A TANGLE OF ROOTS CONVERTED INTO A PHOTOGRAPHER'S DARKROOM Santos, the motion-picture photographer, discovered this huge tree growing on the river bank, where water was handy. He saw its natural advantages and converted it into his "laboratorio." At night, with a bit of canvas wrapped around the roots to keep out stray light, he would develop strips of film in order that he might test the result of his day's exposures. An enthusiast in his work, he would go about the camp with a lantern or a candle and a foot or two of movie film, showing everyone what luck he had had. If he failed to appear, his associates knew that the day had been a failure. politician had donned a silk hat, arrayed himself with the scrupulous perfection of a diplomat bound for a state reception, and vanished ashore for the day. And at every port at which we stopped a revolution subsequently broke out. A plague ship could not have spread disease any more thoroughly than our ship spread revolution. But events proved that we were fortunate to have come on that boat, since shipping on the lower Amazon practically ceased for more than two months after the outbreak. REVOLUTIONISTS, WITH LATIN FERVOR, EMBRACE A STALWART ENEMY The fireworks died down later in the evening, so we decided to venture out to look over the field of carnage. The streets were still deserted, but soon we came to a soldier on guard. Could we go on? He assured us we could. A few blocks farther along another guard let us pass into the public square where most of the fight ing had occurred. The police barracks facing the square had been riddled by gunfire. The police had defended Manáos from the unpaid soldiers, but when their barracks fort became too hot all had fled save one-an old police colonel, who held out doggedly against the attackers. His return fire from the barracks finally ceased and the troops closed in. The old colonel was found inside, down, but not disheartened. In picturesque Portuguese he told his captors that he would still be picking them off if he could, but four bullet wounds through the legs and arms had laid him out. With true Latin spirit, the besiegers promptly embraced their prisoner, praised him to the skies for his gallant defense, and then packed him off to the hospital to be patched up. Manáos had changed hands with not more than a dozen casualties. One morning a few weeks after the revolution our steamer and hydroplane started up the Rio Negro, and for nine months thereafter we were in, beside, and over the world's greatest forest. To take advantage of the cool, steady air and good observation conditions, Hinton and I took off in the early morning hours, as a rule, flying about 100 miles up the river, taking photographs and sketching as we went. By nightfall the chartered steamer carrying the rest of the expedition usually arrived at our anchorage. THE BLACK MIRROR OF THE RIO NEGRO IS A PERIL TO AVIATORS The Negro is well named; it is glossy black. When government engineers wanted to make a mirror basin between the Washington Monument and the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, they coated the bottom of the long pool with pitch. When it is smooth the Negro, by its blackness, produces the same sort of mirror. To a person on a steamer deck the beauty of the tropical scene is heightened by this phenomenon, but to a hydroplane pilot it offers grave danger, because he cannot accurately gauge his distances. Whenever possible Hinton came down in the wake of a boat whose waves broke the mirror. For 200 miles we followed these waters, from Manáos to Carvoeiro, where, to our great relief, we saw the milky waters of the Rio Branco pouring into the Negro like cream into black coffee (see, p. 380). At Siroroco, some distance up the Rio Branco, I gratified a desire that was born in the days when I wore knee breeches and the wonders of geography were first being revealed to me. I stood on my own shadow! Siroroco is one degree off the Equator, and we arrived there at the time of the autumn equinox, when the sun was crossing The Line on its swing to the Tropic of Capricorn. At noon, therefore, the sun was directly overhead. Here we had to make our first repairs. We had begun to suspect that all was not well with the bottom of our plane several days previously, and this fear was confirmed when we flew over the steamboat and Wilshusen noted the "blister" spots which appeared where the hull covering had become loose. Knowing that trouble was in store, he got out our airplane first-aid kit, which contained glue, canvas, mahogany, and screws, and had it ready when the boat caught up with us that afternoon. We pulled the plane up on a mud bank and Wilshusen replanked a section of the hull about 6 feet long, tapering from 4 feet to 2 feet wide. This part of the hydroplane hull was veneer. Under ordinary conditions veneer is stronger than mahogany planking, but we soon found it had no place in the moist Tropics, where the glue became soaked and the thin strips warped and parted. By the most strenuous work day and night, amid swarms of gnats and mosquitoes, and in beating rain, Hinton and Wilshusen stripped off the veneer and replaced it with solid planking. days later, with the help of 20 Indians, the hydroplane was eased into the water. Two For the next six months two thin strips of mahogany with canvas between them were all that separated us from the water. However, six months proved to be just about the limit of their endurance, as the hull was practically water-logged when we landed at Manáos on our return journey, the latter part of March, 1925. WEATHER WORKS ON SCHEDULE ALONG THE AMAZON The weather has a set schedule of performance in the Amazon Basin. The days usually dawn bright and clear. By 9 or 10 o'clock clouds gather and in the afternoon it often rains. The blanket of clouds, however, serves to temper the sun's heat and makes the days really less uncomfortable than many of those of July and August in the Temperate Zones. The nights are very beautiful; the air is often so clear that the stars have the sparkle and snap of our coldest winter nights. The Southern Cross and Milky Way are much in evidence, while directly overhead in November, in the hours just before daylight, is the great constellation of Orion. At this time of year, too, many of the planets and first-magnitude stars shine with great brilliance, and when the full moon is in the sky the night transforms the Amazon Basin into an illimitable fairyland of delicate light and shadow. On the rivers, the rush of the water by the tangled jungle, the distant murmur This huge ceiba tree, supported by buttressed roots, towers 40 feet above the general level of the jungle. Note the wisps of vines swinging from the limb at the left, like a string of beads. Sometimes these parasitic growths resemble washing hung out to dry. THE AVERAGE EXPLORER'S VIEW OF AN AMAZON FOREST (SEE, ALSO, PAGE 366) "A high canopy of trees from whose branches hang vines and moss which spread their greedy fingers downward; beneath this, dense underbrush shrouded throughout the day in green twilight" (see text, page 385). Note the turtle pen in the center (see, also, page 383). In the right foreground the river steamer conveying the Rice Expedition is seen proceeding at five miles an hour up one of the narrow channels. |