and in it Pyrineus started down-stream with the eleven fever patients and the starving wanderer.  Colonel Rondon kept up the morale of his men by still carrying out the forms of military discipline.  The ragged bugler had his bugle.  Lieutenant Pyrineus had lost every particle of his clothing except a hat and a pair of drawers.  The half-naked lieutenant drew up his eleven fever patients in line; the bugle sounded; every one came to attention; and the haggard colonel read out the orders of the day.  Then the dugout with its load of sick men started down-stream, and Rondon, Lyra, Amarante, and the twelve remaining men resumed their weary march.  When a fortnight later they finally struck a camp of rubber-gatherers three of the men were literally and entirely naked.  Meanwhile Amilcar had ascended the Jacyparana a month or two previously with provisions to meet them; for at that time the maps incorrectly treated this river as larger, instead of smaller, than the Gy-Parana, which they were in fact descending; and Colonel Rondon had supposed that they were going down the former stream.  Amilcar returned after himself suffering much hardship and danger.  The different parties finally met at the mouth of the Gy-Parana, where it enters the Madeira.  The lost man whom they had found seemed on the road to recovery, and they left him at a ranch, on the Madeira, where he could be cared for; yet after they had left him they heard that he had died.

On the 12th the men were still hard at work hollowing out the hard wood of the big tree, with axe and adze, while watch and ward were kept over them to see that the idlers did not shirk at the expense of the industrious.  Kermit and Lyra again hunted; the former shot a curassow, which was welcome, as we were endeavoring in all ways to economize our food supply.  We were using the tops of palms also.  I spent the day hunting in the woods, for the most part by the river, but saw nothing.  In the season of the rains game is away from the river and fish are scarce and turtles absent.  Yet it was pleasant to be in the great silent forest.  Here and there grew immense trees, and on some of them mighty buttresses sprang from the base.  The lianas and vines were of every size and shape.  Some were twisted and some were not.  Some came down straight and slender from branches a hundred feet above.  Others curved like long serpents around the trunks.  Others were like knotted cables.  In the shadow there was little noise.  The wind rarely moved the hot, humid air.  There were few flowers or birds.  Insects were altogether too abundant, and even when travelling slowly it was impossible always to avoid them—­not to speak of our constant companions the bees, mosquitoes, and especially the boroshudas or bloodsucking flies.  Now while bursting through a tangle I disturbed a nest of wasps, whose resentment was active; now I heedlessly stepped among the outliers of a small party of the carnivorous foraging ants; now, grasping a branch as I stumbled,