“The unexplored mountains from which these great rivers spring.”
“Unexplored?”
“Certainly. Travellers have been pretty well everywhere in other countries, but there are vast tracts here in Central South America that have never been tapped as yet by explorers. Who knows what we may find?”
“Ah, who knows? Well, we shall see.”
“If only our health holds out and the winds favour us till we have sailed up into the higher regions. What would help us most are floods to give us plenty of deep water.”
“Are we likely to get floods?”
“Plenty. Every storm in the mountains swells these rivers, and if the wind will blow well from the sea we can get up a tremendous distance, for we shall have plenty of deep water.”
“But you want, like us, to try and collect plenty of fresh natural-history objects, don’t you?”
“Of course.”
“You don’t dream of discovering any old golden city, as you call it?”