We were only half-way down that incline when one tree broke. The canoe gave a leap on one side, knocking down Antonio and the man X, the jerk immediately after breaking another tree on the opposite side. Off went the canoe down the hill in her mad career, knocking some of us down, dragging the others, who were holding on to her. Two or three men were badly thrown about, but fortunately no broken bones were recorded. The canoe by that time had, in great leaps, reached nearly the bottom of the hill, but had got so jammed between a rock and a big tree that it required several hours' hard work with our axes and knives in order to disentangle her.
The shock, however, had been too great for the rickety canoe. I became anxious, for I feared she might split in two at any time, and I had no way of repairing her properly. When we got to the water again I patched her up as best I could with improvised nails which I made from pieces of hard wood. With great yells of excitement from my men we launched her once more in the river.
My men boasted how clever they had been to take the heavy canoe over the hill. There was really nothing Brazilians could not do when they wished!
Those forty hours of steady hard work out of the forty-eight hours we had stopped at the falls had seen us over that obstacle, and we were now ready to proceed once more by water.
We had suffered a great deal during those terrible hours from the bees, mosquitoes, hornets, piums, ants, and all kinds of other insects which stung us all over. A glance at the photographs which illustrate this volume, of the canoe being taken across the forest, will show all my men—I, naturally, not appearing, as I was taking the photographs—with their heads wrapped up in towels, notwithstanding the great heat, in order to avoid the unbearable torture as much as possible.
The minimum temperature during the night of August 3rd had been 61° F.; during the night of August 4th 72° F. During the day the temperature was 88° F. in the shade, but the air was quite stifling, as the sky was overcast with heavy clouds.
I took careful observations for latitude and longitude in order to fix exactly the position of the great falls. The latitude was 8° 51′·1 S.; the longitude 58° 50′ W.
The whirlpool and eddies which extended for 1,000 m. below the great fall were formidable. Never in my life have I seen waters so diabolical. They filled one absolutely with terror as one looked at them.
The river flowed there to bearings magnetic 120°; then to 140° b.m. for 3,000 m., where it was comparatively smooth. To the south-east of us was a hill range fully 600 ft. high. What appeared to me to be a small tributary seemed to enter the river on the left, but my men were so tired that I did not cross over to the other side in order to make certain. On looking behind us I could see that the hill range at the fall extended from north-west to south-east, while another smaller hill range, only 250 ft. above the level of the river, stretched from north to south on the left of the stream. The river was 300 m. wide.