traverse its upper course, the first to map its length.  He and his assistants performed a similar service for the Juruena, discovering the sources, discovering and descending some of the branches, and for the first time making a trustworthy map of the main river itself, until its junction with the Tapajos.  Near the watershed between the Juruena and the Gy-Parana he established his farthest station to the westward, named Jose Bonofacio, after one of the chief republican patriots of Brazil.  A couple of days’ march northwestward from this station, he in 1909 came across a part of the stream of a river running northward between the Gy-Parana and the Juruena; he could only guess where it debouched, believing it to be into the Madeira, although it was possible that it entered the Gy-Parana or Tapajos.  The region through which it flows was unknown, no civilized man having ever penetrated it; and as all conjecture as to what the river was, as to its length, and as to its place of entering into some highway river, was mere guess-work, he had entered it on his sketch maps as the Rio da Duvida, the River of Doubt.  Among the officers of the Brazilian Army and the scientific civilians who have accompanied him there have been not only expert cartographers, photographers, and telegraphists, but astronomers, geologists, botanists, and zoologists.  Their reports, published in excellent shape by the Brazilian Government, make an invaluable series of volumes, reflecting the highest credit on the explorers, and on the government itself.  Colonel Rondon’s own accounts of his explorations, of the Indian tribes he has visited, and of the beautiful and wonderful things he has seen, possess a peculiar interest.

V. Up the river of tapirs

After leaving Caceres we went up the Sepotuba, which in the local Indian dialect means River of Tapirs.  This river is only navigable for boats of size when the water is high.  It is a swift, fairly clear stream, rushing down from the Plan Alto, the high uplands, through the tropical lowland forest.  On the right hand, or western bank, and here and there on the left bank, the forest is broken by natural pastures and meadows, and at one of these places, known as Porto Campo, sixty or seventy miles above the mouth, there is a good-sized cattle-ranch.  Here we halted, because the launch, and the two pranchas—­native trading-boats with houses on their decks—­which it towed, could not carry our entire party and outfit.  Accordingly most of the baggage and some of the party were sent ahead to where we were to meet our pack-train, at Tapirapoan.  Meanwhile the rest of us made our first camp under tents at Porto Campo, to wait the return of the boats.  The tents were placed in a line, with the tent of Colonel Rondon and the tent in which Kermit and I slept, in the middle, beside one another.  In front of these two, on tall poles, stood the Brazilian and American flags; and at sunrise and sunset the flags were hoisted and hauled down while the trumpet sounded and all of us stood at attention.  Camp was pitched beside the ranch buildings.  In the trees near the tents grew wonderful violet orchids.