He wanted the exploration made on a grand scale and suggested that he send along a detachment of soldiers. I convinced him that his plan was impracticable, for a small party could get through much more easily than a large one. Late in October I went to Trinidad to outfit for the trip. There, at the old Ice House Hotel, I met two young Britishers who were men after my own heart: Dr. Rogers, a rich Church of England clergyman who preferred the legitimate pleasures of this world to the prospects of the next, and Frank Anderson, son of a wealthy Glasgow merchant and a recent graduate of Edinburgh University. They had come out to hunt for big game and were outfitting for a trip up the Orinoco. When I told them where I was going they expressed a great desire to accompany me and I readily agreed. I was glad to have such good companions for the long and probably dangerous journey, for it was a tradition that there were many “bad Indians” far up the river. I was the commandant of the party, Rogers was the scientist, and Anderson the provider. They had brought out from England two Peacock collapsible boats and to complete our fleet I bought an Orinoco _lancha_, a large flat-bottomed scow with a single enormous sail. We went up as far as Ciudad Bolivar, the head of steam navigation, on the old side-wheeler “Bolivar,” and there took to our boats, which were provisioned for six months and carried seven natives to do the hard work. There was only a slight current in the river, which was at low stage as it was then “midsummer”--their winter comes with the rainy season in our midsummer,--while the steady trade wind from the Atlantic blew straight upstream, so we made good progress under sail. It was a lazy trip in the early stages and a tiresome one, for there were only a few dirty hamlets along the way and the llanos stretched away on both sides of us in an interminable monotony. At the confluence of the Apure and Arauca Rivers, two hundred and fifty miles above Ciudad Bolivar, we found a great inland delta, larger and more bewildering than that at the mouth of the Orinoco where there are thirty-six separate channels that have been charted. This delta, like the one on the coast, was formed by the tremendous force and volume of the “midwinter” floods, which had built up so many islands of soft mud that it was at times difficult for us to stick to the main stream.