Next morning we resumed our march.  It soon began to rain and we were drenched when, some fifteen miles on, we reached the river where we were to camp.  After the great heat we felt quite cold in our wet clothes, and gladly crowded round a fire which was kindled under a thatched shed, beside the cabin of the ferryman.  This ferry-boat was so small that it could only take one mule, or at most two, at a time.  The mules and a span of six oxen dragging an ox-cart, which we had overtaken, were ferried slowly to the farther side that afternoon, as there was no feed on the hither bank, where we ourselves camped.  The ferryman was a soldier in the employ of the Telegraphic Commission.  His good-looking, pleasant-mannered wife, evidently of both Indian and negro blood, was with him, and was doing all she could do as a housekeeper, in the comfortless little cabin, with its primitive bareness of furniture and fittings.

Here we saw Captain Amilcar, who had come back to hurry up his rear-guard.  We stood ankle-deep in mud and water, by the swollen river, while the rain beat on us, and enjoyed a few minutes’ talk with the cool, competent officer who was doing a difficult job with such workman-like efficiency.  He had no poncho, and was wet through, but was much too busy in getting his laden oxen forward to think of personal discomfort.  He had had a good deal of trouble with his mules, but his oxen were still in fair shape.

After leaving the Juruena the ground became somewhat more hilly, and the scrubby forest was less open, but otherwise there was no change in the monotonous, and yet to me rather attractive, landscape.  The ant-hills, and the ant-houses in the trees—­arboreal ant-hills, so to speak were as conspicuous as ever.  The architects of some were red ants, of others black ants; and others, which were on the whole the largest, had been built by the white ants, the termites.  The latter were not infrequently taller than a horseman’s head.

That evening round the camp-fire Colonel Rondon happened to mention how the brother of one of the soldiers with us—­a Parecis Indian—­had been killed by a jararaca snake.  Cherrie told of a narrow escape he had from one while collecting in Guiana.  At night he used to set traps in camp for small mammals.  One night he heard one of these traps go off under his hammock.  He reached down for it, and as he fumbled for the chain he felt a snake strike at him, just missing him in the darkness, but actually brushing his hand.  He lit a light and saw that a big jararaca had been caught in the trap; and he preserved it as a specimen.  Snakes frequently came into his camp after nightfall.  He killed one rattlesnake which had swallowed the skinned bodies of four mice he had prepared as specimens; which shows that rattlesnakes do not always feed only on living prey.  Another rattlesnake which he killed in Central America had just swallowed an opossum which proved to be of a species new to science.