The meaning of Mamoré, which is a Yuracaré word, is “mother of the human race.” They have a legend to the effect that far away, at the source of the Sajta, which is the beginning of the furthermost tributary of the mighty river, there are three rocks of pyramidal shape that rise in terraces, one above the other, and in the heart of which the stream rises. In the very beginning of things this rock gave birth to the first people, for which reason it is called “Mamoré.” Later the name was also given to the river because its water, teeming with fish, supplied them with food and offered an easy highway for the dissemination of the race. Arrived at the point of embarkation, the men began to load the five canoes which were waiting, and the women built a fire and cooked lunch. In a short time everything was ready and the canoes moved easily down-stream. The paddlers were adepts at their work, and as a good deal of rivalry existed between the different crews, they kept up an almost continuous race, with the natural consequence that we made good time. The scenery along the Chimoré is exactly like that on the upper courses of the many rivers of tropical South America; there is the same monotony of the yellow water highway, flanked by walls of deepest green. One thing that impresses the traveller as much as any other is the immensity of the silent, uninhabited areas; and also their comparative worthlessness. For days and even weeks one may enter deeper and deeper into the heart of the undefiled wilderness, and see always the same dark forest, the hurrying, mysterious streams, and the rafts of low, threatening clouds; hear the annoying buzz and feel the poisonous sting of the insect swarms, and swelter in the humid, enervating climate. The greater part of this country can never be cultivated to any extent, as the annual floods cover it to a depth of many feet; there are very few eminences safe from the inundations, and these are of inconsiderable size. The person who pictures the untrodden tropics as a paradise of fruits and flowers, teeming with gorgeous-colored creatures and inhabited by tribes of gracious Indians whose one desire in life is to serve the traveller or explorer, has yet to cut his eye-teeth in the field of exploration.