I seemed to have no luck on that journey. Everything went wrong all the time. Everything seemed to stand in my way to prevent my progress. My men were demoralized, my mules and horses in a pitiable condition. I called a halt of two or three days in order that we might shoe the animals again and rearrange the pack-saddles. We had, of course, a good supply of new shoes, but the work of shoeing so many animals was hard, especially as I had to do most of it myself with Alcides and Filippe, the other men being absolutely useless. Add to this a stifling temperature of 90° Fahrenheit.

Caraja Indian of the Upper Araguaya River.

Caraja Indian of the Upper Araguaya River.

To make things worse there came a downpour, such as I have seldom seen, and which lasted for two entire days. That was the dry season too! The house in which we had put up—and through the roof of which we could admire the stars at our ease while in bed—was turned into a regular swimming-tank when the rain came. We had a good deal of trouble to keep our things dry, propping them up on improvised stands of stones which we removed from the crumbling walls of the building. Fortunately, most of my pack-saddle cases were air- and water-tight, so that the contents could not be injured. The wind blew with great fury—at the rate of 460 metres a minute, to be strictly accurate.

There was a humble hamlet at Rio Grande or Porto do Castanho, on the Matto Grosso side, where we had crossed the Araguaya River. It was the gloomiest of gloomy places even in glorious weather. Imagine it on a wet, windy day. The few tiny one-storied cabins—they could hardly be called houses—had got soaked with the storm, and looked miserable. The inhabitants were busy baling water from inside their dwellings. Many tiles of the roofs had been blown away, and those that remained had grown extra dark with the moisture, with merely a bluish tinge from the reflected light of the grey sky upon their shiny surfaces. The solitary palm tree at the end of the oblong square looked pitiful, with its long bladed leaves split and broken by the wind, while the dense foliage along the river banks was now several tones darker and richer than we had seen it before.

Under usual circumstances the plaza—or square—was so high above the river that one could not see the water at all until one went to the edge of the stream, but during flood the river rose as much as 20 ft. and occasionally overflowed the greater portion of the square.

The grass of the square—a mere field—alone seemed happy in the damp. Half dried and anÆmic from the hot sun, it seemed to be quickly coming back to life and vigour in those few hours which had rendered us all miserable. My poor horses and mules, worn and sore, stood dripping and wretched, with quivering knees, in the middle of the square—too miserable to feed, only now and then slashing their long wet tails to right or left to drive away impertinent flies.

With the storm the temperature had suddenly descended to 75°, and everybody was shivering with cold after the oppressive heat before the storm.

Upon the half-rotted wooden cross which stood in front of the church was perched a vulture—so thin and shaggy and soaked and motionless that you might easily have mistaken it for a stuffed bird. It was the very picture of misery. But everybody was miserable—one could not help it. I was, too—who am not much given to being depressed.

While marching or camping in the midst of unspoilt nature, I never felt depressed, no matter what happened, and was absolutely regardless of climatic conditions; but in those miserable settlements—feeble attempts at civilization—I must confess that I used to get low-spirited too, and often thought what an idiot I had been to leave my happy homes in Florence and in London, in order to come to these wretched places.

After the attempts at baling out the water had proved futile—as there was more coming in than it was possible to fling out—the people in resignation barricaded their doors and windows. Not a soul was to be seen or heard anywhere. The place was absolutely dead. Even after the storm was over no sign of life could be noticed. The people were all still hiding and trembling in their houses, the comparatively slight but sudden change in the temperature bringing upon most of them attacks of strong malarial fever, which was there prevalent.

At last, splashing her little naked feet along the footpath in the grass—now changed into a streamlet—there approached a little girl with a face as black as coal. She looked terrified as she approached the window out of which I was looking. But she overcame her fright and, prettily stretching out her tiny hand, called out "Boa tarde!" (Good afternoon). Her father and mother were ill; would I give her some medicine for them? Soon after, when the sky had cleared, other patients came along asking for quinine or any medicine I could give them. Others wished to have their teeth pulled out. The Brazilians of the interior had great trouble with their teeth, which were usually in a state of decay.

