from his hand, but he reached the bank.  Poor Simplicio must have been pulled under at once and his life beaten out on the boulders beneath the racing torrent.  He never rose again, nor did we ever recover his body.  Kermit clutched his rifle, his favorite 405 Winchester with which he had done most of his hunting both in Africa and America, and climbed on the bottom of the upset boat.  In a minute he was swept into the second series of rapids, and whirled away from the rolling boat, losing his rifle.  The water beat his helmet down over his head and face and drove him beneath the surface; and when he rose at last he was almost drowned, his breath and strength almost spent.  He was in swift but quiet water, and swam toward an overhanging branch.  His jacket hindered him, but he knew he was too nearly gone to be able to get it off, and, thinking with the curious calm one feels when death is but a moment away, he realized that the utmost his failing strength could do was to reach the branch.  He reached, and clutched it, and then almost lacked strength to haul himself out on the land.  Good Trigueiro had faithfully swum alongside him through the rapids, and now himself scrambled ashore.  It was a very narrow escape.  Kermit was a great comfort and help to me on the trip; but the fear of some fatal accident befalling him was always a nightmare to me.  He was to be married as soon as the trip was over; and it did not seem to me that I could bear to bring bad tidings to his betrothed and to his mother.

Simplicio was unmarried.  Later we sent to his mother all the money that would have been his had he lived.  The following morning we put on one side of the post erected to mark our camping-spot the following inscription, in Portuguese: 

“In these rapids died poor Simplicio.”

On an expedition such as ours death is one of the accidents that may at any time occur, and narrow escapes from death are too common to be felt as they would be felt elsewhere.  One mourns sincerely, but mourning cannot interfere with labor.  We immediately proceeded with the work of the portage.  From the head to the tail of this series of rapids the distance was about six hundred yards.  A path was cut along the bank, over which the loads were brought.  The empty canoes ran the rapids without mishap, each with two skilled paddlers.  One of the canoes almost ran into a swimming tapir at the head of the rapids; it went down the rapids, and then climbed out of the river.  Kermit accompanied by Joao, went three or four miles down the river, looking for the body of Simplicio and for the sunk canoe.  He found neither.  But he found a box of provisions and a paddle, and salvaged both by swimming into midstream after them.  He also found that a couple of kilometres below there was another stretch of rapids, and following them on the left-hand bank to the foot he found that they were worse than the ones we had just passed, and impassable for canoes on this left-hand side.