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The Papagaio is known both at the source and the mouth; to descend it did not represent a plunge into the unknown, as in the case of the Duvida or the Ananas; but the actual water work, over the part that was unexplored, offered the same possibilities of mischance and disaster. It is a hazardous thing to descend a swift, unknown river rushing through an uninhabited wilderness.
They were to go direct to the first telegraph station, at the great falls of the Utiarity, on the Rio Papagaio. Of course they travelled faster than the mule-train. Father Zahm, attended by Sigg, started for the falls in them.
Fiala and Lieutenant Lauriado stayed at Utiarity to take canoes and go down the Papagaio, which had not been descended by any scientific party, and perhaps by no one. They were then to descend the Juruena and Tapajos, thereby performing a necessary part of the work of the expedition.
The regular chronometer movement, because of its delicacy, is out of the question for rough land or water travel. We had with us a small- sized half-chronometer movement recently brought out by the Waltham Company as a yacht chronometer. It gave a surprisingly even rate under the most adverse conditions. I was sorry to lose it in the rapids of the Papagaio when our canoes went down.
Fiala, after the experience of his trip down the Papagaio, the Juruena, and the Tapajos, gives his judgment about equipment and provisions as follows: The history of South American exploration has been full of the losses of canoes and cargoes and lives. The native canoe made from the single trunk of a forest giant is the craft that has been used.
The Parecis were, of course, in the right, but the colonel could not afford to have his men take sides in a tribal quarrel. It was only a two hours' march across to the Papagaio at the Falls of Utiarity, so named by their discoverer, Colonel Rondon, after the sacred falcon of the Parecis.
On the swift water in the gorge of the Papagaio Fiala's boat had been upset and all his belongings lost, while he himself had narrowly escaped with his life. I was glad indeed that the fine and gallant fellow had escaped. The Canadian canoe had done very well.
At the telegraph office we received news that the voyage of Lauriado and Fiala down the Papagaio had opened with a misadventure. In some bad rapids, not many miles below the falls, two of the canoes had been upset, half of their provisions and all of Fiala's baggage lost, and Fiala himself nearly drowned.
An innominatus, in the shape of a similar quoin, is separated by a deep Col, apparently a torrent-bed, from a huge Beco de Papagaio the "Parrot's Bill" so common in the Brazil. It is our "High Peak," the most remarkable feature of the sea-facade, even when it conceals the pair of towering pillars that show conspicuously to the north and south.
For canoe travel the idea was to take these wooden cases off. I did not have an opportunity personally to experience the management of these food cases. We had sent them all ahead by pack- train for the explorers of the Duvida River. The exploration of the Papagaio was decided upon during the march over the plateau of Matto Grosso and was accomplished with dependence upon native food only.
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