These tacubas, which are really fallen trees, are the most apparent danger in the jungle, although the chances of accident from them are very slight. Along the bank were many slanting trees, bound sooner or later to give way. On our return journey down the Aremu we passed, or rather scraped under, a huge trunk which completely spanned the creek. It must have fallen about two days before and we had to push through a perfect tangle of orchids and lianas.

Tree-ferns twelve feet high draped the banks; spiders of weird shapes dropped upon us, buoyed up by their long silken cables; brush-tipped aërial roots dangling at the ends of plummet lines fifty feet long were drawn from stem to stern of the boat and across the pages of our journals as we wrote.

Half an hour after starting we discovered a Three-toed Sloth (Choloepus) high up in a tree almost over the water. Mr. Howell shot the creature and we found it to be of large size, with long reddish-brown hair. The face, expressionless as it always is in these animals, had small eyes of a warm hazel color. Later we had it cooked and found it quite palatable.

In many of these tropical growths the new or first leaf-shoots are pale or brilliant red, this holding good in the case of the giant moras, several trees with locust-like foliage, and even the flat, leaf-vines, Monstera or shingle plants, crawling up the trunks. One small tree with entire leaves and covered with sweet-scented tassel-shaped flowers, had at least half its foliage of a pale yellow-green. This is the spring of this region in so far as such a region of never ending warmth and moisture may be said to have a spring. On every hand flowers were in abundance. All were unknown to us, but most were of large size and varied odor and color. All the tales of the rarity of flowers in the tropics had not fitted in with our experiences.

In the course of three bends of the river, during some fifteen minutes’ observation, we observed the following in masses of sufficient size to catch the eye far off and add a decided color tone to the spot where they grew: purple pea-blooms in wisteria-like bunches; falling-star white flowers; pink two-petalled ground flowers in dense clumps; spider lilies, the large kind; red passion flowers; white tubular blooms; five-parted purple star-shaped flowers; wild cotton, in enormous masses of bloom, resembling clematis and as fragrant; long thin racemes of very fragrant, dull greenish white flowers; brush-like purple blooms, white at the base, growing sessile on the trunks, with an edible fruit, which the blacks call “Waika.”

This list is exclusive of all the many inconspicuous flowers and all orchids, which were seldom out of sight. Its value lies only in giving the faintest of hints of the wonderful beauty of these jungle water trails.

On these upper reaches of the stream the two water birds most in evidence were Tiger Bitterns40 and Great Rufous Kingfishers.67 One could write pages trying to describe a single vista of this beautiful region and yet give only a hint of its charm. In one place a mighty loop of a lofty bush rope or monkey ladder with ornate woody frills decorating the edges, hangs swaying high in air across the stream. Several other giant vines have caught hold and have wormed their way in serpentine folds along the first great swing. In the spaces between these huge living cables, seeds and parasitic plants have taken root and grown, filling up the network with their aërial bulbs and in turn furnishing rootholds for an innumerable variety of flowers, ferns, orchids, mosses and lichens. The mosses are long and fan-shaped like some species of coral, and the lichens are red, pink, gray and white. The whole forms, high over our heads, an enormous hanging garden which no human ingenuity could duplicate.

Two hours after starting we reached the place called Two Mouths and turned into the Little Aremu. In no place is this stream more than twenty-five feet wide, with low, sloping sandy or clay banks facing steep ones, first on the right, then on the left side, according to the bend of the stream and the force of the current. As we went along a splendid male Crested Curassow4 flew up and was shot, to be added to our menu. Before we came in sight it was clucking softly.

A splash around a bend, and sharp claw and toe marks showed where a capybara (Hydrochoerus capybara) had just entered the water, and from here on we found such tracks common on every sandy bank.

We were amused at our steersman’s occasional orders to the crew. In places where the current was swift and poling was very difficult he would shout in a most woful and despairing voice “O Lord!”, giving us quite a start. We eventually found that he was intending this ejaculation for “Pole-hard!”

Black-shelled mollusks were common on submerged logs, and on the banks above the water line were scores of curious spiders and insects, while dragon-flies of a half dozen or more species darted swiftly about. Throughout the morning we were never out of hearing of the hammering of Woodpeckers, or the cooing of Doves or the laughing, descending scales of Woodhewers. The Chinese music of the cicadas came to our ears, a sound which recalled vividly the forests of Venezuela.

The water was now at a medium level, but after heavy rains when it is high, all the great tacubas six feet above our heads are submerged and much of the land along the river banks becomes a swamp.

Farther upstream when the water became very shallow and the stream narrowed to twelve or fifteen feet, some of us left the ballyhoo in order to make the work of the blacks easier, and took to the trail. After a fifteen minutes’ walk we saw the glimmer of sunshine through the trees and knew that we had reached the gold mine of the Little Aremu.