My own men had wrapped themselves up in their blankets in order to keep warm. They had slept most of the time. They were too cold and lazy even to get up to cook and eat their food. None of the houses possessed a chimney, cooking being done outside; nor, of course, any sanitary arrangements. Those of my men who had toothache cried and moaned the whole night, as might be expected of children aged six of any other country. I have seldom seen men more sensitive and frightened at pain or illness.

The main structure at Porto do Castanho (Port of the Chestnut Tree, because there should be a chestnut tree there) was the church, a mere barn, which elsewhere but in central Brazil would not be considered good enough for storing hay, still less for the worship of the Almighty. Not that it was used much for the latter purpose, as there was no priest within several hundred kilometres. The walls of the church were all scraped and dirty, the corners chipped off by passing animals. All the passers-by went and wiped their dirty hands on the walls of the church—perhaps attracted by the whitewash, which none of the other buildings possessed.

The shops—there were two—had nothing for sale, except some locally grown tobacco. In one shop I found some small iron nails, which were sold at the equivalent of 6d. each!

May 11th. The drenching rain continued the entire night, the minimum temperature being 73° Fahrenheit. My poor animals were in a terrible condition the next morning through the damp, the sores having become badly infected. They were in a purulent condition, and a mass of maggots—the terrible bishus, which were the pest of Brazil. So we had the great job of cleaning them all with a powerful disinfectant as well as washing them with a decoction of warm barbatimÃo (Stryphnodendron barbatimÃo M.), a wood with a great resistance to crushing (K. 1·015) and a specific gravity of 1·275. The decoction, which was really very beneficial for wounds and sores of animals, was made with the bark of that tree warmed in water over a fire. Another decoction we frequently used was of salt and carrapicho herb, but this was not quite so effective as the former.

My men killed a magnificent tucano—a large bird with climbing, inquisitive habits. It possessed an enormous yellow bill of singularly light structure, the point of which was black. The lower part of the bill was of a brilliant red, and of a similar red was the rib of the upper part of the bill. The plumage was of a handsome velvety black on the body and tail—quite shiny—while the chest was of a pure white, and the under part of the tail of bright vermilion feathers. White feathers showed at the base of the tail above.

The tucano (Ramphastos) is too well known for me to describe it fully again. It is found all over tropical Brazil. There are many different varieties, such as the Ramphastos vitellinus, Ramphastos ariel, the Ramphastos Cuvieri, the Pteroglossus Beauharnaisii, or curl-crested tucano, etc., extremely common, especially farther north, near the borders of the Amazon.

I was sorry when my men killed this beautiful bird. I had watched it for some time, with its inquisitive habits, hopping from branch to branch, peeping its bill into cavities and examining everything that happened below by bending its head attentively, now on one side then on the other. It evidently took intelligent interest in our doings. My men had gone out to do their cooking. The bird watched them with the greatest attention—with jerky movements not unlike those of a magpie.

The tucanos have, I believe, been described as being stupid; but on the contrary I think they are extremely clever—quite as clever as many parrots or macaws. I observed how shrewd that particular bird was. It would come quite close to us, and examine with really amazing attention what we were doing as long as we were not taking any notice of it, but the moment a man happened to touch a stone or try to point a rifle at it, it would fly a long distance off, with shrill yelps, and would not return until it was quite sure that we were not noticing its presence.

The uses of the enormous bill of the tucano have often been discussed by ornithologists, many of whom believe that the bill is of no use to that bird and Nature made in this case a mistake and has not yet had time to rectify it. Scientists frequently allege that Nature makes mistakes, because many of them have never really understood Nature. How could they? They have never been near enough to Nature unspoiled. Many of them also believe that tucano birds are great fishers, following the notion that many water birds have red or yellow bills of large size. That, too, is another great mistake, for the tucano is eminently a fruit and nut eater, and of course a feeder on worms and insects contained in fruit.

