to insect bites.  The fauna and flora, however, are of great interest.  The American Museum was particularly anxious to obtain collections from the divide between the headwaters of the Paraguay and the Amazon, and from the southern affluents of the Amazon.  Our purpose was to ascend the Paraguay as nearly as possible to the head of navigation, thence cross to the sources of one of the affluents of the Amazon, and if possible descend it in canoes built on the spot.  The Paraguay is regularly navigated as high as boats can go.  The starting-point for our trip was to be Asuncion, in the state of Paraguay.

My exact plan of operations was necessarily a little indefinite, but on reaching Rio de Janeiro the minister of foreign affairs, Mr. Lauro Muller, who had been kind enough to take great personal interest in my trip, informed me that he had arranged that on the headwaters of the Paraguay, at the town of Caceres, I would be met by a Brazilian Army colonel, himself chiefly Indian by blood, Colonel Rondon.  Colonel Rondon has been for a quarter of a century the foremost explorer of the Brazilian hinterland.  He was at the time in Manaos, but his lieutenants were in Caceres and had been notified that we were coming.

More important still, Mr. Lauro Muller—­who is not only an efficient public servant but a man of wide cultivation, with a quality about him that reminded me of John Hay—­offered to help me make my trip of much more consequence than I had originally intended.  He has taken a keen interest in the exploration and development of the interior of Brazil, and he believed that my expedition could be used as a means toward spreading abroad a more general knowledge of the country.  He told me that he would co-operate with me in every way if I cared to undertake the leadership of a serious expedition into the unexplored portion of western Matto Grosso, and to attempt the descent of a river which flowed nobody knew whither, but which the best-informed men believed would prove to be a very big river, utterly unknown to geographers.  I eagerly and gladly accepted, for I felt that with such help the trip could be made of much scientific value, and that a substantial addition could be made to the geographical knowledge of one of the least-known parts of South America.  Accordingly, it was arranged that Colonel Rondon and some assistants and scientists should meet me at or below Corumba, and that we should attempt the descent of the river, of which they had already come across the headwaters.

I had to travel through Brazil, Uruguay, the Argentine, and Chile for six weeks to fulfil my speaking engagements.  Fiala, Cherrie, Miller, and Sigg left me at Rio, continuing to Buenos Aires in the boat in which we had all come down from New York.  From Buenos Aires they went up the Paraguay to Corumba, where they awaited me.  The two naturalists went first, to do all the collecting that was possible; Fiala and Sigg travelled more leisurely, with the heavy baggage.