orenoon of the following day was a repetition of this wearisome
work; but late in the afternoon the river began to run in long quiet
reaches. We made fifteen kilometres, and for the first time in several
weeks camped where we did not hear the rapids. The silence was
soothing and restful. The following day, April 14, we made a good run
of some thirty-two kilometres. We passed a little river which entered
on our left. We ran two or three light rapids, and portaged the loads
by another. The river ran in long and usually tranquil stretches. In
the morning when we started the view was lovely. There was a mist, and
for a couple of miles the great river, broad and quiet, ran between
the high walls of tropical forest, the tops of the giant trees showing
dim through the haze. Different members of the party caught many fish,
and shot a monkey and a couple of jacare-tinga birds kin to a turkey,
but the size of a fowl--so we again had a camp of plenty. The dry
season was approaching, but there were still heavy, drenching rains.
On this day the men found some new nuts of which they liked the taste;
but the nuts proved unwholesome and half of the men were very sick and
unable to work the following day. In the balsa only two were left fit
to do anything, and Kermit plied a paddle all day long.

Accordingly, it was a rather sorry crew that embarked the following
morning, April 15. But it turned out a red-letter day. The day before,
we had come across cuttings, a year old, which were probably but not
certainly made by pioneer rubbermen. But on this day--during which we
made twenty-five kilometres--after running two hours and a half we
found on the left bank a board on a post, with the initials J. A., to
show the farthest up point which a rubberman had reached and claimed
as his own. An hour farther down we came on a newly built house in a
little planted clearing; and we cheered heartily. No one was at home,
but the house, of palm thatch, was clean and cool. A couple of dogs
were on watch, and the belongings showed that a man, a woman, and a
child lived there, and had only just left. Another hour brought us to
a similar house where dwelt an old black man, who showed the innate
courtesy of the Brazilian peasant. We came on these rubbermen and
their houses in about latitude 10 degrees 24 minutes.

In mid-afternoon we stopped at another clean, cool, picturesque house
of palm thatch. The inhabitants all fled at our approach, fearing an
Indi