The huge bill, attaining the length of six or seven inches, is toothed at the sides in order to be able to saw the stems of fruit. The shape and size of the bill, far from being a mistake of nature, are made so in order to enable that bird to dig holes into the bark of trees and to enable it to crush and chew the many curiously shaped fruits found in certain parts of the Brazilian forest. Moreover, the bill is also a great protection to the head in going through the dense foliage, where thorns are innumerable and alive with dangerous insects of great size, which can, owing to the length of its beak, be destroyed at a distance from the bird's most vital organs.

These birds have received the name tucano from the noise they make, which resembles "tok-kan" very sharply pronounced and with a snap at the end of each syllable.

The tucanos are good climbers, but not good fliers. In fact, their flight is somewhat clumsy and heavy. They seldom fly long distances. They spend all their time on the higher branches of trees. They are generally to be seen alone or in couples, or perhaps occasionally in flocks of three or four.

What spare moments I had in Castanho—after the storm was over—I spent on the banks of the river looking at the magnificent stream.

Looking south, a low hill range could be seen in the distance with a conical summit rising slightly above the range—the Serra do Cayapo. It was there, as I have said, that the great Araguaya had its birth. It was interesting to note that the head waters of the Araguaya—flowing north, of course—had their birth within an infinitesimal distance of those of two such immense rivers as the Inducassu and the Sucuru, flowing into the Parana, and also near the somewhat unknown Taquary River flowing into the Paraguay.

It would be possible—although perhaps expensive—by means of raised artificial lakes and locks actually to join at least one of these southern great rivers to the great Araguaya, and thus—barring some troublesome rapids—form a continuous waterway from south to north across South America, from Buenos Ayres, roughly in Lat. 34° 5' south, to ParÁ in Lat. 1° 27' 6 South. Imagine a distance by river extending for 33° 37' 54 (or 3,737 kil.) in a straight line—as the crow flies—and not less than double that distance if we include the constant turns and deviations in the various connected rivers.

Easier still and less expensive would be to connect by rail the last two navigable points of those two streams. That will certainly be done some day, when those abandoned regions are eventually populated and properly developed.

There were some rocky falls just below Porto Castanho which prevented navigation as far as the place where we crossed the Araguaya—otherwise the river was navigable from those falls as far as ConceiÇÃo.

The formation of the clouds over the great Araguaya River was peculiar. Great clusters of globular clouds generally collected in three distinct strata upon a whitish sky as far as high up upon the sky vault.

Facing north, the country appeared absolutely flat, and nothing could be seen above the trees as far as the eye or even a telescope could perceive. In that direction the stream, 200 yards wide, flowed through a perfectly straight channel for about one mile.

The fishing in the river was excellent. One night we caught a lot of fish. One, a huge pirarara weighing 40 lb., then some pirahiba and a pintado, the latter 24 lb. in weight. The pirarara was an extraordinary-looking fish. It had a long head covered entirely with a hard, bony, granular substance, which could only be cracked by a severe blow with an axe. The eyes were prominent and placed quite close to abnormally long antennÆ or feelers. The back of the pirarara was bluish black, the centre of the body longitudinally was yellowish, whereas the under part was white. The tail was of a bright vermilion, and the black fins had red edges, which made the huge pirarara a really beautiful fish to look at.

Typical Flat-topped Plateau of Central Brazil.

Typical Flat-topped Plateau of Central Brazil.

One Night's Fishing on the Araguaya.

One Night's Fishing on the Araguaya.

The pirahiba had a grey back with stripes so faint that they were hardly visible. Its head was flat and anchor-shaped. The eyes—very small—were curiously situated on the top of the head instead of at the sides—owing to the fact that the head was really so flat that it had no sides: it was merely a gentle convex curve from one side of the mouth to the other over the skull. The pirahiba too, like most fish of those rivers, possessed long tentacles. Its mouth and fins were slightly tinted red. It displayed powerful teeth similarly arranged to those of the pintado fish previously described.

Then we got some tubarao (or Squalus carcharias)—a small fish with a long, pointed head like a bird's beak, of the plagiostomos order, and several mandi—a small yellow fish with enormous eyes. The mandi had remarkable vitality. Seven hours after it had been caught—I had no idea the poor thing was still alive—it gave several leaps in the air, and when I put it in a bucket of water it shortly began to swim as if nothing had happened.

