On the morning of March 22 we started in our six canoes.  We made ten kilometres.  Twenty minutes after starting we came to the first rapids.  Here every one walked except the three best paddlers, who took the canoes down in succession—­an hour’s job.  Soon after this we struck a bees’ nest in the top of a tree overhanging the river; our steersman climbed out and robbed it, but, alas! lost the honey on the way back.  We came to a small steep fall which we did not dare run in our over-laden, clumsy, and cranky dugouts.  Fortunately, we were able to follow a deep canal which led off for a kilometre, returning just below the falls, fifty yards from where it had started.  Then, having been in the boats and in motion only one hour and a half, we came to a long stretch of rapids which it took us six hours to descend, and we camped at the foot.  Everything was taken out of the canoes, and they were run down in succession.  At one difficult and perilous place they were let down by ropes; and even thus we almost lost one.

We went down the right bank.  On the opposite bank was an Indian village, evidently inhabited only during the dry season.  The marks on the stumps of trees showed that these Indians had axes and knives; and there were old fields in which maize, beans, and cotton had been grown.  The forest dripped and steamed.  Rubber-trees were plentiful.  At one point the tops of a group of tall trees were covered with yellow-white blossoms.  Others bore red blossoms.  Many of the big trees, of different kinds, were buttressed at the base with great thin walls of wood.  Others, including both palms and ordinary trees, showed an even stranger peculiarity.  The trunk, near the base, but sometimes six or eight feet from the ground, was split into a dozen or twenty branches or small trunks which sloped outward in tent-like shape, each becoming a root.  The larger trees of this type looked as if their trunks were seated on the tops of the pole frames of Indian tepees.  At one point in the stream, to our great surprise, we saw a flying fish.  It skimmed the water like a swallow for over twenty yards.

Although we made only ten kilometres we worked hard all day.  The last canoes were brought down and moored to the bank at nightfall.  Our tents were pitched in the darkness.

Next day we made thirteen kilometres.  We ran, all told, a little over an hour and three-quarters.  Seven hours were spent in getting past a series of rapids at which the portage, over rocky and difficult ground, was a kilometre long.  The canoes were run down empty—­a hazardous run, in which one of them upset.