Although the Amazons have been known to Europe for fully four hundred years, exploration has been confined almost entirely to the main river and its great tributaries. Little addition has been made to the information possessed by Sir Walter Raleigh in the three hundred years that have elapsed since his death. The rivers certainly are known and charted, yet the land beyond their banks is almost as much a land of mystery in the twentieth century as it was in the days of Queen Elizabeth. It is possible to spend a lifetime in navigating the Amazon,[6] and to know nothing more of its 2,722,000 square miles of basin than can be peered at through the curtain of vegetation which drapes the main streams. Behind that veil lies the fascination of Amazonian travel.

We are not here concerned with the scanty records history offers of these vast regions, nor, for our immediate purposes, is it needful to inquire into the conditions and features of the Amazon watershed as a whole, except in so far as they differ from or resemble those of my field of exploration, the tracts between the middle Issa and Japura Rivers, and in their vicinity. Roughly speaking, this lies in that debatable land where the frontiers of Brazil meet those of Peru, Colombia, and—perhaps—Ecuador, a country claimed in part by the three latter, but administered by none. Here the dead level of the lower Amazonian plains imperceptibly acquires a more decided tilt, the trend of the land from the great Andean water-parting on the west and north-west being south-east to the mighty river on the south, consequently these north-western affluents of the Amazon flow in more or less parallel lines from the north-west to the south-east. It is the rivers that dominate this country, the mountains, those primal determinants, are only distant influences, snow-topped mysteries but dimly imagined on the far horizon from some upstanding outcrop, a savannah where momentarily a perspective may be gained over and beyond the illimitable forest.[7]

On the south of the tracks here dealt with the Amazon slowly sweeps its muddy yellow waters, 500,000 cubic feet per second, towards the ocean. On the north the Uaupes River flows to join the Rio Negro. Between the Uaupes and the Amazon the Rio Caqueta, or Japura River, runs south-east, due east, and south to the main stream, and almost parallel with it the Putumayo, or Issa, gathers the waters of the Kara Parana and the Igara Parana, both on its northern, that is to say its left bank, and joins the Amazon where the main river turns sharply south 471 miles below Iquitos. West again, the Napo drains down to join the great water-way 2300 miles from the sea. Of the Napo much has been written since Orellano sailed down it from Peru, homeward bound to Spain in 1521, and it may be left outside the bounds of our inquiry. With the Issa and Japura we must deal in some detail, but of the Uaupes and Rio Negro a few words will suffice.

Rapids and cataracts bar the navigation of the Uaupes, the chief tributary if not, as some would have it, the main stream of the Negro, until it is, according to Wallace, “perhaps unsurpassed for the difficulties and dangers of its navigation.”[8]

Wallace estimated the country to be not more than 1000 feet above sea-level. I should judge it to be considerably less, by the trend of the country to the south of it. But even here I may be mistaken, as my aneroid was useless, for undiscovered reasons, and my opinion is based simply on the force of the currents of the rivers, the number and depth of the rapids, and the distances to the main river and thence to the sea. The height above sea-level cannot be great, for the tides are felt at Obydos, more than half-way from the ocean to the mouth of the Rio Negro, and there is no abrupt rise from the Obydos levels; indeed the slope of the land is so slight that in the middle reaches of the main river during wet seasons the floods spread for twenty miles, and there is no visible current.

The Uaupes, though lighter than the majority of southern tributaries of the Negro, is what is known as a black water river, while most of the rivers flowing in on the northern bank are white water rivers. This peculiarity, which may be as marked as the difference between ink and milk, is due apparently to the variety of soil in the country drained by the rivers. The chief tributaries of the Uaupes, the Itiya and the Uniya, are both white water streams. Spruce notes that fish are scarcer in black than in white water streams,[9] and attributes it to the absence of vegetation. This may be true in part of the Negro, but it is not true, I think, of other rivers. Certainly these have some sort of fish, for I have seen them rise. One species is known to feed on a variety of laurel berry very plentiful on some of the river-banks.

The Rio Negro itself, the waters of which are dead black, is navigable for more than a third of its course to vessels of a 4 feet draught even in the dry season, and communication is possible from its upper waters with the great northern artery of the Orinoco, through the Casiquiari, the most important of the natural canals that abound throughout the Amazon regions.

