From Vilhena we travelled in a generally northward direction.  For a few leagues we went across the chapadao, the sands or clays of the nearly level upland plateau, grassy or covered with thin, stunted forest, the same type of country that had been predominant ever since we ascended the Parecis table-land on the morning of the third day after leaving the Sepotuba.  Then, at about the point where the trail dipped into a basin containing the head-springs of the Ananas, we left this type of country and began to march through thick forest, not very high.  There was little feed for the animals on the Chapadao.  There was less in the forest.  Moreover, the continual heavy rains made the travelling difficult and laborious for them, and they weakened.  However, a couple of marches before we reached Tres Burity, where there is a big ranch with hundreds of cattle, we were met by ten fresh pack-oxen, and our serious difficulties were over.

There were piums in plenty by day, but neither mosquitoes nor sand-flies by night; and for us the trip was very pleasant, save for moments of anxiety about the mules.  The loose bullocks furnished us abundance of fresh beef, although, as was inevitable under the circumstances, of a decidedly tough quality.  One of the biggest of the bullocks was attacked one night by a vampire bat, and next morning his withers were literally bathed in blood.

With the chapadao we said good-by to the curious, gregarious, and crepuscular or nocturnal spiders which we found so abundant along the line of the telegraph wire.  They have offered one of the small problems with which the commission has had to deal.  They are not common in the dry season.  They swarm during the rains; and, when their tough webs are wet, those that lead from the wire to the ground sometimes effectually short circuit the wire.  They have on various occasions caused a good deal of trouble in this manner.

The third night out from Vilhena we emerged for a moment from the endless close-growing forest in which our poor animals got such scanty pickings, and came to a beautiful open country, where grassy slopes, dotted with occasional trees, came down on either side of a little brook which was one of the headwaters of the Duvida.  It was a pleasure to see the mules greedily bury their muzzles in the pasturage.  Our tents were pitched in the open, near a shady tree, which sent out its low branches on every side.  At this camp Cherrie shot a lark, very characteristic of the open upland country, and Miller found two bats in the rotten wood of a dead log.  He heard them squeaking and dug them out; he could not tell by what method they had gotten in.