, most gorgeous river scenes were before us. This was by far
the most beautiful spot I had come across on the river so far. I
therefore named the huge island on which I stood George Rex Island. I
gave Alcides orders to carve the name on a tree, but as he was an
anarchist he refused to do it, excusing himself by saying that he had
injured his hand.

At that camp we caught over 400 lb. of fish in less than half an
hour--three _jahus_ among the number, each weighing over 40 lb. Then we
also captured two _cachorra_ or dog fish, which possessed vicious-looking
molars of great length, not unlike those of a big dog. Each of these fish
weighed over 30 lb. Then we got eight _trahiras_, some 20 lb. each in
weight. With the little salt which remained we preserved some of the
fish, as we were now getting very short of food. However, we had
excellent meals most of the time on the river, frying the fish with fat
which we extracted from the fish itself.

During the night of July 26th we had a minimum temperature of 55 deg. F., but
as we had had plenty to eat the previous evening--in fact, too much--we
did not feel the cold quite so severely.

_Ariranhas_ in large families were plentiful near that spot, and came
close several times, grinding their teeth at us, especially when we were
slaughtering the fish on the bank. We kept watch during the entire night,
as on that occasion they were truly vicious. Our dogs, for a change,
became quite sportive. One of them, named Negrino, got furious with the
_ariranhas_, and, driven mad by their unmusical noises, actually jumped
into the stream to go to their attack. In a moment he had quantities of
_ariranhas_ upon him, and was bitten savagely, one ear being nearly torn
off. He endeavoured to beat a retreat, but by that time he was in
mid-stream and struggling for dear life against his enemies. We put out
in the canoe at once and went to his rescue, eventually getting him on
board in an exhausted condition, and bleeding terribly all over.

We enjoyed a hearty breakfast of boiled and fried fish before leaving
camp at 9 o'clock in the morning. We were sorry to leave the beautiful
camp--the best we had had since we had been on the River Arinos. There
were before us two great channels. The one flowing east was the larger of
the two, fully 400 m. wide and 3,000 m. long in a straight line. As we
were paddling along we passed on our left a triangular island the
southern side of which was 2,000 m. long,