long creepers of monkey ropes, and, attaching them to the canoes, set a couple of hundred men hauling, and in this way dragged them up by main force.

For a present of a few yards of cloth or a handful or two of beads, we generally got as much help as we Wanted from the fishing villages on the river bank. Occasionally, the only passable part of a cataract or rapid was blocked by enormously strong weirs, some of which were made of whole trees, and had evidently been placed there by the natives when the water was low. Holes, two or three feet square, were left in these weirs, over which fish-traps, formed like an ordinary lobster-pot and made of wicker-work, were placed. The mouths of these traps were always placed down river, in order to catch the fish mounting the stream while on the feed.