The Issa, or Putumayo—the Peruvian name is perhaps better known than the Brazilian, the true geographical one—is the first tributary of importance to join the Amazon after it has entered Brazilian territory. Of its 1028 miles only 93, according to the Brazilian Year-Book, are not navigable by steamers. This exceeds the truth, for there is practically no communication with Colombia or Ecuador by this route, as the statement would imply. In the upper reaches of the Issa rock and shingle are to be found, while 300 miles down stream hardly a stone is to be seen. The water is very muddy, and the current variable as the depth. Now it will be a swirling storm-fed torrent, the turbid water burdened with a wild flotsam of forest trees and matted vegetation, cutting into the soft layers of vegetable mould that form its banks, and rise above it as much as 25 feet in places; anon it is a sluggish stream that spreads oilily nowhither, with scarce a ripple over the deep alluvial deposits of its bed. This river is at its lowest in February and March. At its juncture with the Amazon looking upstream from the main water-way, the Issa is the more imposing of the two, for its course lies wide and fully exposed, while the Amazon bends sharply, and gives the impression that it and not its affluent is the tributary stream. Robuchon calculated that its breadth there was 600 metres, the depth 8, and the current 2½ miles an hour. He states very truly that landslides often occur on the banks of these rivers, and that such destruction of the bank, together with the quick rise and fall of the streams, may so alter the appearance of any stretch as to render it quite unrecognisable, even within a few hours. Special mention is made by him of the Papunya River, that enters on the left bank of the Issa. Forty miles from the Papunya is the Parana Miri,[10] a river with very black water and a large group of islands at its mouth. Many of the islands in these rivers are not stationary, they are floating masses of soil and vegetation, torn away from the banks when the river is in spate. They may be as much as a hundred yards from bank to bank, and birds are to be found living upon them.

The Igara Parana runs into the Issa where that river makes a horse-shoe bend,[11] the junction being on the inner side of the horse-shoe. The breadth of the stream at its mouth is 161 metres. The water is clearer than that of the Issa, and the current slower, never more than 3 miles an hour. Some 220 miles upstream there is an important waterfall, known as La Chorrera, or the Big Falls. The Igara Parana becomes vary narrow and most tortuous as it nears them, and is only 30 metres wide at its exit from Big Falls Bay. This is a huge pool almost as wide as it is long, with a narrow exit at one end, and a succession of cascades at the other. These falls are impassable in boats, and traffic with the upper river can only be carried on by land portage. Much debris of rocks and river-borne tree-trunks obstructs the narrow passage above the falls, which are given by Robuchon as having a total length of 120 metres and a width of 18 metres. The waters descend over a series of wide rocky steps, worn flat and smooth by the ceaseless friction. Masses of stone line the right bank, and rise perpendicularly from the water. This is the only part of the country where I have seen rocks and stones in any quantity.

The upper reaches of the river are distinctly more picturesque than its lower waters. The almost level banks, with their monotonous succession of forest trees, grow gradually steeper, till the sandstone cliffs rise like a fortification above the fringe of vegetation that encroaches on the high-water mark. Presently the river winds in and out between shelving hills, tree-clad to the very margin of the water. Between the Igara Parana and the Kara Parana the country is a perfect switchback of hills and ridges, with a stream in every gully. The steepness of these valleys, with a pitch perhaps of 25° or 30°, does not permit the surface water to lodge and form swamp or morass, in contrast to the waterlogged plains of the lower rivers. Immediately on the left bank of the Igara Parana, and in the vicinity of the Big Falls, the country continues to be hilly, but to the north-east it is more open, and the bush is less obstructive, though its density varies immensely. Similar diversified scenery is to be found on the upper waters of the Japura.

The Kahuanari, a considerable tributary on the south bank of the Japura, drains the divide that intervenes between that river and the Igara Parana. It is subject to sudden floods, which wash down large quantities of forest debris. I have seen it rise twenty feet in a day, and afterwards subside as quickly.

The floods are not to be wondered at when the tremendous rainfall of these regions is considered. The question is never if it will rain, but when and for how long it will be fine. Rain is certain in a land which has but a few days clear of it in every twelve months. Five days, a fortnight, that, all told, is the extent of dry weather to be looked for in this country. The dry season is but a name. It is dry only in comparison with the wetter months from March to August. The upper valley of the Amazon has a three-day winter at our midsummer—June 24, 25, 26—so it is said, and certainly I noted a very decided drop in the temperature of these days in 1908. Snow is unknown, and hail not common. Despite the daily rain the turquoise blue of the sky is seldom long hidden, though from March to June leaden skies portend rain, and seldom fail to make good their portent. During the dry season the rain if it be frequent is never continuous. Almost every day, between three and four in the afternoon and two and five in the morning, heavy clouds will roll up, a preliminary breeze rustle through the leaves, shake the trees, and increase till suddenly there comes a deluge of big drops. Such storms last but half an hour, yet the rain will soak through everything, and the wet bushes drench the passer-by for hours afterwards. Nothing is ever really dry, things are in a constant state of saturation, and it is possible at all times to wring moisture out of any of one’s belongings. So great and incessant is the evaporation that at night the dew is as heavy as rain, while the marshy low-lying lands and the rivers are shrouded by mist both morning and evening. With such humid air lichens and HepaticÆ flourish on all the tree-trunks, though I have never seen them, as described by Spruce, covering the very leaves of the trees.[12]

