Our first care was to try to find a way of proceeding on our voyage. On account of the low stage of the water from the months of January to March, steamers do not ascend beyond Ciudad Bolivar regularly, and at best they go only as far as the Apure. It was, therefore, decided to charter a sailboat of shallow draft which would take us to the first great barrier to navigation, the cataracts of Atures. To secure such a craft was not an easy matter. We visited several of the large export houses, mostly German, but none of them had vessels at their disposal. Finally, we heard of a man named Guillermo Montez; he was a type frequently met with in South America; owning a small store which contained chiefly long ropes of garlic festooned on the walls, living in a mud hovel, and apparently poverty-stricken, he nevertheless possessed great wealth and knew how to handle his fellow countrymen. This “handling” consisted of keeping them constantly in debt to himself, so that he owned them virtually body and soul. Montez immediately sent to Soledad for one of his debtors, and within a short time we had secured the contract for the transportation needed. On December 16 word reached us that the boat was ready. We had spent the intervening days adding to the stock of provisions brought from New York, and it might be added that the shops of Ciudad Bolivar were well filled with a splendid assortment of foodstuffs at reasonable prices. The _Hilo de Oro_ (_Thread of Gold_), for that was the name of the sloop impatiently bobbing near the bank, was a boat capable of carrying one hundred and fifty _quintales_, under the command of one Pedro Solano; her crew consisted of four men, and the captain’s wife, whose position was that of cook. To properly load the equipment and provisions required half a day, and with the springing up of the evening wind we hoisted sail and, skirting the towering rocks protruding from the centre of the river, glided easily to the other side. As all the men came from Soledad, there followed a night of the usual festivities of drinking and leave-taking; but with the rising sun, the wind still holding out, we started on the real voyage up the great river. Fortunately, the wind was favorable and continued to blow intermittently all day long; by ten o’clock at night we had covered about thirty miles and cast anchor at a point called _Boca la Brea_. The width of the river averaged about one mile and a half, and the entire bed is strewn with huge boulders, rendering navigation at night impossible.