“Your common sense will, I am sure, sustain my objection and realize that it was better that I should direct my own movements and appear only at the exact moment when my presence was needed.  That moment has now arrived.  You are in safe hands.  You will not now fail to reach your destination.  From henceforth I take command of this expedition, and I must ask you to complete your preparations to-night, so that we may be able to make an early start in the morning.  My time is of value, and the same thing may be said, no doubt, in a lesser degree of your own.  I propose, therefore, that we push on as rapidly as possible, until I have demonstrated what you have come to see.”

Lord John Roxton has chartered a large steam launch, the Esmeralda, which was to carry us up the river.  So far as climate goes, it was immaterial what time we chose for our expedition, as the temperature ranges from seventy-five to ninety degrees both summer and winter, with no appreciable difference in heat.  In moisture, however, it is otherwise; from December to May is the period of the rains, and during this time the river slowly rises until it attains a height of nearly forty feet above its low-water mark.  It floods the banks, extends in great lagoons over a monstrous waste of country, and forms a huge district, called locally the Gapo, which is for the most part too marshy for foot-travel and too shallow for boating.  About June the waters begin to fall, and are at their lowest at October or November.  Thus our expedition was at the time of the dry season, when the great river and its tributaries were more or less in a normal condition.

The current of the river is a slight one, the drop being not greater than eight inches in a mile.  No stream could be more convenient for navigation, since the prevailing wind is south-east, and sailing boats may make a continuous progress to the Peruvian frontier, dropping down again with the current.  In our own case the excellent engines of the Esmeralda could disregard the sluggish flow of the stream, and we made as rapid progress as if we were navigating a stagnant lake.  For three days we steamed north-westwards up a stream which even here, a thousand miles from its mouth, was still so enormous that from its center the two banks were mere shadows upon the distant skyline.  On the fourth day after leaving Manaos we turned into a tributary which at its mouth was little smaller than the main stream.  It narrowed rapidly, however, and after two more days’ steaming we reached an Indian village, where the Professor insisted that we should land, and that the Esmeralda should be sent back to Manaos.  We should soon come upon rapids, he explained, which would make its further use impossible.  He added privately that we were now approaching the door of the unknown country, and that the fewer whom we took into our confidence the better it would be.  To this end also he made each of us give our word of honor that we would publish or say nothing which