A cold night on this big river though we are getting south now after our thousand miles in our little boat; so we got ashore and supped on grebe which reminded one of red herrings. Found a little grass hut built by a woodcutter possibly, and three of us snuggled up on the floor, just big enough, with a candle and part of a book. Heaven knows where the man got it. Well, we went to sleep and the bookman knocked the candle over and the fire ran up the hut luckily one of us woke and put it out and the others never knew and told the fireman next noon that "he had been dreaming"; is so, why that black streak? Another morning we found a big jaguar and cub had passed a yard from A's head. They were grunting all night close to us in the jungle, and could not have been hungry as there were five of us to choose from. Got aboard and got lost on the Chaco side of the river. This gran Chaco is an endless maze of creeks and little islands covered with trees and jungle, no birds or beasts seemingly and the fish won't bite often. There are some hostile Indians but the chances are greatly in favor of starving to death, a desolate place but the wind brought us to the river again and when the cox wanted to go about, it blew so fresh that mast and big lateÈn sail went. Two of us jumped and held on to it but it was hard on finger nails and as there was quite a little sea our small boat was tumbling about. We all had our trousers rolled up to our knees except Maria, who was a Paraguayan woman and wife of Salvador, a Portuguese, who we called Joe. Fortunately there was a little island on to which we drifted. Maria was frightened and knelt down a few yards off, with her skirt over her head, for five minutes, like an image. Then she rose up and said: "It is a bad wind; we shall not get to Rosario alive," and set to work like a little man. We fixed our mast up with fish lines and whatever we had. Drifting again on the Chaco side where the jungle is not as thick as on the other, with more trees. We ran in to look at what turns out to be boughs bent over in a half-circle, once a tiny hut four feet high. Now the thatch is gone and there is two or three inches of water and rotten leaves, sitting in which and leaning against the boughs is a skeleton and a worm-eaten flint lock musket alongside, the skull has rolled or been blown off and lies there. What a death! miles of dark silent forest behind, in front the immense river, the wash of which is the only sound. Poor devil, wonder who it was once! We left it sitting there and I do not suppose anyone will come across it again.