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When we started taking her down with ropes--our ropes were all rotted by that time, and had no strength whatever--the canoe was tossed about in a merciless manner. I recommended my men as they ran along to beware of the ropes catching on the cutting edges of the high rocks. No sooner had the canoe started down the swift current than one of the ropes at once caught on a rock and snapped. The men who held the other rope were unable to hold it, and let it go. I saw the canoe give three or four leaps in the centre of the channel and then disappear altogether. That was a sad moment for me. But as my eye roamed along the foaming waters, what was my surprise when I saw the canoe shoot out of the water in a vertical position at the end of the rapid and waterfall! That was the greatest piece of luck I had on that journey. By being flung out of the water with such force she naturally emptied herself of all the water she contained, and I next saw her floating, going round and round the whirlpool at the bottom of the rapid.

The considerations which support such a policy on America's part are mainly these: First, that if America does not lend the assistance of her detachment from European quarrels to such an arrangement, Europe of herself may not prove capable of it. Second, that if Europe does not come to some such arrangement the resulting unrest, militarism, moral and material degeneration, for the reasons above indicated and for others to be indicated presently, will most unfavorably affect the development of America, and expose her to dangers internal and external much greater than those which she would incur by intervention. Third, that if America's influence is in the manner indicated made the deciding factor in the establishment of a new form of world society, she would virtually take the leadership of Western civilization, and her capital become the centre of the political organization of the new world State. While "world domination" by military means has always proved a dangerous diet for all nations that have eaten of it heretofore, the American form of that ambition would have this great difference from earlier forms--that it would be welcomed instead of being resisted by the dominated. America would have given a new meaning to the term and found a means of satisfying national pride, certainly more beneficial than that which comes of military glory.

On October 19th we came in for a howling storm of wind and rain, waves being produced in the river as high as those that occur in the sea. We tossed about considerably and shipped a lot of water. More immense sand-beaches were passed, and then we came to a region of domed rocks showing along the river bank. At all the _baracaos_, or trading sheds where the _seringueiros_ bought their supplies, the same rubbish was for sale: condemned, quite uneatable ship biscuits sold at 5_s._ a kilo; Epsom salts at the rate of L2 sterling a kilo; putrid tinned meat at the rate of 10_s._ a tin; 1-lb. tins of the commonest French salt butter fetched the price of 10_s._ each. The conversation at all those halting-places where the trading boats stopped was dull beyond words, the local scandal--there was plenty of it always--having little interest for me.

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