VIII.  The river of doubt

On February 27, 1914, shortly after midday, we started down the River of Doubt into the unknown.  We were quite uncertain whether after a week we should find ourselves in the Gy-Parana, or after six weeks in the Madeira, or after three months we knew not where.  That was why the river was rightly christened the Duvida.

We had been camped close to the river, where the trail that follows the telegraph line crosses it by a rough bridge.  As our laden dugouts swung into the stream, Amilcar and Miller and all the others of the Gy-Parana party were on the banks and the bridge to wave farewell and wish us good-by and good luck.  It was the height of the rainy season, and the swollen torrent was swift and brown.  Our camp was at about 12 degrees 1 minute latitude south and 60 degrees 15 minutes longitude west of Greenwich.  Our general course was to be northward toward the equator, by waterway through the vast forest.

We had seven canoes, all of them dugouts.  One was small, one was cranky, and two were old, waterlogged, and leaky.  The other three were good.  The two old canoes were lashed together, and the cranky one was lashed to one of the others.  Kermit with two paddlers went in the smallest of the good canoes; Colonel Rondon and Lyra with three other paddlers in the next largest; and the doctor, Cherrie, and I in the largest with three paddlers.  The remaining eight camaradas—­there were sixteen in all—­were equally divided between our two pairs of lashed canoes.  Although our personal baggage was cut down to the limit necessary for health and efficiency, yet on such a trip as ours, where scientific work has to be done and where food for twenty-two men for an unknown period of time has to be carried, it is impossible not to take a good deal of stuff; and the seven dugouts were too heavily laden.

The paddlers were a strapping set.  They were expert rivermen and men of the forest, skilled veterans in wilderness work.  They were lithe as panthers and brawny as bears.  They swam like waterdogs.  They were equally at home with pole and paddle, with axe and machete; and one was a good cook and others were good men around camp.  They looked like pirates in the pictures of Howard Pyle or Maxfield Parrish; one or two of them were pirates, and one worse than a pirate; but most of them were hard-working, willing, and cheerful.  They were white,—­or, rather, the olive of southern Europe,—­black, copper-colored, and of all intermediate shades.  In my canoe Luiz the steersman, the headman, was a Matto Grosso negro; Julio the bowsman was from Bahia and of pure Portuguese blood; and the third man, Antonio, was a Parecis Indian.