Electric disturbances are numerous, and a sharp and sudden thunder-shower often occurs about three in the afternoon, or in the night, though rain at night without thunder is common. These storms come up in the dry season especially, and the worst storms may be expected in February, at the breaking of the dry weather. Sometimes the electric storm will consist of an uninterrupted display of lightning with little or no thunder, and the sizzle of light makes the landscape appear as in a cinematograph picture. This continued on one occasion all through the night, and from the amount of interest the Indians evinced I judged it to be an unusual occurrence.

It is always possible to tell when rain will come because of the preliminary breeze, hardly felt below the tree-tops, followed by a dead calm that precedes the downpour. The prevailing wind for nine months of the year will be from the east or south-east, from June to August it will be north and north-west. In January the prevailing wind is from the Atlantic, north-east, veering to south-west; in July from the Pacific, south-west, round to north-east. Fitful and uncertain local whirlwinds will, without warning, swoop down on the clearings round the houses, play havoc in forest and plantation, uproot trees, and destroy habitations.

In spite of the continual rain, of the universal humidity; the climate is not unhealthy. The heat, though a damp heat, is never excessive, the enormously great evaporation brings in a succession of fresh breezes to moderate the temperature;[13] and so, despite apparently trying conditions, the climate is not injurious. The low watersheds between the large rivers appear to be quite healthy, and if there be fever its prevalence varies locally to an extraordinary degree. It has been observed that where the soil is first turned up fever not infrequently follows, a fact noted in other parts of the world, and by no means a condition peculiar to the Amazons.

The soil of the vast Amazonian basin is mainly the alluvial deposit of decomposed vegetable life for centuries past. This sea of Pampean mud stretches from the ocean marshes up to the very heels of the mountains that stand outpost to hold the southern continent from the Pacific. Black and rich it lies in layer after layer twenty, thirty, forty feet beneath the great pall of vegetation that flourishes above during its little day, to die and drop for successive generations of arboreal life to thrive upon in their turn. And in all this vastness is never a stone. Vegetable mould and water-borne mud, but stone does not exist for thousands upon thousands of miles. Only in the upper waters of the Amazonian system are rock formations reached; in the particular district under consideration nothing is to be found harder than a soft, friable sandstone. On parts of the Issa, as on the Napo, the deep banks show strata of shingle, with perhaps red or white clay, that alternate with the dark humus and decaying wood.

It is the ceaseless activity of all vegetable life that renders these regions fit for human habitation at all. There is no period, as with us, of bare branches overhead and decaying matter below. Decomposition is there, but for every dead leaf a virent successor is ready to absorb the gases engendered by decay. The soil may be water-logged, but evaporation, combined with the constant rain, the frequent inundations, and the endless operations of an immeasurable insect world, militate against stagnation. Dank it may be, but there is no iridescent scum upon the water, no foetid smells to warn of lurking poisons. These natural danger-signals are unneeded, for the poisons are self-destructive. Processes of corruption are coexistent with those of purification. So extraordinary is this that I never hesitated to drink any water, nor is any evil resultant from water-drinking within my knowledge.

In this struggle it is the weak who go under, the feeble who support the strong. This holds good for vegetable and animal kingdom alike, and even with man there is no place for the helpless. Those who fail by the way, who cannot fulfil their functions in the toiling world, and have ceased to be of practical utility, must make way for the more capable. Altruism is not bred of the forest, it is a virtue born in cities. Here it would be suicide. The growing leaf must push off the fading leaf, or the latter will stunt and imperil its growth. In fact it does so, and growth is thus continual. There are no seasons to correspond with our spring nor with our fall of the leaf. From the lower Amazon’s maze of water-ways up to the foothills of the western mountains reigns perpetual summer; the same leafy veil hides the mysteries of the great expanse, eternally dying, eternally renewed.

As one passes onwards, however, nearer where the great cloud-banks gather over the mountain giants of the west, a perceptible change is to be noted, the scenery of the upper Amazon differs in certain essential particulars. It is not only that the great river thoroughfare, first spread on either side beyond the farthest horizon,[14] becomes a thin black line that grows nearer and deeper. Other features besides the river-surface contract. The majestic forest trees give way to timber not so towering. Plant life is not less prolific, but it is on a smaller scale. The bush has the air of being younger. It suggests that it has been dwarfed by perpetual inundations. Nor is the stunted growth limited to the vegetable world; the animals themselves, as if Nature insisted that all be in keeping, are on a lesser scale than their congeners of the eastern plains. No alligators of immense size lurk in the upper waters, even the fish and the turtles are smaller, as though their inches were limited in proportion to the streams.

