The Mundurucus
and Brazilians are always on the best terms, and the former are even
more inveterate enemies of the wild Indians than are the latter.
By mid-forenoon on April 26 we had passed the last dangerous rapids.
The paddles were plied with hearty good will, Cherrie and Kermit, as
usual, working like the camaradas, and the canoes went dancing down
the broad, rapid river. The equatorial forest crowded on either hand
to the water's edge; and, although the river was falling, it was still
so high that in many places little islands were completely submerged,
and the current raced among the trunks of the green trees. At one
o'clock we came to the mouth of the Castanho proper, and in sight of
the tent of Lieutenant Pyrineus, with the flags of the United States
and Brazil flying before it; and, with rifles firing from the canoes
and the shore, we moored at the landing of the neat, soldierly, well
kept camp. The upper Aripuanan, a river of substantially the same
volume as the Castanho, but broader at this point, and probably of
less length, here joined the Castanho from the east, and the two
together formed what the rubbermen called the lower Aripuanan. The
mouth of this was indicated, and sometimes named, on the maps, but
only as a small and unimportant stream.
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