Packing the loads across was simple.  Dragging the heavy dugouts was labor.  The biggest of the two water-logged ones was the heaviest.  Lyra and Kermit did the job.  All the men were employed at it except the cook, and one man who was down with fever.  A road was chopped through the forest and a couple of hundred stout six-foot poles, or small logs, were cut as rollers and placed about two yards apart.  With block and tackle the seven dugouts were hoisted out of the river up the steep banks, and up the rise of ground until the level was reached.  Then the men harnessed themselves two by two on the drag-rope, while one of their number pried behind with a lever, and the canoe, bumping and sliding, was twitched through the woods.  Over the sandstone flats there were some ugly ledges, but on the whole the course was down-hill and relatively easy.  Looking at the way the work was done, at the good-will, the endurance, and the bull-like strength of the camaradas, and at the intelligence and the unwearied efforts of their commanders, one could but wonder at the ignorance of those who do not realize the energy and the power that are so often possessed by, and that may be so readily developed in, the men of the tropics.  Another subject of perpetual wonder is the attitude of certain men who stay at home, and still more the attitude of certain men who travel under easy conditions, and who belittle the achievements of the real explorers of, the real adventures in, the great wilderness.  The impostors and romancers among explorers or would-be explorers and wilderness wanderers have been unusually prominent in connection with South America (although the conspicuous ones are not South Americans, by the way); and these are fit subjects for condemnation and derision.  But the work of the genuine explorer and wilderness wanderer is fraught with fatigue, hardship, and danger.  Many of the men of little knowledge talk glibly of portaging as if it were simple and easy.  A portage over rough and unknown ground is always a work of difficulty and of some risk to the canoe; and in the untrodden, or even in the unfrequented, wilderness risk to the canoe is a serious matter.  This particular portage at Navaite Rapids was far from being unusually difficult; yet it not only cost two and a half days of severe and incessant labor, but it cost something in damage to the canoes.  One in particular, the one in which I had been journeying, was split in a manner which caused us serious uneasiness as to how long, even after being patched, it would last.  Where the canoes were launched, the bank was sheer, and one of the water-logged canoes filled and went to the bottom; and there was more work in raising it.