There were only two or three very small dug-outs on the Araguaya, none of which were capable of carrying more than one or two people. There was no boat there large enough to carry all my men and baggage, had I even at that moment decided to descend that river instead of proceeding west. I took observations for latitude and longitude at Porto Castanho, as well as boiling-point observations with the hypso-metrical apparatus, the latter in order to get the exact elevation, and also to keep a check on my several aneroids which I used on the journey merely for differential observations.

May 9th, 1910. Boiling point, 210° 3 F. Temperature of the air, 83° F. = 1182 ft. above the sea level. By Aneroid, 1190 ft.

My mules having had a good rest, I was making ready to start on May 12th, when one of my men refused to come any farther. He wished to be paid off and go. So he received his pay and went. He would probably end his existence in that filthy little hamlet. He would never have the energy to return to Goyaz alone. I was rather glad he had gone, as, a few nights previously, he had fired at me while I was asleep. The bullet had actually made a hole through the canvas of my camp bed. I had fortunately taken the precaution to alter the position of my bed—under my tent—a precaution I took every night, after my men had gone to sleep in their hammocks, some distance outside. The man had evidently aimed where he thought my head was resting. I having turned the bed around, the bullet, fired from the man standing, went just over my ankles, perforating the canvas quite close to them. I naturally came out of my tent to see what was the matter, and saw the man with the rifle in his hand.

"Why did you shoot?" I inquired, as the man, evidently surprised to see me standing before him, ejaculated disconnected words.

"I saw a huge onÇa" (a jaguar) ... "it was there ... I saw its two eyes shining like fire...."

"Did you kill the onÇa?"

"No, it leapt away."

I advised the man, patting him paternally on the back, not to startle everybody again. If he should see another onÇa he had better come to me. I seldom missed when I fired at all—as I had been able to show them a few days before. I did not wish my men to behave like so many timid young girls, as I wished to be able to tell people in Europe that Brazilians were brave and noble.

"Firing in such a fashion indiscriminately," I explained to him, "you might have even killed one of your companions! Now go to sleep like a good fellow, and do not fire again!"

I spoke to the rascal in the gentlest of ways, never for one moment letting him suspect that I knew he had intended that bullet to go through my head. Nor did I ever take any of the other men into my confidence. When they asked what the commotion was about, I told them that their companion had fired at a jaguar and the jaguar had leapt away. There is only one effective weapon you can use with scoundrels. It is the greatest calm and kindness.

The man, hiding his face in his hands, threw himself upon his hammock and began to sob. He sobbed and sobbed and sobbed until the morning—much to the inconvenience of everybody in camp. At sunrise he had been seized with a severe attack of rheumatism which had contracted a leg badly. It was pitiful to see him walking—but when he was not aware of being looked at he walked as well as anybody else.

From that day that fellow never dared look me straight in the face. He avoided riding near me on the march, and in camp was sulky and unpleasant, retiring to a distance and declining to work. He was relieved of the functions of cook. The last time he had produced a meal nearly brought massacre upon him at the hands of the other men.

He received his full pay up to date, without uttering a word of thanks. He duly signed a receipt with his thumb-mark, as he was unable to write. When the troop of horses and mules and his companions left, he never spoke a word of farewell to his companions or animals, nor to me. He sat silent and motionless, with his eyes riveted to the ground as if in a trance. Some days later we discovered that he had stolen from our store some 40 lbs. of coffee and a large quantity of sugar, as well as a number of other articles which had been useful to us.

The sky when we left was overcast, and huge globular clouds, white and grey, hung in great masses, especially half way up the vault of the sky. The country, after crossing the Araguaya, was remarkably beautiful, from an agricultural point of view—enormous campos or prairies—over rich alluvial deposits, with scanty stunted trees upon them. Plenty of burity palms grew in the lower depressions.

