so very slow that unless we made up the time, it was probable that we would be short of food before we got where we could expect to procure any more except what little the country in the time of the rains and floods, might yield.  We ran until after five, so that the work of pitching camp was finished in the dark.  We had made nearly sixteen kilometres in a direction slightly east of north.  This evening the air was fresh and cool.

The following morning, the 15th of March, we started in good season.  For six kilometres we drifted and paddled down the swift river without incident.  At times we saw lofty Brazil-nut trees rising above the rest of the forest on the banks; and back from the river these trees grow to enormous proportions, towering like giants.  There were great rubber-trees also, their leaves always in sets of threes.  Then the ground on either hand rose into boulder-strewn, forest-clad hills and the roar of broken water announced that once more our course was checked by dangerous rapids.  Round a bend we came on them; a wide descent of white water, with an island in the middle, at the upper edge.  Here grave misfortune befell us, and graver misfortune was narrowly escaped.

Kermit, as usual, was leading in his canoe.  It was the smallest and least seaworthy of all.  He had in it little except a week’s supply of our boxed provisions and a few tools; fortunately none of the food for the camaradas.  His dog Trigueiro was with him.  Besides himself, the crew consisted of two men:  Joao, the helmsman, or pilot, as he is called in Brazil, and Simplicio, the bowsman.  Both were negroes and exceptionally good men in every way.  Kermit halted his canoe on the left bank, above the rapids, and waited for the colonel’s canoe.  Then the colonel and Lyra walked down the bank to see what was ahead.  Kermit took his canoe across to the island to see whether the descent could be better accomplished on the other side.  Having made his investigation, he ordered the men to return to the bank he had left, and the dugout was headed up-stream accordingly.  Before they had gone a dozen yards, the paddlers digging their paddles with all their strength into the swift current, one of the shifting whirlpools of which I have spoken came down-stream, whirled them around, and swept them so close to the rapids that no human power could avoid going over them.  As they were drifting into them broadside on, Kermit yelled to the steersman to turn her head, so as to take them in the only way that offered any chance whatever of safety.  The water came aboard, wave after wave, as they raced down.  They reached the bottom with the canoe upright, but so full as barely to float, and the paddlers urged her toward the shore.  They had nearly reached the bank when another whirlpool or whirling eddy tore them away and hurried them back to midstream, where the dugout filled and turned over.  Joao, seizing the rope, started to swim ashore; the rope was pulled