Accordingly, it was arranged that Colonel Rondon and some assistants and scientists should meet me at or below Corumba, and that we should attempt the descent of the river, of which they had already come across the headwaters.

From Buenos Aires they went up the Paraguay to Corumba, where they awaited me.

Only three weeks previously a twelve-year-old boy who had gone in swimming near Corumba was attacked, and literally devoured alive by them.

On December 15 we reached Corumba.

Corumba is on a steep hillside, with wide, roughly paved streets, some of them lined with beautiful trees that bear scarlet flowers, and with well-built houses, most of them of one story, some of two or three stories.

Of course Corumba is still a frontier town.

In a year the railway from Rio will reach Corumba; and then this city, and the country roundabout, will see much development.

The morning after our arrival at Corumba I asked Colonel Rondon to inspect our outfit; for his experience of what is necessary in tropical travelling has been gained through a quarter of a century of arduous exploration in the wilderness.

It was Fiala who had assembled our food-tents, cooking-utensils, and supplies of all kinds, and he and Sigg, during their stay in Corumba, had been putting everything in shape for our start.

At Corumba the weather was hot.

The naturalists found the bird fauna totally different from that which they had been collecting in the hill country near Corumba, seventy or eighty miles distant; and birds swarmed, both species and individuals.

Directly in front of us, many leagues distant, rose the bold mountains that lie west of Corumba.

The owner, a countryman from a small ranch, asked for a tow to Corumba, which we gave.

On Christmas eve we reached Corumba, and rejoined the other members of the expedition.

THE HEADWATERS OF THE PARAGUAY At Corumba our entire party, and all their belongings, came aboard our good little river boat, the Nyoac.

Back in the forest near Corumba the naturalists had found them very bad indeed.

The junction of the Sao Lourenco and the Paraguay is a day's journey above Corumba.

From Corumba there is a regular service by shallow steamers to Cuyaba, at the head of one fork, and to Sao Luis de Caceres, at the head of the other.

The river was as big as the Paraguay at Corumba; but, in striking contrast to the Paraguay, there were few water-birds.

A year previously five rubbermen, Mundurucu Indians, were working on the Corumba at about that level.

Even in Corumba, the hottest place I have ever been in, the native does not think he is dressed unless he wears one of these stiff abominations around his throat.