Page:Through the Brazilian Wilderness by Theodore Roosevelt (1925).djvu/280

 In mid-afternoon we came to the mouth of a big and swift affluent entering from the right. It was undoubt- edly the Bandeira, which we had crossed well toward its head, some ten days before, on our road to Bono- facio. The Nhambiquaras had then told Colonel Rondon that it flowed into the Duvida. After its junction, with £he added volume of water, the river widened without losing its depth. It was so high that it had overflowed . and stood among the trees on the lower levels. Only the higher stretches were dry. On the sheer banks where ’we Handed we had to push the canoes for yards or rods ^through the branches of the submerged trees, hacking and hewing. There were occasional bays and ox-bows from which the current had shifted. In these the coarse marsh grass grew tall.

f This evening we made camp on a flat of dry ground, densely wooded, of course, directly on the edge of the river and five feet above it. It was fine to see the speed and sinewy ease with which the choppers cleared an open space for the tents. Next morning, when we bathed before sunrise, we dived into deep water right from the shore, and from the moored canoes. This second day we made sixteen and a half kilometres along the course of the river, and nine kilometres in a straight line almost due north.

The following day, March 1, there was much rain — sometimes showers, sometimes vertical sheets of water. Our course was somewhat west of north and we made twenty and a half kilometres. We passed signs of Indian habitation. There were abandoned palm-leaf shelters on both banks. On the left bank we came to two or three