“What do you make of that?” he asked.

“It is an Assai palm,” said Summerlee.

“Exactly. It was an Assai palm which I took for my landmark. The secret opening is half a mile onwards upon the other side of the river. There is no break in the trees. That is my private gate into the unknown. Come on and you will understand.”

It was indeed a wonderful place. Having reached the spot marked by a line of light-green rushes, we carried two canoes through them, and found ourselves in a quiet stream, running clear over a sandy bottom. No one could possibly have guessed the existence of such a stream.

It was a fairyland… The most wonderful that the imagination of man could conceive. The thick branches met over our heads, creating a tunnel, in a golden twilight flowed a beautiful river. Clear as crystal, motionless as a sheet of glass. It was an avenue to a land of wonders.

All sign of the wild Indians had passed away, animal life was more frequent, everything showed that they knew nothing of the hunter. Little black-velvet monkeys, with snow-white teeth and gleaming eyes, chattered at us as we passed. Once a dark, clumsy tapir stared at us from a gap in the bushes, and then went away through the forest; once we saw a great puma, its green eyes glared hatred at us over its shoulder. Bird life was in abundance, while beneath us the crystal water was alive with fish of every shape and color.

For three days we made our way up this tunnel of hazy green sunshine. The deep peace of this strange waterway was unbroken by any sign of man.

“No Indian here. Too much afraid. Curupuri,” said Gomez.

“Curupuri is the spirit of the woods,” Lord John explained. “It’s a name for any kind of devil. They think that there is something terrible in this direction, and therefore they avoid it.”

On the third day the stream was rapidly growing more shallow. Finally we pulled the boats up among the brushwood and spent the night on the bank of the river. In the morning Lord John and I made our way for a couple of miles through the forest, keeping parallel with the stream; but as it grew ever shallower we returned and reported that the canoes could not be brought any more. We concealed them among the bushes, leaving a landmark with our axes, so that we could find them again. Then we distributed the various burdens among us – guns, ammunition, food, a tent, blankets, and the rest – and, shouldering our packages, we began the more challenging stage of our journey.

On the second day after leaving our canoes we found that the whole character of the country changed. Our road was mainly upwards, the woods became thinner and lost their tropical view. The huge trees of the alluvial Amazonian plain gave place to coco palms with thick brushwood between.

On the ninth day after leaving the canoes, the trees had grown smaller until they were mere shrubs. Their place was taken by an immense wilderness of bamboo, which grew so thickly that we could only penetrate it by cutting a pathway with the machetes and billhooks of the Indians. It took us a long day, travelling from seven in the morning till eight at night, with only two breaks of one hour each, to get through it. Anything more monotonous and wearying could not be imagined. Several times we heard some large, heavy animals quite close to us. From their sounds Lord John judged them to be some form of wild cattle. Just as night fell we formed our camp, exhausted after the long day.

Early next morning we were again afoot, and found that the character of the country had changed once again. Behind us was the wall of bamboo, in front was an open plain, with clumps of tree-ferns, the whole curving before us until it ended in a long ridge. It was here, where an incident occurred which may or may not have been important.