It is not easy to convey any true notion of the scenery of the MontaÑa, the vast forest regions spreading eastwards, down from the lower Andean slopes. Here and there the dense forest gives place to an open savannah, an outcrop of rock with but a shallow stratum of soil. These have none of the deep vegetable mould of the lower-lying forests, and the poorer and thinner soil harbours flora of many totally distinct varieties. Often the great fan leaves of the Aeta are matted into a dense roof over the black swamp of the valleys. Sometimes these water-loving palms are seen by the river-side, interlopers in the fringe of fern and thickets of feathery bamboo; or, again, they will grow in a regular belt with little or no other vegetation.

Life is more evident on the rivers than in the forest. Fish are there in plenty—eighteen hundred species are known in the Amazonian waters. Birds, often conspicuous by their apparent absence in the bush, flock on the sand-banks and marshes of the bank. Herons and ducks abound. Egrets haunt the sandy spits that rise from the water, and in the marshy swamps numbers of these beautiful creatures may commonly be seen hunting for the tiny fish, animals, and insects on which they feed. Another enemy of the small denizens of the stream and marsh is the kingfisher. More than one variety abound on all the Amazon water-ways, but none of them can compare with the English bird in brilliancy of colour. Probably this is an instance of protective colouring, one of Nature’s methods of defence, for on these dark waters the gorgeous blue of our Alcedo ispida would be even more conspicuous than it is on our clearer streams.

One pictures this tropical garden, this paradise of the naturalist, as a blaze of gorgeous colour, a profusion of exquisite forms. But, in proportion to one’s imaginative anticipation, I have never seen such a monotonous, flowerless wilderness as this bush appears. Still there are flowers, and flowers of showy colouring, the pinks and yellows of the bignonias, the white and crimson of the chocolate-tree, the crimson of the hibiscus, the scarlet blaze of the passion-flower, the snowy beauty of the inga; all these and a thousand more are there, with the rarest blue and all the myriad shades of mauve and orange, yellow, pink, brown, violet of uncounted orchids. But orchids, though common, grow at the very top of the trees, and unless they are searched for they are not seen, except such varieties as are found on the savannahs.

The whole is on a scale so gigantic, the immense forest, the great rivers, that details are lost in the vast expanse, and the total effect is one of absolute sameness. Yet the individual variety is enormous. Though uniform in the mass, twenty-two thousand species of plants have been differentiated; thousands more remain undescribed. Only a botanist could attempt to deal with these even superficially. The uninitiated, like myself, can but look and wonder.

Many of the units of this mighty aggregate are of a surpassing loveliness; flowers unequalled for beauty, birds and insects that are living jewels, outrivalling inanimate gems. Such palms and ferns as would be rare treasures in a Kew Gardens hothouse riot unheeded in tangled profusion above the dark marshy soil, over a screen of parasites and epiphytes. Forest giants, those immense monarchs of the woods Californian advertisements depict for the edification of the populace, are not there; certainly they are never to be found in the MontaÑa. Nor, perhaps, in consequence of the lower growth, is there that intense gloom mentioned by writers on more easterly districts. The idea that you look up but can never see the sky is fiction to me. The foliage is certainly too dense for the sunlight to penetrate down to the damp soil and matted underbush, but patches of the sky are always more or less visible through the interlocked branches overhead. Light and air are to be had freely only on the tree-tops, and it is there that birds, insects, and flowers mass their glories out of human ken. Even the animals are climbers, and most of them spend more than half of their existence on the trees.

There are no long dark avenues beneath this leafy canopy that hides all the life and colour of the forest world from the traveller, painfully cutting his path through the intricate confusion of roots and creepers below. These parasitic creepers are of many kinds, rooting down to the dark soil, intertwining with themselves, pushing boldly to the tree-tops, strong as withes, in wild festoons, knotted, tangled, of every thickness from a giant cable to a narrow thread. I have seen parasite on parasite. They loop from tree to tree, bind the underwood into impenetrable thickets, and trail over the track-way, ready to strangle or trip the heedless passer-by. But track-way is a misnomer. The only thoroughfares, where water is as abundant as dry land, are the water-ways. The bed of a stream is the only track. No other line of communication is intelligible to the Indian. Even in the vicinity of civilised centres, hundreds of miles away from these wild fastnesses of Nature, the exuberant vegetation rapidly encroaches upon a roadway. Paths in the forest there are none. A forest track consists in following the line of least resistance. If this should be stopped by any obstacle, a fallen tree, a sudden inundation, it would never be removed or surmounted. There is no choice but to climb over or go round. The ordinary Indian wayfarer would go round; and so the road deviates increasingly; it becomes inconceivably twisted, until the actual ground covered is enormous compared with the distance from point to point.

