EXPLORING THE AMAZON

The upper Amazon Basin is one of the last of the world's blind spots to succumb to the persevering curiosity of the explorer. For many years attempts had been made in vain to penetrate the dense jungles which cover it, and to navigate the seething rapids that block its rivers, but the undertaking has now been proved entirely feasible from the air.

Where the untrodden jungle presented a matted and almost impenetrable wall to men on foot, it surrendered its secrets readily to men in the sky. The hostile Indians who had hindered previous expeditions could not obstruct a plane flying 3,000 feet above them, and no ground scout, however skillful, could match an aviator in ferreting out the easiest trails to be followed and forewarning of obstacles to be met and overcome. Our hydroplane served as the eyes of the expedition.

Our party assembled in Manaos, Brazil, on July 6, 1924, and consisted of Dr. Rice, director; Dr. Koch-Crunberg, ethnologist; Dr. George Shattuck, physician; Weld Arnold, cartographer; Charles C. Bull, assistant; John C. Couzens, engineer; Walter Hinton, airplane pilot; John E. Wilshusen, airplane mechanic; John W. Swanson ,and Thomas S. MacCaleb, radio-telegraphists; Hermann Dengler, draftsman; Silvino Santos, film operator; Ramundo Camara, assistant; and myself, as observer and aerial photographer. With the Indian porters and paddlers, our party numbered more than 100.

The variety of professions represented on its staff suggests the variety of the objectives of the expedition. Dr. Rice set the following program: To survey and map the Rio Branco and its western affluent, the Rio Uraricoera, following the latter to its source in the Serra Parima, and to ascertain whether any passage existed between the head-waters of this river and those of the Orinoco, thus tying this survey to the one carried out on the leader's 1919-20 expedition…"