I shook down a shower of fire-ants; and among all these my attention was particularly arrested by the bite of one of the giant ants, which stung like a hornet, so that I felt it for three hours.  The camarades generally went barefoot or only wore sandals; and their ankles and feet were swollen and inflamed from the bites of the boroshudas and ants, some being actually incapacitated from work.  All of us suffered more or less, our faces and hands swelling slightly from the boroshuda bites; and in spite of our clothes we were bitten all over our bodies, chiefly by ants and the small forest ticks.  Because of the rain and the heat our clothes were usually wet when we took them off at night, and just as wet when we put them on again in the morning.

All day on the 13th the men worked at the canoe, making good progress.  In rolling and shifting the huge, heavy tree-trunk every one had to assist now and then.  The work continued until ten in the evening, as the weather was clear.  After nightfall some of the men held candles and the others plied axe or adze, standing within or beside the great, half-hollowed logs, while the flicker of the lights showed the tropic forest rising in the darkness round about.  The night air was hot and still and heavy with moisture.  The men were stripped to the waist.  Olive and copper and ebony, their skins glistened as if oiled, and rippled with the ceaseless play of the thews beneath.

On the morning of the 14th the work was resumed in a torrential tropic downpour.  The canoe was finished, dragged down to the water, and launched soon after midday, and another hour or so saw us under way.  The descent was marked, and the swollen river raced along.  Several times we passed great whirlpools, sometimes shifting, sometimes steady.  Half a dozen times we ran over rapids, and, although they were not high enough to have been obstacles to loaded Canadian canoes, two of them were serious to us.  Our heavily laden, clumsy dugouts were sunk to within three or four inches of the surface of the river, and, although they were buoyed on each side with bundles of burity-palm branch-stems, they shipped a great deal of water in the rapids.  The two biggest rapids we only just made, and after each we had hastily to push ashore in order to bail.  In one set of big ripples or waves my canoe was nearly swamped.  In a wilderness, where what is ahead is absolutely unknown, alike in terms of time, space, and method—­for we had no idea where we would come out, how we would get out, or when we would get out—­it is of vital consequence not to lose one’s outfit, especially the provisions; and yet it is of only less consequence to go as rapidly as possible lest all the provisions be exhausted and the final stages of the expedition be accomplished by men weakened from semi-starvation, and therefore ripe for disaster.  On this occasion, of the two hazards, we felt it necessary to risk running the rapids; for our progress had been