Where a stream has to be crossed there is rarely any bridge more stable than a small tree cut down and thrown across just when and where it may be wanted. Frequently such impromptu bridges are under water. They are invariably of the slightest; a branch no thicker than a man’s hand suffices to span a deep chasm, and over this an Indian will pass more unconcernedly than an Englishman over London Bridge. The worst penance of all in forest journeyings is to cross a river or a gully full of great fallen trees, on such flimsy foothold. The drop at times may be 40 to 50 feet, and there will be but the one tree across without any attempt at a hand-rail to steady the traveller. Nor can you grasp an Indian’s shoulder for aid in the perilous transit, for to do so is to lose once for all every trace of prestige and authority. The man who cannot get over a river unaided, the man who is not man enough to walk and must be carried in a hammock, is but a poor creature in the eyes of the South American Indian. Still it is more than a test of nerve. In the middle of such a bridge you feel yourself swaying, and it is only with a fearful concentration of will-power and a bitten lip that you arrive safely on the other side, having leapt the last three feet. In the first month of forest journeying I bit my lip through time and again. It is not the torrent below that frightens, it is the rotten trees in the gully. A fall may possibly be a broken neck, more probably it would be a broken leg. Of the two in country of this description a broken neck is preferable.

Where a stream has to be crossed that is too deep to be forded and cannot be bridged over in this elementary fashion, there is little difficulty in the construction of a raft or a temporary canoe. The bulging-stemmed palm furnishes an almost ready-made one. This palm, Iriartea ventricosa, is readily known by the peculiar swelling on the upper part of the trunk. It will attain the height of 100 feet, and the swollen portion is big enough to form the body of an improvised canoe.

Forest bridges are not the only terrors to confront the traveller; lurking dangers are many, and imagination is but too quick to multiply the risks. Peril from wild beasts does not loom largely in the picture, though the jaguar is a savage brute, and the experienced traveller will never sleep without a weapon at hand in case one of these daring creatures should venture to attack. But of animals more anon. There is one danger by no means imaginary, the danger of falling trees. A sudden crack, startlingly noisy in the all-pervading stillness, will give warning of a fall, but there is nothing to guide to safety. It may be the nearest tree that is coming down, or one at some distance; yet the deceptive noise will not determine which may be the doomed one, beyond the fact that a palm gives the sharpest crack. Indians when they hear such a sound are invariably frightened, and often will run backwards and forwards in terrified uncertainty, to try and discover whence came the danger signal.

Then there are plants that injure more directly. One palm, an Astrocaryum, has spines six inches in length up its stem. These spines, black in colour, hard, unbreakable, fall in the bush and spike the foot of the unfortunate who may tread on them. On the palm-stem itself they will wound the unwary hand incautiously or involuntarily thrust in the thicket. Many of the climbing plants have thorns or hook-like prickles, and perhaps the worst are the many kinds of twining river-side palms, whose barbed leaves will tear both flesh and clothing.[15] But trying as these vegetable torments may be, they are outclassed in the eyes of the tyro by the more active evil of perils from snakes and insects. Creeping through dense bush is an agony at first. Poisonous reptiles may lie concealed all about one, virulent insects surround in their myriads. If imagination has painted a floral paradise it has also run riot over a profusion of deadly snakes, an uninterrupted purgatory from creeping things innumerable, and winged pests before which the plague of flies in ancient Egypt sinks to insignificance. And there is some excuse for imagination if it be fed on travellers’ tales. As a matter of fact, if these were true life would in all verity be insupportable. But the fear of snakes passes in two weeks, never to return, and mercifully the most pestilent creatures exist only in limited spheres, and seldom or never in the same. Places that are troubled with the pium will be found free of mosquitoes at night; in a belt of country where the mosquito abounds the pium will be absent, and in any case the two are never active together. The pium, a most vile little fly, comes out at sunrise. It is an intolerable pest, will attack any exposed part of the body, and draws blood every time. The traveller is forced, when journeying through a pium-infested country, to don guarded boots, gauntlets, and a veil. It is impossible to eat, drink, or smoke, till sunset puts a period to the troubling. Fortunately, piums are only found within a few hundred yards of the rivers. This is also the case as a rule with mosquitoes. There is a bad belt of pium country on the Issa, at the Brazilian frontier. It takes two days to get through on a steamer, and during the forty-eight hours life is a long-drawn torture. But once through you are rid of them. Robuchon noted that the Culex mosquito disappears on entering this river: but there are others; one, a kind of Tabano in miniature, is called the Maringunios. I found piums on the Kahuanari at low river, but a light breeze would suffice to sweep them away, and both mosquitoes and piums are practically non-existent in the middle Issa-Japura valley, though mosquitoes are found in certain parts of tracts of flatter country, but are not bad enough to make a net a necessary adjunct for comfort. There is also a tiny sand-fly that occasionally appears at sunset, when the river is low, and though minute in size, causes a very painful wound. It is known in Brazil as the Maruim.

