The Bridgeport evening farmer., 1916-05-11
'1t is surely an Assai palm" said

| Ipon the other side of the river There | is no break in thu trees. That is the
 wonder and the mystery of 1t. There
 where you see light green rzshes in stead of dark green undergrowth. there between the great cottonwoods, that is my private gate into the unknown Push through and you will under stand"
 ] It was indeed a wonderful place. Having reached the spot marked by a line of light green rushes, we poled
 out two canoes through them for some hundreds of yards and eventually 1 emerged into placid and shallow stream, running clear and transparent over a sandy bottom. It may have been twenty yards across and was banked in on each side by most luxu-
 rfant vegetation. No one who had not observed that for a short distance reeds had taken the place of shrubs l could possibly have guessed the exist ! ence of such 8 stream or dreamed of the fairyland beyond.
 For a fairyland it was, the most wonderful that the imagination of man could conceive. The thick vegetation met. overhead, interlacing into a nat ural pergola, and through this tunnel of verdure in golden twilight flowed the green, peIlucid river, beautiful in itself, but marvellous from the strange tints thrown by the vivid light from above, filtered and tempered in it's fall. Clear as crystal, motionless as a sheet of glasS, green as the edge of an ice
 berg, 1t stretched in front of us under it's leafy archway, every stroke of our paddles sending a thousand nipples
 across it's shining surface. It was a fn a of All signs of the Indians had passed
 away, but animal life was more ire quent, and the tameness of the crea- lures showed that they knew nothing of the hunter. Fuzzy little black vel
 vet monkeys with snow white teeth and gfeami1Sg, mockfng eyes chattered at us as we passed. With a dull,
 heavy splash an occasional cayman plunged in from the bank. Once a dark, clumsy tapir stared at us from
 gap in the bushes and then lumber k ed away through the forest. Once, too, Nthe yellow, sinucus form of great
 puma whisked amid the brushwood, and its green, ba1efu1 eyes glazed ha- tired at us over its tawny shoulder.
 Bird life was abundant, especially the
 wading birds, stork, heron and ibis gathering in little groups, blue, scar let and white, upon every log which | jutted from the bank, while beneath us the crystal water was alive with fish of every shape and color.
 For three days we made our way
 up this tunnel of hay green sunshine.
 On the longer stretches One could hard Iy tell as one looked ahead where the
 distant green water ended and the
 distant green archway began. The i deep peace of this strange waterway l 7zvp1lT cfer rnFT
 f'No Indian here. Too much afraid Curupurt,' 2 said Gomez.
 "Curupuri is the spirit of the VVoOds '' Lord John explained. Its a name for any kind of devil The poor beg
 gars thinks that there Is somethlna
 fearsome 1n this direction, and there
 fore they ayeid 1t.
 | On the third day it became evident
 that our journey in the canoes could
 not last much longer, for the stream was rapidly growing mOre shallow.
 Twice in sS many hours we stuck upon l the bottom. Finally we pulled the
 boats up among the brushwood and ] spent the night on the bank of tho
 river. ID zhe morning Lord John and made oc% way for couple of miles through the forest, keeping parallel 1 with the stream, but as 1t grew ever ] shalzower we returned and reported l what Professor Chal1enger had already
 suspected, that we had reached the
 highest point to which the canoes could
 be brought We drew them up, thsre-
 fore, and concealed them among the
 bushes, blazing tree with our axes
 so that we should find them again.
 Then we distributed the various bur
 dens among us-guns, examination,
 food. a tent, blankets and the rest
 and, shouldering car packages, we set
 forth upon the more Iabor1Odg stage of
 our Journey.
 Advancing in singlenle along the bank
 of the stream, we soon found that it
 narrowed down to mere brook, ana I finally that it lost itself in a great
 green motass Of spongelIks mosses,
 into which we sank up to our knees
 The place was horribly haunted by
 clouds of mosquitoes and every form
 of flying pest, so we were glad to hnd
 solid ground again and to make a cir cult among the trees, which enabled
 us to outhank this pestilent mOrass. | which droned like an organ in the dis
 tance, so loud was it with Insect life.
 On the ninth day after leaving the
 canoes, having done, as reckon, about
 12o miles, we began to emerge from the trees, which had grown smaller un-
 til they were mere shrubs. Their place
 was taken by an immense wilderness
 of bamboo, which grew so thickly that
 we could only penetrate it by cutting
 a pathway with the n1achetes and bili-
 hooks of the Indians. It took us long
 day, travelling from in the morning
 till at night, with only two breaks
 of one hour each, to get through this
 obstacle. Anything more monotonOus
 and wearying could not be imagined,
 fCr, even at the most open places
 could not see more than ten or twelve
 yards, while usually my vision was limited to the back of Lord Johns cot i ton jacket in front of me and to the yellow wall within a foot of me on aitI,.a,. sssln L...,-,, .l,-....