aradas over-ate, and sickness was as rife among them as
ever. In Cherrie's boat he himself and the steersman were the only men
who paddled strongly and continuously. The storekeeper's stock of
goods was very low, only what he still had left from that brought in
nearly a year before; for the big boats, or batelaos-batelons--had not
yet worked as far up-stream. We expected to meet them somewhere below
the next rapids, the Inferno. The trader or rubberman brings up his
year's supply of goods in a batelao, starting in February and reaching
the upper course of the river early in May, when the rainy season is
over. The parties of rubber-explorers are then equipped and
provisioned; and the settlers purchase certain necessities, and
certain things that strike them as luxuries. This year the Brazil-nut
crop on the river had failed, a serious thing for all explorers and
wilderness wanderers.

On the 20th we made the longest run we had made, fifty-two kilometres.
Lyra took observations where we camped; we were in latitude 8 degrees
49 minutes. At this camping-place the great, beautiful river was a
little over three hundred metres wide. We were in an empty house. The
marks showed that in the high water, a couple of months back, the
river had risen until the lower part of the house was flooded. The
difference between the level of the river during the floods and in the
dry season is extraordinary.

On the 21st we made another good run, getting down to the Inferno
rapids, which are in latitude 8 degrees 19 minutes south. Until we
reached the Cardozo we had run almost due north; since then we had
been running a little west of north. Before we reached these rapids we
stopped at a large, pleasant thatch house, and got a fairly big and
roomy as well as light boat, leaving both our two smaller dugouts
behind. Above the rapids a small river, the Madeirainha, entered from
the left. The rapids had a fall of over ten metres, and the water was
very wild and rough. Met with for the first time, it would doubtless
have taken several days to explore a passage and, with danger and
labor, get the boats down. But we were no longer exploring,
pioneering, over unknown country. It is easy to go where other men
have prepared the way. We had a guide; we took our baggage down by a
carry three-quarters of a kilometre long; and the canoes were run
through known channels the following morning. At the foot of the
rapids was a big house and store; and camped a