It was muggy and warm during the night—min. 65° Fahr.—with swarms of mosquitoes. We were glad to leave the next morning, following a north-westerly course across a wonderfully beautiful meadow with circular groups of trees and a long belt of vegetation along the stream. It was then that I made my first acquaintance in Brazil with the seringueira (Syphonia elastica or Hevea brasiliensis), which was fairly plentiful in that region. As we shall see, that rubber tree, producing the best rubber known, became more and more common as we proceeded north.
In the cuts of rivers, soft red volcanic rock was exposed, with a surface layer of white sand and grey ashes in the flat meadow. The padding of earth was thin. Except close to rivers and in extinct craters where the accumulations of earth and cinders were often deeper with a good supply of moisture from underneath, the trees were feeble and anæmic. There again I was amazed to find how unstable and weak most trees were. One could knock them down with a mere hard push—as the roots had no hold in the ground, where they spread horizontally almost on the surface, owing to the rock underneath which prevented their penetrating farther than the thin upper layer of earth, sand, and ashes. If you happened to lean against a tree 4 or 5 in. in diameter, it was not uncommon to see the tree tumble down and you too. The wood also of those trees was very brittle and watery, with no power of resistance worth mentioning.
Many were the streamlets which flowed into the Rio Preto at elevations from 1,450 to 1,500 ft., viz. the Burity Comprido, the Bujui, the Grinko, the Pomba, the Corgo do Campo, the Riberão Grande, and the Stiva. Many of those streamlets had beautiful beds of white marble pebbles, which made their cool and clear water look and taste perfectly delicious. Others, with soft black mud bottoms—especially in cuvettes—were extremely troublesome to cross.
On the banks of those streams were marvellous pacobeira palms—a kind of giant banana palm, attaining a height of 30 to 40 ft., with a stem, ovoid in section, of great length, and from which shot out paddle-like leaves of immense size and of a gorgeous green, 6 to 7 ft. long and 3 ft. wide.
On July 3rd we went through thick, dirty, low scrub and forest, except along streams, the banks of which were lined with tall anæmic trees 1 inch in diameter with a mere bunch of leaves from branches at the summit. We again met with several cuvettes—very grassy, with the usual florid growth of trees in the centre. Those depressions were 1,400 ft. above the sea level. From many of the trees hung huge globes, like tumours. They were nests of cupim, the destructive white ants (termes album), of which there were swarms everywhere in that region. In one night they ate up the bottoms of most of my wooden boxes and rendered many of our possessions useless. They ate up our clothes, injured our saddles by eating the stitching—anything that was not of metal, glass, or polished leather was destroyed by those little devils.
We were beginning to descend gradually on the northern side of the table-land. After crossing a pass 1,350 ft. above the sea level we arrived on a lagoon to our left. Shortly after we reached the left bank of the Arinos River, separated there from the lagoon by a narrow tongue of high land—some 30 ft. high—between the two waters.
It was thus that on July 4th we encamped on that great tributary of the Amazon. We were still thousands of kilometres away from its mouth. My animals were quite exhausted and were unable to continue. Moreover, the forest near this great river—already, so near its birthplace, over 100 metres wide—would have made their coming along quite impossible, as the grazing was getting scarce, and would be scarcer still as we went on north. Then as the River Arinos took me in the direction in which I intended to travel, I had made up my mind to abandon the animals at that spot and attempt to navigate the river—diabolical as its reputation was.
We had now travelled on horseback some 2,000 kil. from the last railway station, of which about 600 kil. were over absolutely unknown country. Rough as the travelling had been, it was mere child's play compared with the experiences we had to endure from that day on.
Map showing Author's Route.