My men suffered intensely from the cold at night—the minimum being 60° Fahr., maximum 92°, in the afternoon of the 13th. The temperature had been much lower since we had crossed the great river. The elevation was only 1,250 ft.

Rising slowly over an undulation in the country to 1,300 ft., we began to find igneous rock showing through the surface soil, especially on the higher points.

Lixia (Nephelium Litchi Carab), caraiba and the laranjeira do campo (Citrus vulgaris), were trees to be seen in that region.

We had wonderfully clear sky in the morning. At noon it became slightly clouded, while in the afternoon one-third of the sky was covered. A light breeze blew from the west. Some 28 kil. from the Araguaya we came to a small miserable farmhouse. After a great deal of bargaining I was able to purchase some extra horses. The people had no idea whatever of the value of money, and named sums at first which would have easily purchased the finest horses on the English turf. They descended in time to more reasonable figures.

Our life was rendered miserable all day by the millions of pium or gnats that swarmed around us and stung us with incredible fierceness and viciousness. Those little brutes left on our skins black marks fully as large as themselves wherever they stung us. The itching was most trying. Those marks remained for several weeks, and only disappeared when we perforated them with a needle to let the blood out, or waited long enough for them to become desiccated and the skin re-formed.

Pium is a word of the Tupi and Tupinamba Indians' language. Those tiny insects entered your eyes, leaving behind an odoriferous acid which caused great irritation of the lids. We removed dozens every day from our eyes. Fortunately they were easily extracted. They also dashed into your ears, up your nose, and, whenever you opened it, inside your mouth.

It was well worth going to Matto Grosso to enjoy the lovely moonlight nights, only comparable in their luminous splendour to nights of Central Africa in the middle of the Sahara desert, and to those on the high Tibetan plateau in Asia. The light of the moon was so vivid that one could see almost as well as in the daytime.

Personally, the crisp cool air (min. 59° Fahr.) made me feel in most excellent health and spirits, but my men, who had putrid constitutions, were a mass of aches and pains. Some cried like children the entire night with toothache, moaning and shrieking like lunatics when the pain became acute; others got internal aches, another had cramp in the legs. I must say that Alcides, with all his faults, was the only one who always did his work—not always with common sense, but he did it—and, when ill, never gave exhibitions of pitiful weakness like the others.

Filippe, the negro, who eventually showed himself to be the bravest Brazilian on that expedition, also stood the pain more calmly and with manliness. As I had judged from the first moment I had laid eyes upon them, those were really the only two men who were any good at all. "Il bon dÌ si vede dal mattino" (A fine day is seen in the morning), says an ancient and very true Italian proverb; truer, perhaps, in its philosophy with individuals than with the weather.

Many of my men's complaints vanished with the warmth of the sun—108° Fahr. at 1 p.m., with a maximum temperature during the day of 85° in the shade.

With the beautiful clear sky and a gentle breeze blowing, it was a real delight to march. Only a slight whitish mist—always in horizontal streaks—was to be noticed near the earth. The sky, although limpid, was never of a deep blue, but merely of a pale cobalt. The dew was heavy during the night and soaked everything, making the baggage, the tents particularly, heavy for the animals to carry. We still kept at an elevation of 1,250 ft., noticing, as we marched on, an isolated range of hills extending from north-east to south-west and showing considerable erosion at its south-westerly terminus. Two conical hills—one a broken cone—stood on the summit of a flat plateau, the entire range, as well as the summit of hills, showing eroded slopes with vertical wall-like superior portions.

After leaving the stream at the foot of a range 1,450 ft. above the sea level, on rising over a low pass I could observe to the north-east of that range great blocks of eruptive rock much perforated, in which were embedded pellets of yellow lava and of red and black baked igneous rock. On examining the north-eastern end of the main part of the range it was apparent that what remained standing before us was merely one half of a circular crater, the other half of which had collapsed or had been blown up by volcanic action. The bottom of the crater was subsequently filled with alluvial deposits. There was there a grassy plain with a few burity palms. In the valley before us was ideal pasture land, which will some day be of great value.

