still very high, and the current raced round the many islands
that at this point divided the channel. At four we made camp at the
head of another stretch of rapids, over which the Canadian canoes
would have danced without shipping a teaspoonful of water, but which
our dugouts could only run empty. Cherrie killed three monkeys and
Lyra caught two big piranhas, so that we were again all of us well
provided with dinner and breakfast. When a number of men, doing hard
work, are most of the time on half-rations, they grow to take a lively
interest in any reasonably full meal that does arrive.

On the 10th we repeated the proceedings: a short quick run; a few
hundred metres' portage, occupying, however, at least a couple of
hours; again a few minutes' run; again other rapids. We again made
less than five kilometres; in the two days we had been descending
nearly a metre for every kilometre we made in advance; and it hardly
seemed as if this state of things could last, for the aneroid showed
that we were getting very low down. How I longed for a big Maine
birch-bark, such as that in which I once went down the Mattawamkeag at
high water! It would have slipped down these rapids as a girl trips
through a country dance. But our loaded dugouts would have shoved
their noses under every curl. The country was lovely. The wide river,
now in one channel, now in several channels, wound among hills; the
shower-freshened forest glistened in the sunlight; the many kinds of
beautiful palm-fronds and the huge pacova-leaves stamped the peculiar
look of the tropics on the whole landscape--it was l