On June 21st we crossed the Piraputangas (elev. 750 ft. above the sea level), where, owing to the steep banks, we had much difficulty in taking mules and baggage to the opposite side. We then proceeded across another large plain, skirting the spurs of the Serra Azul. Nine kilometres from camp we came to a stream 80 metres wide, which flowed from north-east to south-west. It had an average depth of 1½ ft. It was, I think, the Cuyabá Grande.
It was not easy to identify those rivers, as the existing maps of that country were absolutely worthless, most of them being filled in with fancy mountains and rivers, which either did not exist at all or were sometimes hundreds of kilometres out of their position. There were frequently mistakes of two, three, and more degrees in the latitudes and longitudes even of important places. As for the tributary rivers, of which merely the mouths were known and named, they had supplied good material for the imagination of more or less artistic cartographers in order to fill in the rest of their course. Even the German map and the American maps of the International Bureau of American Republics, which were the two best, were extremely inaccurate in their representation of that region. For instance, the latter map—and nearly all the other maps—placed the Serra Azul some 180 or 200 kil. south of its actual position. The German map was some 70 kil. out. The Serra Azul could be seen from a great distance, and had been marked approximately and not by actual observations on the spot. Nor, of course, had the tributaries of the Cuyabá been explored or even seen except at their mouths; hence their imaginary courses.
A Street of Diamantino.
The Dogs of the Expedition.
Considering how the maps of those regions had been got together, it was really wonderful that, with all their blunders, they gave as much information as they did. Unhappy, nevertheless, would be the poor traveller who relied on those maps in making a journey across the country. For instance, if you expected to come upon a certain river in one day and did not get there until after ten or fifteen days' hard marching; if you expected to find a mountain range—nearly as high as the Himalayas or at least as high as the Andes, according to the deep shading on the maps—and found instead an interminable flat plain; and if you saw on your map rivers marked navigable, and found rapids instead, in comparison with which the terrible ones of Niagara are mere child's play, you would certainly become rather sceptical of prettily-drawn maps.
On most of the maps of Brazil one saw marked to the east of the Araguaya, in the Goyaz Province, an immense range with no less a name than Cordilheira Geral la Serra do Estrondo—or "General Range of the Mountains of Noise." They were marked as the most prominent range in Brazil—quite as high as the Andes of Peru, Bolivia, and Chili; whereas, as a matter of fact, I was told on good authority that they were mere low hills, where there were any hills at all.