We crossed two cols (elev. 1,550 ft.) with a beautiful plain between. Then we descended into a third lovely valley on the north side of the outer wall of the crater. The grazing was perfect for the animals. Clusters of vigorous, healthy burity palms stood in great numbers in the centre and at the sides of the valley. This great valley was bounded by two ridges extending in a northerly direction—two spurs, as it were. The rounded, channelled outer sides of the crater to the north would tend to strengthen the theory that those slopes were formerly a gradual continuation of the present inclined valley. On those slopes of the mountain hardly any vegetation could be noticed, perhaps owing to the fact that hard volcanic rock existed under the thin surface padding of yellowish earth.

The valley was buried in red and grey lapilli and ashes, finely broken up marble cubes, and fragments of other forms of crystallized rock.

As we proceeded from camp Fogasso, the northern slopes of the crater became divided into huge furrows, the vertical upper part of the crater displaying vividly rich red tones. The crater was castellated at the summit, like the walls of a fortress.

The geological formation of that portion of the Matto Grosso plateau interested me greatly. Each individual spur, taken separately, showed slopes sometimes abrupt, sometimes well rounded, separated from the next spur of hills by a V-shaped or angular, or else a concave hollow. At the bottom of those hollows one did not find the slopes continuing the line of the crater, but the valley was there absolutely flat and cut the line of the slope sharply. It would almost appear as if a subsidence of the soil had taken place in that particular locality, or else one might speculate whether those abrupt hills had not been the walls of what was once a subterranean volcanic cauldron—the flat valley, in which we were, having been the bottom of that cauldron. What little rock one found in the river bed in this valley showed signs of having been exposed to intense and prolonged heat, and so did the brilliant red summit of the hill range, which was also of the deep red typical of hard-baked rock.

The ParedÃozinho.

The ParedÃozinho.

Typical Scenery of Matto Grosso.

Typical Scenery of Matto Grosso.

The scene which I had before me there in Matto Grosso greatly reminded me of a similar basin I had seen when the great Bandaisan mountain in Japan was blown up by a volcanic explosion and left merely the bottom part of its gigantic internal cauldron with vertical red walls around it. With the exception of scanty and anÆmic grass and a few stunted trees, there was hardly any vegetation noticeable. The Fogasso stream, on the bank of which we camped, flowed in an easterly direction into the Araguaya.

The temperature on the plateau was ideal—min. 63° Fahr. during the night; max. 75°. We were at an elevation of 1,450 ft.

On May 15th we were travelling along a valley over which must have once risen the continuation of a range which stood to the north of us. There were deep grooves and corrugations in the valley in a direction from south to north between the two sections of the now interrupted range. There we found soil of red, brown and yellow tints, or else great stretches of grey volcanic ashes and earth mixed, as well as sharply angular fragments of igneous rock, which showed that they had not travelled there by rolling on the ground or propelled by water.

After this we passed close to another curious spur of mountains on the east—quite isolated and of a red vertical columnar formation. Its summit was broken up—much more so than that of the plateau-like range to the south of us which we were following in a parallel line. The highest point of that range, to the south, was wooded, and so were the two conical-topped hills which towered over it. The strata where exposed showed a slight dip to the north. We crossed the range by two low cols at elevations of 1,550 ft. and 1,560 ft. respectively. On the summit and even lower upon the sides of those cols we found huge boulders of eruptive rock, highly ferruginous. Globular lumps, big and small, of spattered smooth-surfaced yellow lava were to be found in myriads; also many spherical pellets of ferruginous, highly-baked rock with innumerable holes produced while in a state of ebullition. Some of the ferruginous rocks had pellets of yellow lava firmly imbedded in them, which had evidently penetrated while liquid into the hollows of the ferruginous rock which was already in a semi-solid, or perhaps solidified, condition. At any rate, when it happened the ferruginous rock was already harder than the lava.

While I was studying attentively the geological conditions of that region, the sky suddenly became as black as ink to the south, and a heavy shower, which lasted half an hour, drenched us all to the marrow of our bones. Then it cleared up, and the sun, supplemented by our natural heat, dried our clothes upon us again as we went on.