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he vanished.
    I was back at our meeting place promptly the following day, but Mr. Gurnley wasn’t. Instead I was met by two of the most unlikely looking Indians, solemn faced, slightly bowlegged, and very small. Both were wearing old torn shirts, grease-stained shorts, and broad straw hats that kept their faces in perpetual shade. One stepped forward and handed me a note. It was from Mr. Gurnley.
    “I think you will find these two gentlemen adequate for your purposes. They are Pémon Indians. The taller one is named Tin, at least by me, and I call the other fellow Pan. (Their tribal names are unpronounceable.) Tin can speak some English. He will explain about the cost of their hire and the boat. I shall be away for a few days but hope to see you on your return. Bon voyage. CAG.”
    Tin and Pan! How could I refuse such a combination even though I was a little doubtful about their ability to lead me deep into the unknown. I had no choice anyway. We agreed terms, their terms, and I asked when they could be ready. They turned to each other and smiled. Tin held up a small canvas bag, Pan shrugged. Apparently they were ready right now. Well—so was I. The comforts of Canaima were beginning to pall.
     
     
    The river is placid and oily-surfaced. The ripples made by our wooden dugout canoe or curiara powered by a modest outboard motor, hardly ripple at all; the water moves reluctantly in thick undulations toward the jungle shore. The sun hammers its surface into submission. Even at full acceleration (not particularly fast in our case, especially against the current) there’s hardly a breeze to cool my pumping pores. I’m biting off lumps of limpid air and trying to swallow them, and trailing my hand in the river. It’s as warm as a hot tub. Then I remove my hand remembering all those tales of subsurface creatures awaiting the unsuspecting novice—the giant Cayman alligator whose bite will snap off an arm fast as a die-cutter; the notorious anaconda, a huge river-dwelling boa said to reach fifty feet in length and more; the piranhas, with a hundred teeth of honed glass set in bulldog jaws, driven into communal frenzy by blood and capable of shredding a fifty-pound capybara to the skeleton in a few frantic minutes.
    Worst of all is the candiru, like a bit of broken string, said to have a fondness for man’s lower orifices, whence inserted, it spreads its body spikes into flesh to prevent extraction. A barbed arrow of destruction that blocks passages and bursts bowels and bladders with insidious ease. And overhead, the ever-watchful, ever-ravenous black vultures, circling silently, waiting vigilantly for rich pickings. All the jungle contradictions: peace disguising panic; order in the midst of chaos; horror hovering over the happiest of moments, mellowed by complacency. I keep my fingers to myself, gripping the side of the canoe.
     
     
    The jungle eased by, a solid exuberant mass of green, edged in parasol-topped palms. Taken in small sections it was a senseless tangle of vines, dead limbs out of which soared new limbs, fallen trees still standing half straight in the gloom, fresh perky foliage striving for the sun, masses of dun-colored leaves, ferns, and palm fronds sinking back into the pulpy floor of the forest. Taken in larger sections, you could see the calm, changeless form and structure of the jungle, the striated tiers defined by the varied species of trees, ferns, and bushes, peaking in hundred-foot treetops where breezes made the branches frisky in the freedom of space and air and endless sunlight.
    It was at once dull and full of endless variety. It tantalized with the partial transparency of its riveredge fringes and threatened with the impenetrable gloom a few yards in. It invited and repelled. Its scale was impossible to imagine. Hundreds of miles of the same stuff in every direction, an infinity of contradictions, a complete and separate living entity needing nothing save itself—discouraging all but the most