river which entered on our left.  We ran two or three light rapids, and portaged the loads by another.  The river ran in long and usually tranquil stretches.  In the morning when we started the view was lovely.  There was a mist, and for a couple of miles the great river, broad and quiet, ran between the high walls of tropical forest, the tops of the giant trees showing dim through the haze.  Different members of the party caught many fish, and shot a monkey and a couple of jacare-tinga birds kin to a turkey, but the size of a fowl—­so we again had a camp of plenty.  The dry season was approaching, but there were still heavy, drenching rains.  On this day the men found some new nuts of which they liked the taste; but the nuts proved unwholesome and half of the men were very sick and unable to work the following day.  In the balsa only two were left fit to do anything, and Kermit plied a paddle all day long.

Accordingly, it was a rather sorry crew that embarked the following morning, April 15.  But it turned out a red-letter day.  The day before, we had come across cuttings, a year old, which were probably but not certainly made by pioneer rubbermen.  But on this day—­during which we made twenty-five kilometres—­after running two hours and a half we found on the left bank a board on a post, with the initials J. A., to show the farthest up point which a rubberman had reached and claimed as his own.  An hour farther down we came on a newly built house in a little planted clearing; and we cheered heartily.  No one was at home, but the house, of palm thatch, was clean and cool.  A couple of dogs were on watch, and the belongings showed that a man, a woman, and a child lived there, and had only just left.  Another hour brought us to a similar house where dwelt an old black man, who showed the innate courtesy of the Brazilian peasant.  We came on these rubbermen and their houses in about latitude 10 degrees 24 minutes.

In mid-afternoon we stopped at another clean, cool, picturesque house of palm thatch.  The inhabitants all fled at our approach, fearing an Indian raid; for they were absolutely unprepared to have any one come from the unknown regions up-stream.  They returned and were most hospitable and communicative; and we spent the night there.  Said Antonio Correa to Kermit:  “It seems like a dream to be in a house again, and hear the voices of men and women, instead of being among those mountains and rapids.”  The river was known to them as the Castanho, and was the main affluent or rather the left or western branch, of the Aripuanan; the Castanho is a name used by the rubber-gatherers only; it is unknown to the geographers.  We were, according to our informants, about fifteen days’ journey from the confluence of the two rivers; but there were many rubbermen along the banks, some of whom had become permanent settlers.  We had come over three hundred kilometres, in forty-eight days, over absolutely unknown ground; we had seen