The Flowing Road; Adventuring on the Great Rivers of South America (Paperback)

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER III VOYAGING OVERLAND Travel was growing more difficult. In gaining half of the forty-five feet which marks the extremes between low water in December and high water in June, the river had so strengthened its already stout current that we could scarcely make one mile the hour, while the contributary streams coming in from the north flung themselves upon us with added force and pace, as we laboriously hauled and paddled across their mouths. But if the rapidly rising Negro was making more arduous our progress with the batelao, it was also lending success to my inland canoe trips by increasing the number and volume of the " igarapees " and generously overflowing the contiguous land, so as to afford me opportunity of penetrating farther and farther into the jungle. To really see the marvellous fecundity and intricacy of its vegetable life, one must pass behind the half-concealing drop curtain nature hangs along the river bank. Of such opportunity I took full advantage. Sometimes through a passage not over six feet wide, opening directly off the swirling, noisy river, I passed through the dense overhanging growth at the bank into submerged woodland where reigned the oppressive silence of primeval forest; now a little river, after many windings and cross canals, led finally to a lagoon whose shores teemed with bird life; yet again the igarapee widened and narrowed andwidened once more, twisting through forest and campo to end far inland in pond or perhaps continue on to another, or even two or three such expansions before running its length. And all the while, whether the road was narrow or wide, or across lagoon or along igarapee, it led through a wonderland, where the flora amazed, and the small reptilia scurried hither and yon as I journeyed on however silently. ...