high up upon the sky vault.

Facing north, the country appeared absolutely flat, and nothing could be
seen above the trees as far as the eye or even a telescope could
perceive. In that direction the stream, 200 yards wide, flowed through a
perfectly straight channel for about one mile.

The fishing in the river was excellent. One night we caught a lot of
fish. One, a huge _pirarara_ weighing 40 lb., then some _pirahiba_ and a
_pintado_, the latter 24 lb. in weight. The _pirarara_ was an
extraordinary-looking fish. It had a long head covered entirely with a
hard, bony, granular substance, which could only be cracked by a severe
blow with an axe. The eyes were prominent and placed quite close to
abnormally long antennae or feelers. The back of the _pirarara_ was bluish
black, the centre of the body longitudinally was yellowish, whereas the
under part was white. The tail was of a bright vermilion, and the black
fins had red edges, which made the huge _pirarara_ a really beautiful
fish to look at.

[Illustration: Typical Flat-topped Plateau of Central Brazil.]

[Illustration: One Night's Fishing on the Araguaya.]

The _pirahiba_ had a grey back with stripes so faint that they were
hardly visible. Its head was flat and anchor-shaped. The eyes--very
small--were curiously situated on the top of the head instead of at
the sides--owing to the fact that the head was really so flat that it had
no sides: it was merely a gentle convex curve from one side of the mouth
to the other over the skull. The _pirahiba_ too, like most fish of those
rivers, possessed long tentacles. Its mouth and fins were slightly tinted
red. It displayed powerful teeth similarly arranged to those of the
_pintado_ fish previously described.

Then we got some _tubarao_ (or _Squalus carcharias_)--a small fish with a
long, pointed head like a bird's beak, of the _plagiostomos_ order, and
several _mand[~i]_--a small yellow fish with enormous eyes. The
_mand[~i]_ had remarkable vitality. Seven hours after it had been
caught--I had no idea the poor thing was still alive--it gave several
leaps in the air, and when I put it in a bucket of water it shortly began
to swim as if nothing had happened.

There were only two or three very small dug-outs on the Araguaya, none of
which were capable of carrying more than one or two people. There was no
boat there large enough to carry all my men and baggage, had I even at
that moment decided to descend that river instead