_Padre._ “But, captain, if I am never to speak how am I to improve or correct to suit you?” _Captain._ “With the moral influence of your head and hands, when you see anything necessary to be done!” This settled the question of the padre’s new vocation, and he was forthwith introduced to the crew, who greeted his installation with marked approbation. At night, when he became genial in confessional overflow and dogmatic in argument, he was the source of humorous repartee and good-will among the passengers on the quarter-deck. His American birth having toned down the quarrelsome disposition legitimate as an inheritance to the native-born Irishman, when under the influence of whiskey, he indulged in quaint disputations, peculiar to his Yankee ingraft, in freedom from ill humor. With this insight descriptive of mood foreign to the members of the corps, we will now resume our narration of events transpiring in the daily progress of the steamer’s river voyage. _May 28._—The banks of the river are now clearly defined, but the water still submerges the undergrowth that margins its lower stages in the season of drought; the more matured growths are already peopled with the smaller species of birds delighting in the bushy retreats overhanging the waters. Our naturalists’ eyes are now greedily engaged in busy search for new specimens of the feathered species. _May 29._—This morning we reached a sand-spit formed by a confluent stream, upon which the receding waters had left a wood-drift well suited for the steamer’s use, having been forced by the jam of flood-tide high out of the current. The eddies and backwater of the Pilcomayo’s stronger flow had carried the raft and lodged it high up above the mouth of the lesser stream, leaving an extension inter-stayed by the roots that reached into deep water; alongside of the raft, in the smaller stream, the steamer moored. The axes of the firemen and sailors were soon busy, wakening for the first time the forest echoes to the chucking sound of their strokes. The more active members of the corps volunteered their services in aid for speedy replenishment, deriving in recompense the invigorating novelty of exercise. While actively engaged with ready hands and merry voices they were suddenly startled with the scream of the steamer’s whistle, simultaneously accompanied with a flight of arrows from the ambush of the forest screen above the raft. Fortunately distance and trepidation from the unearthly screech of the whistle rendered their aim harmless; the check it afforded enabled the woodcutters to scramble up the sides of the steamer before the savages recovered from their surprise. When they realized that the shriek was harmless in effect, the Indians rushed forth from their concealment to secure the axes which had been abandoned by the men in their sudden fright, but were again momentarily intimidated by the rumbling sound of the gong, which Antonio, the steward, had seized to increase with