A most annoying little insect that is very common in the bush is a kind of harvest bug. This almost invisible “red tick” must not be confused with another parasite that is only obtained from contact with Indians. The forest tick lives on the leaves of plants and bushes, and when shaken off creeps everywhere, and will burrow under the skin, which gives rise to maddening irritation.

Wasps and wild bees—the bee of these regions is a waspish creature—are frequently a nuisance. Often in a forest path I have come upon a huge black overhanging nest pendant from a tree. It looks like a tarred lobster-pot full of black pitch, and it is necessary to rush past to avoid the stings of the easily-roused inhabitants. Some of the wasps are exceedingly handsome fellows, noticeable even among Amazonian winged beauties, unsurpassed in any other land for gorgeous colouring. Among other fine insects of the MontaÑa are the huge Morphos, a dazzling blue butterfly many sizes bigger than a humming-bird; dragonflies with iridescent wings and jewelled bodies, fireflies and glow-worms with their living lights, so brilliant that I have often in a moment of forgetfulness mistaken them for distant lights from some human dwelling-place. But the butterflies, the most resplendent of all, frequently illustrate the proverb that beauty is but skin deep. Exquisitely graceful in flight, marvellous in subtle colourings, I have found them to be the dirtiest possible feeders. The sight of one now fills me with repugnance, for it calls to mind pictures of these so apparently dainty and aerial beings fluttering about some mass of offal, actually eating manure.[16] They will congregate in thousands round a spot of blood, so absolutely fearless that it is not possible to drive them away. They will actually smother the kill during the disembowelling process after hunting. The contrast of their ethereal loveliness and their gross habits is revolting—Psyche and putrid filth, an inconceivably horrible combination.

Butterflies and moths exist in great numbers and varieties. The most ordinary kind is a large bright sky-blue; other common ones are tiger-marked and yellow, like our sulphur butterfly but larger. Most of them are strong fliers. If the perfect insects themselves inflict no injury, the same cannot always be said of them in the caterpillar stage, for very many have hair that stings quite painfully.

Ants are the greatest curse. They are everywhere, of all kinds, of varied colours, and almost invariable viciousness. They drop from the overhanging foliage. They may come singly or in battalions—army corps rather. The traveller pushing through the thicket will knock them off the bushes, and they will proceed to crawl down the neck or up the sleeves. They swarm over the bare feet. And then they sting. The worst kind is a small stinging ant not more than the size of a pin’s head. In many places the earth is broken up and transformed into irregular heaps, the late habitations of some gregarious ant, such as the Ecodema cophelotos, or it may be built into cones to the height of 4 or 5 feet by the termites. It needs but short experience of the bush to endorse very heartily Spruce’s comment that they “deserve to be considered the actual owners of the Amazon valley.”[17] On more than one occasion stinging ants drove me from dry land to water. In inundated country these insects forced me to take refuge off the higher points of land, which, turned into temporary islands, form the natural resting-place for the traveller exhausted by the wading, the swimming, and the stumbling through the unseen undergrowth. Unfortunately the ants, too, are driven to take the same refuge. The traveller may find that choice lies between torture on land or again seeking the comparative peace of the water in perhaps an exhausted condition. Happily ants, like the pium, keep in belts, and of these it can only be said that discreet avoidance is better than valour.

With regard to the reptiles, though these abound, they seek rather to avoid than to court notice, and are by no means the danger to life that the ignorant imagine. Naturally the naked Indian is more exposed to any peril there may be than the better protected white man, and if a snake be trodden on it will promptly turn and bite the unshod foot of the aggressor. But no snake, so far as I have observed, will attack a human being unmolested, not even the boa constrictor; nor would the anaconda, the great water snake, though all Indians are very afraid of it. I do not think that even the venomous labarria ever bites a man unless first disturbed.

