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What concerned me most was the swift, brown river that flowed almost at our feet. At last I had reached the masterful Congo, which, with the sole exception of the Amazon, is the mightiest stream in the world. As I looked at it I thought of Stanley and his battles on its shores, and the hardship and tragedy that these waters had witnessed.
He had been the prey of all sorts of swindlers, adventurers, visionaries and even lunatics. Wrapping himself up in deep and imbecile secrecy he had gone in for the most fantastic schemes: a harbour and docks on the coast of Patagonia, quarries in Labrador such like speculations. Fisheries to feed a canning Factory on the banks of the Amazon was one of them.
All four-footed animals can swim naturally in some fashion, but leopards can swim especially well. And the jaguar, who lives near the Amazon and other rivers, is a champion swimmer. He swims as easily as he climbs trees. So he eats fish as often as he eats monkeys! Yes, he actually catches a monkey sleeping on the bough of a tree! He climbs up so silently that the monkey does not awake.
Only the men who were in that fight can fully understand why Sir Douglas Haig was right in christening her the Joan of Arc of Loos." A more mature French Amazon is Madame Louise Arnaud, the widow of an officer killed in the war. She commanded a corps of French and Belgian women who were permitted by the War Minister to don uniforms.
And almost immediately his pull upon the reins began to tell, for his thews and sinews, hardened and tempered to the strength of steel by his long tramp from the banks of the Amazon, were very different from those of the effeminate youth who had been thrown out; and after traversing a couple of hundred yards, the animals acknowledged themselves beaten and came to a standstill without having done further damage.
"We can build a raft," thought I, "launch it upon this noble river, and float down to the Amazon, and thence to the mouth of the great stream itself. There is a Portuguese settlement there the town of Grand Para. There we shall be safe from our foes." Such were my first thoughts on beholding the new river. I reflected further.
The bachelor perceiving that his time had not yet come, allowed the little would-be Amazon to depart, without again making the slightest approach to the subject nearest his heart. Her skill in the use of the silver-mounted weapons, excited great admiration in the breast of daddy, whom she usually allowed to assist in setting up a target, because she could not well get rid of him.
That such extensive areas do exist cannot be doubted: the granitic region of Parime is described by Humboldt as being at least nineteen times as large as Switzerland. South of the Amazon, Boue colours an area composed of rocks of this nature as equal to that of Spain, France, Italy, part of Germany, and the British Islands, all conjoined.
The tree grows wild in the hot, damp forests of the Amazon valley and in other parts of South America that have a similar climate. The ideal climate for the rubber tree is one which is uniform all the year round, from eighty-nine to ninety-four degrees at noon, and riot lower than seventy degrees at night.
He told us that apes' flesh was very nice for eating a fact some of our party were inclined to doubt. He laughed at our scruples, and assured us that he had frequently dined off apes. The Indians on the Amazon go out regularly to hunt them, and have a very successful mode of so doing. Every hunter is provided with a hollow cane, called a sarbacan I before described it in our trip up the Amazon.
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