Chapter 8 8. In the Amazon jungle

We have arrived at our destination.We haven't gone up to the plateau yet, but the plateau is indeed standing in front of us, and even Professor Sommerli's mood is better.He still doesn't admit that his peers are right, but he's less skeptical.But I have to pick up my narrative from where I left off.We are sending home a wounded native Indian, and I let him take this letter, though I doubt it will reach you at all. Last time I wrote that we were leaving the Indian village where we said goodbye to the Esmeralda.I must begin this report with the bad news, for there was an inexplicable trouble that night.I have spoken of the English-speaking Gomuz, a fine hireling, but I think the entanglement of curiosity and vice is quite common among such people.Finally that night he hid himself near the hut where we were discussing our plans.Our faithful black Zambo found him there and brought him to us.Gomuz drew his knife, but the tall black man disarmed him with just one hand.We talked to them individually and asked them to hold hands.It is very hopeful that things will turn around for the better.As for the quarrel between the two learned men, it continued and became violent.

The next day we embarked on this strange journey.We found that all our spares fit into the two kayaks without difficulty, and we split the crew.In order not to quarrel, we took the precaution of putting a professor in a boat.I was with Challenger when he was at his best. For two days we went up the river.The river was several hundred yards wide, and the water was murky, but transparent, so that the bottom could always be seen.Half of the Amazon's tributaries have this characteristic, while the other half have a whitish water, depending on the area they flow through.Twice we crossed the rapids, each time carrying the kayak for half a mile around it.The two sides are virgin forests, but it is easy to pass through, and it is not too difficult to carry our kayak through the woods.The height of the tree and the thickness of the trunk exceed any extent I imagined. The huge pillar-like tree body reaches straight into the sky, and it does not spread its branches and leaves until far above our heads, forming a green top cover, only occasionally golden. sunlight penetrates in.Our scientists pointed out that it was a redwood tree, that was a cedar tree, and pointed out a variety of other trees and plants.Vibrant orchids and other exotic blooms make one feel like being in a fairyland under the occasional sunlight that penetrates.In these vast forests, beings who cannot bear the darkness have been struggling towards the high sunlight.Every plant clings to plants that are stronger and taller than itself.Plants that would not otherwise cling to themselves learned the art here to break free from the shadows, so that even some of the palm trees clung around the cedar trunks in an effort to reach their tree top.There is always something moving high above our heads, telling us that this is the world of snakes, monkeys, birds, and sloths that live in the sunlight in the treetops.At dawn and sunset the monkeys croak in unison, but in the heat of the day only the monotonous cry of insects is heard.Between the trees nothing moves.Occasionally an anteater or a bear ran through the shadows, the only traces of ground animals I saw in the vast Amazon jungle.

However, there are signs that even humans are not far away from us.On the third day of going up the river, we heard strange and rhythmic sounds flickering.The first time we heard it, the two boats were only a few yards from each other, and our Indians were as still as if they had been turned into bronze statues, listening, with horror on their faces. "What is it?" I asked. "Drums," said Lord John, nonchalantly, "war drums. I've heard them before." "Yes, sir, the drums," said Gomuz. "Savages, they watch us every step of the way. They'd kill us if they could."

"How can they watch us?" I asked, looking into the darkness. Gomuz shrugged his broad shoulders. "The Indians know they have their own way. They look at us and talk to each other with drums. If they could, they would kill us." [Note] Sloth - a kind of mammal in South America and other lands. It lives in forests and moves slowly. By that afternoon—the diary in my pocket indicates that it was Tuesday, August 18th—the beating of drums could be heard in at least a half-dozen places from various places: sometimes they beat fast, sometimes slowly, sometimes The time is obviously a question and an answer.There was something threatening in those rhythmic voices, as if to say, "We'll kill you if we can. We'll kill you if we can."

All day long we listened to the drums.Their threats are reflected in the faces of our partners of color.But that day I saw that both Sommerley and Challenger had the greatest courage, the courage that comes from the scientific mind.All day they watched every bird on the branch, every plant along the shore. We parked the kayaks in the middle of the river at night, and made all preparations for possible attacks.But nothing happened, and at dawn we continued our voyage, listening to the sound of the drums fading away behind us.About three o'clock in the afternoon we came to a rapid drop more than a mile long--it was here that Professor Challenger's boat capsized on the previous trip.The Indians picked up our kayaks first, then our spares, and walked through the wide bushes, all four of us walking, guns over our shoulders.Before evening we had successfully crossed the rapids, and having traveled some ten miles up, we stopped, and there we passed the night.It seemed to me that we had covered no less than a hundred miles on this tributary since we left the Main River.

Early the next morning, Professor Challenger gave us an exclamation of satisfaction and pointed out a lone tree. "That's the tree, which I use as a signpost. The secret entrance is on the other side of the river, half a mile further on. That's the beauty of the tree going on and on. There we can see, among the giant kapoks In the middle of the forest, the green reeds replaced the dark green bushes, and that was my secret door to the unknown world." A wonderful place indeed.When we reached the point marked by a patch of reed, we pushed the kayak through the reed for a few hundred yards to a shallow, clear river flowing on a sandy bottom.The river was about twenty yards wide, and the vegetation on its banks was most attractive.Those who did not notice that a patch of reed had taken the place of the bush would not have guessed the existence of such a stream, and the wonderland beyond it.

