Next morning we went down a kilometre, and then landed on the other side of the river.  The canoes were run down, and the loads carried to the other side of a little river coming in from the west, which Colonel Rondon christened Cherrie River.  Across this we went on a bridge consisting of a huge tree felled by Macario, one of our best men.  Here we camped, while Rondon, Lyra, Kermit, and Antonio Correa explored what was ahead.  They were absent until mid-afternoon.  Then they returned with the news that we were among ranges of low mountains, utterly different in formation from the high plateau region to which the first rapids, those we had come to on the 2nd of March, belonged.  Through the first range of these mountains the river ran in a gorge, some three kilometres long, immediately ahead of us.  The ground was so rough and steep that it would be impossible to drag the canoes over it and difficult enough to carry the loads; and the rapids were so bad, containing several falls, one of at least ten metres in height, that it was doubtful how many of the canoes we could get down them.  Kermit, who was the only man with much experience of rope work, was the only man who believed we could get the canoes down at all; and it was, of course, possible that we should have to build new ones at the foot to supply the place of any that were lost or left behind.  In view of the length and character of the portage, and of all the unpleasant possibilities that were ahead, and of the need of keeping every pound of food, it was necessary to reduce weight in every possible way and to throw away everything except the barest necessities.

We thought we had reduced our baggage before; but now we cut to the bone.  We kept the fly for all six of us to sleep under.  Kermit’s shoes had gone, thanks to the amount of work in the water which he had been doing; and he took the pair I had been wearing, while I put on my spare pair.  In addition to the clothes I wore, I kept one set of pajamas, a spare pair of drawers, a spare pair of socks, half a dozen handkerchiefs, my wash-kit, my pocket medicine-case, and a little bag containing my spare spectacles, gun-grease, some adhesive plaster, some needles and thread, the “fly-dope,” and my purse and letter of credit, to be used at Manaos.  All of these went into the bag containing my cot, blanket, and mosquito-net.  I also carried a cartridge-bag containing my cartridges, head-net, and gauntlets.  Kermit cut down even closer; and the others about as close.

The last three days of March we spent in getting to the foot of the rapids in this gorge.  Lyra and Kermit, with four of the best watermen, handled the empty canoes.  The work was not only difficult and laborious in the extreme, but hazardous; for the walls of the gorge were so sheer that at the worst places they had to cling to narrow shelves on the face of the rock, while letting the canoes down with ropes.  Meanwhile Rondon surveyed and cut a trail