Alligators in the Issa and the Japura are small, rarely seen, and never formidable. The dangerous jacare, that huge monster of the lower rivers, is unknown here. But of fierce and poisonous fish I shall have somewhat to say later. Curiously enough, despite the swampy nature of the ground, I never met with any leeches, though Bates mentions a red, four-angled species he found to be abundant in the marshy pools at the juncture of the Japura and the Amazon.[18] Frogs and toads are the most abundant reptiles. They exist in thousands and are of all sizes, though I have never seen any of dimensions that Spruce speaks of—“as big as a man’s head.”[19] At night near any stream huge frogs keep up a constant and fearful noise, and even at midday, when a silence that may be felt enfolds the tropical woodland, their chorus is only subdued, not stayed.

This silence of the forest is a very real thing, a quality that does not lessen by acquaintance. On the contrary it grows more real and more oppressive. A strange gloom and a strange stillness hold the bush. They give the impression that there is nothing animate in all the vastness, no life other than that of the overwhelming, all-triumphant vegetation. It is possible to journey for days and never see a human being. A sound, be it but the cracking of a twig, startles in the forest. Then, suddenly, the vibrant quiet will be broken by a shrill scream. Some creature has been done to death. The cry dies to a moan, and the low murmur that is hardly sound, the drone of the unseen but abundant life, once more makes up the silence that pulses tormentingly on ear and brain, till night again wakens the birds and the beasts of the wild, and the murmur grows and deepens to the full volume of confused sound made by the forest’s busy life.

At the break of day, and again at the going down of the sun, the howling monkeys, if they be in the neighbourhood, startle the echoes with their raucous yelps. Sunrise is, indeed, the signal for absolute pandemonium. Toucans start an endless chattering that rises now and again to a far-reaching scream. The trumpeter birds make extraordinary noises. With them may be joined in a chorus of discord the macaws and the parrots of the district, and the chorus is punctuated at night by the mournful cry of a large night-jar.

But, for the most part, the birds and the beasts go about their business silently. They seek neither to disturb their victims nor to advertise their own doings and so attract those with sinister designs against themselves. In the bush silence is a better policy than honesty.

Picture all this, and try to understand the bush life in Amazonia. It will explain much of the unwritten and unwritable story of the inhabitants of these wilds. For the traveller the day is easily summarised: the awakening at sunrise, followed by a bath in the nearest stream, and a meal of what was left over-night; the trail, the worst in the world; the slow progress that jars on the nerves; the never-ending, impenetrable forest; the narrow path that has to be widened; the stumbles, the falls, the whipping of the face and arms by innumerable twigs; the ever-ready liana that catches the foot of the careless walker; the stinging ants that shower down on face and neck when a tree is accidentally shaken; the greenheart and other rods that pierce the feet and legs; the thorns innumerable, and the fine palm-spines on which a hand is transfixed when put out to save a fall; the end of the trek, a bath to get rid of the litter of mud and vegetable filth; dinner, of sorts; and a hammock under a shelter so poor that it will not prevent the driving and inevitable rain from chilling the sleeper to the bone. Imagine the state of fatigue to mind and body when one cries, “Thank God, I have got so far to-day. I could not repeat to-day’s labours. I could not go back on my own open trail, or go through the same to-morrow.” And so crying one knows that to-morrow and the trail must come. Even in fancy you will feel the pressure on your chest, the pressure behind you. It demoralises utterly.

There is a gruesome depression that is almost physical, produced by solitude on a small island, when all other land is out of sight. The bush to me is worse. The oppression is as of some great weight. A light heart is impossible in an atmosphere which the sunshine never enlivens, that is beaten daily back to earth by rain, where the air is heavy with the fumes of fallen vegetation slowly steaming to decay. The effect of the impenetrable thickets around, the stifling of the breath, is all mental, doubtless; but it must react physically on the neurotic subject.

This depression, this despondency, may seem incredible to those who have never experienced anything similar, who are ignorant of the innate malevolence of the High Woods. But in truth there is nothing in Nature more cruel than the unconquered vegetation of a tropical South American forest. The Amazonian bush brings no consolation. It is silent, inhospitable, cynical. It has overcome the mastodon and the megatherium, the prehistoric camel and the rhinoceros. It has reduced its rivals of the animal kingdom to slimy alligators and unsightly armadilloes, to sloths and ant-bears. The most powerful tenant of its shades is the boa constrictor, the most majestic the jaguar. Man is a very puny feature in the Amazonian cosmos.