What a wonderland.Dense trees are staggered overhead, and through this green channel under the golden sunlight, a beautiful green river flows, as clear as crystal. We saw no more traces of Indians, but we saw many wild animals.They don't seem to be afraid of us, which means they haven't seen a pigman.Little black monkeys, baring their white teeth, howled at us as we walked by.Once a black tapir, staring at us from the bushes, went off through the forest.Another time, a huge jaguar appeared on the bank of the river, looking at us with green eyes.Small flocks of birds, blue, red, and white, sat on the stumps on the bank.And fish of all shapes and colors swim in the crystal-like water.

For three days we walked this green and sunny passage without seeing a human being. "It's terrible that there are no Indians here. Guru Puri," Gomuz said. "Gurupuri is the spirit of the forest," Lord John explained. "The name of any ghost. The Indians think there is something terrible in this direction, so they always avoid coming here." On the third day, it became apparent that our kayak trip could not last much longer as the river rapidly became shallower.We ended up towing the kayak through the bush and spending the night on the shore.Next morning Lord John and I walked two miles along the river through the woods, but as the water was getting shallower we returned to report that we could no longer use the kayaks.We hid the boats in the bushes, and marked a tree with an axe, that we might find them.

Just as we were getting ready to embark on the tougher phase of our journey, our professors started arguing.From the moment Challenger joined our work, he gave us overall command, which Professor Somerley didn't like.Now, when Challenger told his fellow professor to hold the barometer, Somerley suddenly became angry. "May I ask, sir," said Somerley, with menacing silence, "in what capacity do you issue orders?" "Professor Summerley, I give the order because I am the leader of this expedition." I must tell you, sir, that I do not recognize you in that capacity. "

"Really?" Challenger bowed. "Maybe you will confirm my true identity!" "Yes, sir. You are a person who needs to be checked for the truth of the statement, and that is what the committee is here to do. Put aside your self-appointed status, sir!" "Damn it!" said Challenger, sitting down on the edge of a kayak. "In that case you go your way, I'll go mine! If I'm not the leader, don't expect me to lead the way." Lord John Ruxton talked and persuaded and explained to me.Happily we had discovered by this time that our two professors did not think very highly of Dr. Edinburgh Illingworth.So whenever there was a quarrel, we mentioned the Scottish zoologist, and the two professors formed a temporary friendship because of their hatred for this colleague.This time, too, the zoologist's name played a role.

Following the creek, we soon found that the river had disappeared in a wet green swamp.There are all kinds of bugs and mosquitoes flying there. The day after leaving the kayak, we discovered that the character of the area had changed.Our road has been going up, as we climbed, the forest became thinner, coconut palms replaced the giant trees of the Amazon plain, with dense bushes in between, we traveled entirely by compass, there were a couple of Once, Challenger and the two Indians disagreed.All agree that "it is better to trust the instinct of the Indian than to trust the highest product of contemporary European culture".We are right to do so.It became obvious on the third day, when Challenger admitted that he recognized some Lu Zhi left over from the previous trip, we found the remains of the previous camp. The path still goes up and we need to cross a rocky slope, which took us two days.The vegetation changed again, we saw many kinds of exotic orchids, and we pitched tents by the side of the temporarily diverted river, and the small blueback fish in the water made our delicious dinner. On the ninth day after leaving the kayaks (we had traveled one hundred and twenty miles), we arrived at an endless bamboo forest.The bamboo was so dense that we had to hack a way with an axe.We walked through this bamboo forest from seven in the morning to eight in the evening.We only rested twice that day, one hour at a time, and I can't say what kind of animal lived in such a bamboo forest, but several times I heard the sound of a large, immobile animal very close to us.Just as night fell, we walked out of the bamboo forest and immediately pitched our tents.We were exhausted from walking all day. Early the next morning we started walking again and found that the character of the area had changed again.Behind us was a wall of bamboo, and in front of us was an open plain, sloping up and full of tree-like ferns. The plain ended at a long mountain range, and we arrived there about noon.There is a valley on the other side of the mountain, and the mountain rises from the ground again. When we passed the mountain, something unexpected happened. Professor Challenger and two native Indians leading our group stopped abruptly, pointing excitedly to the left.While he was doing this, we saw, about a mile away, what looked like a large gray bird.It rose slowly from the ground, low and straight, until it disappeared among the tall ferns like trees. "Did you see that?" called Challenger. "Somoly, do you see that?" His peers watched the place where the animal disappeared. "What do you think?" he asked. "A pterodactyl." Summerley laughed out loud. "A dragon," he said. "If I did see anything, it was just a crane." Challenger was too angry to speak, he just went on walking, but Lord John came up to me, his face serious.He holds binoculars in his hands. "Before it flew into the woods, I pointed the binoculars at it," he said. "I can't say what it is, but on my athlete's credit, it's not any bird I've ever seen in my life." Have we really reached the edge of the unknown?The edge of the lost world that our leader talked about?I have told you what happened, you should know as much as I do! We no longer see anything that could be called singular. And now, my readers, I take you across the broad river, through the reed ponds, through the green passages, up the long palm slopes, through the bamboo forests, and across the plains of tall ferns.The plateau with its high red cliff-lines was in sight, the same plateau I had seen in photographs, and there could be no doubt.It's about seven miles from where we're camping now.Challenger looked as proud as a peacock, while Somerley was silent, but still suspicious.Another day would put an end to certain doubts, while Yossey, with his arm cut by the split bamboo, insisted on going back.I asked him to take the letter away.Enclosed is a sketch of the route of our journey, which may make my report easier to understand.