This important affluent of the Amazon comes from the southwest, and from source to mouth has not a single island, nor a single rapid, to check its course.

The mouth is about three thousand feet in width, and the river comes in some miles above the site formerly occupied by the town of the same name, whose possession was disputed for so long by Spaniards and Portuguese.
Up to the morning of the 30th of June there had been nothing particular to distinguish the voyage.

Occasionally they met a few vessels gliding along by the banks attached one to another in such a way that a single Indian could manage the whole--_"navigar de bubina,"_ as this kind of navigation is called by the people of the country, that is to say, "confidence navigation." They had passed the island of Araria, the Archipelago of the Calderon islands, the island of Capiatu, and many others whose names have not yet come to the knowledge of geographers.
On the 30th of June the pilot signaled on the right the little village of Jurupari-Tapera, where they halted for two or three hours.
Manoel and Benito had gone shooting in the neighborhood, and brought back some feathered game, which was well received in the larder.

At the same time they had got an animal of whom a naturalist would have made more than did the cook.
It was a creature of a dark color, something like a large Newfoundland dog.
"A great ant-eater!" exclaimed Benito, as he threw it on the deck of the jangada.
"And a magnificent specimen which would not disgrace the collection of a museum!" added Manoel.
"Did you take much trouble to catch the curious animal ?" asked Minha.
"Yes, little sister," replied Benito, "and you were not there to ask for mercy! These dogs die hard, and no less than three bullets were necessary to bring this fellow down." The ant-eater looked superb, with his long tail and grizzly hair; with his pointed snout, which is plunged into the ant-hills whose insects form its principal food; and his long, thin paws, armed with sharp nails, five inches long, and which can shut up like the fingers of one's hand.

But what a hand was this hand of the ant-eater! When it has got hold of anything you have to cut it off to make it let go! It is of this hand that the traveler, Emile Carrey, has so justly observed: "The tiger himself would perish in its grasp." On the 2d of July, in the morning, the jangada arrived at the foot of San Pablo d'Olivenca, after having floated through the midst of numerous islands which in all seasons are clad with verdure and shaded with magnificent trees, and the chief of which bear the names of Jurupari, Rita, Maracanatena, and Cururu Sapo.