eighteen more passengers. It seemed to me that they would have to sleep
in a vertical position, since, as far as I could discover, the places
where it could be done horizontally were all occupied. At five in the
afternoon of this day, we arrived at a small rubber estate called Boa
Vista, where the owner kept cut palm-wood to be used for the launch,
besides bananas, pineapples and a small patch of cocoa-plants. The
firemen of our launch were busily engaged in carrying the wood,
when one of them suddenly threw off his load and came running down
the bank. The others scattered like frightened sheep, and only with
difficulty could be brought to explain that they had seen a snake
of a poisonous variety. We crept slowly up to the place under the
wood-pile which they had pointed out, and there about a foot of the
tail of a beautifully decorated snake was projecting. I jammed my
twenty-four-inch machete through it longitudinally, at the same time
jumping back, since it was impossible to judge accurately where the
head might come from. It emerged suddenly about where we expected, the
thin tongue working in and out with lightning speed and the reptile
evidently in a state of great rage, for which I could hardly blame
it, as its tail was pinned down and perforated with a machete. We
dispatched it with a blow on the head and on measuring it found
the length to be nearly nine feet. The interrupted loading of wood
continued without much additional excitement and we were soon on our
way again.

That night I passed very badly. My female neighbour insisted on
using the edge of my hammock for a foot-rest, and, to add to my
general discomfort, my hammock persisted in assuming a convex shape
rather than a more conventional and convenient concave, which put me
in constant danger of being thrown headlong into the river, only a
few inches away. Finally, I took my hammock down from its fastenings