The sense of one’s insignificance is the first lesson of travel in the bush. In the beginning the discovery amuses the adventurer. Later, he resents the implied superiority of the fixed and nerveless plants which barricade his progress. In the end, he hates the bush as though it were a sentient being. Yet the component parts of the bush are familiar to all at home: we coddle them in our gardens, and nurse them tenderly in our glass-houses. But in the Amazons they unite to form a horrible, a most evil-disposed enemy. They obscure the sun from the earth, condemn one to existence in a gloomy, stifling half-light. They constrict the world to a path laboriously hacked through jealous undergrowth. They stab with hidden snags, and strangle with deftly poised lianas. In their most hurtful mood they poison with a touch.[20]

The Amazonian forest is no glorified botanic garden. Its units are not intelligently isolated and labelled. There is but a monotonous tangle of vegetation through which the traveller cuts his way to daylight and perspective in a river-channel. One rarely sees a blossom or a fruit. Within that tangle, however, is the whole varied life of the tropical jungle. It may be difficult to distinguish specimens through the superimposed mass of extraneous vegetation; it may be impossible to catch a glimpse of a living creature throughout a day’s march; but the flowers are there in their thousands, and a myriad of eyes have noted each blundering movement of the wayfarer. It is no part of the philosophy of the bush to force even the most reckless of animals into needless publicity.

It is simple for the traveller to pull the canoe to the bank of one of the upper tributaries of the great river, to land, to part the screen of bushes, and to pass beyond—into the obscurity of barbarism. It is a simple feat, yet eventful. A thousand yards away from the safe thoroughfare of the main stream the explorer is lost, overwhelmed in the extravagance of vegetation. Denied a pathway, a landmark, a horizon, or a sky, he has less to guide him than the castaway on the ocean or the wanderer in the Sahara. His most definite course can only be from river-bed to river-bed. To direct him on his way the trees offer no aid to help him, the forest provides but little sustenance.

Every traveller in the bush lives in the constant dread of being lost. Desertion, unexpected, unforeseen, is common with the Indians. They leave without ascertainable cause at the cost of their pay, at the risk of their lives. In a watch of the night they depart, and although the country be swarming with their blood-enemies, they vanish into the forest and are no more seen.

In time the civilised man, with no other than such barbaric companions, turns at the thought of them, is nauseated by their bestiality, longs for relief from their presence. Then he wanders away, ever so little a distance into the bush, to be alone and to think. He happens upon a stream—that is so simple a by-path, so obvious a guide. He wanders light-footedly up its bed in search of that ego which had begun to elude him. The surroundings interest him. The water comforts his feet. The silence casts him back upon himself. He thinks, computes, and the solitude assists his introspection. He recovers his perspective, replaces the comrades of his bush-life in their proper places—the glass-fronted cupboards of an anthropological museum. His self-respect regained, he pauses to admire his new-found horizon.

Trees hem him in on every side. A little way up the stream is a narrow slit of sunlight, a little way down a narrow canopy of sky. All else is vegetation. The solitude no longer tempts him, but mocks as he contemplates his surroundings. Yet to doubt is to be ridiculous. It is all so simple; it took so long to come here up the stream; the same number of hours or minutes will take him back again to the spot he marked, and so to the camp.

The difficulties begin with the return journey. He questions the hour of leaving the bearers, the rate of march, the time spent in lazy consideration. One tree is so like another tree, one river vista but the duplicate of the last. Reeds, weeds, and bush now offer nothing distinctive; their former individuality appears to be lost. The trail must have been passed. He shouts, diffidently at first, eventually with hysteria. He fires a rifle, and the bush but re-echoes the sound. The hundreds of miles of forest on every side press together, and the signal is shuttlecocked between. The very echoes seem to him muffled, like the drums at a soldier’s funeral. The traveller is lost.

The realisation is a strange psychological phenomenon. It forces the self-reliant European on his knees to pray; drags him to his feet to blaspheme; throws him on his face to weep. This admission may come strangely to the well-housed British ratepayer. It may sound like a confession of unfathomable cowardice. It is far easier for the arm-chair philosopher to imagine the stoicism of the Indians than to reproduce the neuroticism of his European counterpart. Things are so different when the conception of the Amazonian bush is the memory of the tropical houses in Kew Gardens.

One day I was lost alone. When I realised it I shouted, then fired half-a-dozen rounds from my rifle, and laughed. It was the laugh that brought me to my senses—that way lay madness. The reaction to calm was stupendous. Life was dependent upon self-control and clarity of judgment. I counted my rounds, remembered all I had eaten that day, and settled myself to think. We had crossed a stream, and my boys had been left quenching their thirst. I took the lie of the land, and found a path leading downwards. It must go to water. It did in fact take me to a stream, and I trudged wearily in the bed of it; then, after two fruitless hours of growing despondency, turned and went down, to find, as darkness was closing in, Brown and his party. That night I had fever, and talked in my sleep. And John Brown was lost for five and a half months. Good God!

There is one last experience of the bush—starvation. The man who has not starved can never enter into the feelings of his brother who, with blood-shot eyes and shaking fingers, has groped about the fallen leaves for a lizard or a frog. I can answer for it that those who have starved never again may express the sensation. It has become the memory of a nightmare.