at all.  The skill of these sons of the forest in cutting a pathway with their long knives became a constant wonder to me.  Where an inexperienced person would have lost himself, looking for a round-about easy course, these men moved straight ahead, hewing and hacking right and left, the play of the swift blades seemingly dissolving all obstacles in their path.  Some idea of the density of the growth can be gathered from the fact that if a man moved off he became instantly invisible although he might be only a yard or two away.

Late in the afternoon we reached a small hut or tambo built on the former trip by the Chief.  It was nothing but a roof on poles, but it was a welcome sight to us as it meant rest and food.  We were tired and hungry and were glad to find a small creek close by where we could refresh ourselves, taking care to keep out of the reach of the alligators and water-snakes swimming close to the weeds by the shore.  For our supper we gave the dried pirarucu flesh a boil and soaked some farinha in water, eating this tasteless repast with as much gusto as we would if it had been roast beef.  Let me here recommend this diet for any gourmet whose appetite has been impaired, and he will soon be able to enjoy a stew of shoe-leather.  One of the men, a good-natured athlete, Jerome by name, was sent out after fresh meat, and brought back a weird little animal resembling a fox (cuti).  We decided to test it as a stew, but, lacking salt, we found the dried pirarucu preferable.

The excitement of the night was furnished by ants, which had built a nest in the tambo where we had swung our hammocks.  The visitors swarmed up poles and down ropes and would not be denied entrance.  Wads of cotton smeared with vaseline and bandaged around the fastenings of the hammock proved no obstacle.  It was impossible to sleep; mosquitoes came to the assistance of the ants and managed to find their way through the mosquito-net.  To complete the general “cheerfulness,” the tree-tops were full of little spider-monkeys whispering mournfully throughout the dark and showery night.

The second day’s march took us through the region which the Chief had explored the year before, and we spent the night in another tambo built on that occasion.  Our progress, however, was made with increasing difficulty, as the land had become more hilly and broken and the forest, if possible, more dense and wild.  We were now at a considerable distance from the river-front and in a region where the yearly inundation could never reach.  This stage of the journey remains among the few pleasant memories of that terrible expedition, through what I may call the gastronomic revel with which it ended.  Jerome had succeeded in bringing down with his muzzle-loader a mutum, a bird which in flavour and appearance reminds one of a turkey, while I was so lucky as to bag a nice fat deer (marsh-deer).  This happened at tambo No. 2.  We called each successive hut by its respective number.  Here we had a great culinary feast, so great that during the following days I thought of this time with a sad “ils sont passe, ces jours de fete.”