a way through the forest. I noticed that the
Indian, when cutting his way through, using the knife in his right hand,
would gradually veer to the right, so that if you let him go long enough
he would describe a regular circle and come back to his original
starting-point. If he cut the way with the left hand, the tendency would
be to keep to the left all the time until he had described a circle that
way. That was not characteristic of that man only, but of nearly all the
men I met in Brazil when making a _picada_. It was therefore necessary to
keep constant watch with the compass so that the deviation should be as
small as possible during the march.

We had gone but a short distance from camp when we came to a streamlet of
the most delicious water. I had suffered a great deal from thirst the day
before. We had been so poisoned by the yellow water of the stream that I
did not like to try more experiments at the marsh where my men insisted
on making camp. So that now I really enjoyed a good drink of the limpid
water. That day we found too much water. On going 1 kil. farther, about 4
kil. from camp, we found another wider and equally delicious streamlet, 2
m. wide. All the streams we met flowed in a northerly direction.

We walked and walked the entire day, until 6 p.m., covering a distance of
26 kil. The Indian Miguel worried me the whole day, saying that cutting
the _picada_ was heavy work and he could not go on, as his finger was
hurting him, and the pay he received--L1 sterling a day--was too small
for the work he had to do. I had to keep constant watch on him, as he was
a man of a slippery nature, and I did not know what he might do from one
moment to another. Also he said we were simply committing suicide by
trying to go through the virgin forest, as we should meet thousands of
Indians who would attack us, and we had no chance of escape. I needed
this man and his companion to carry my sextant and the unexposed
photographic plates, some two hundred of them, which were of considerable
weight.

That night, when we made camp, Miguel shot a fine _jacu_ (_Penelope
cristata_), and we had a meal. Soon after a regular downpour came upon
us, making us feel most uncomfortable. At about eight o'clock, however,
the rain stopped. With a great deal of trouble we were able to light a
fire, while the wet leaves of the trees kept on dropping water on us and
making a peculiar rustling noise on the carpet of dead foliage on the
ground