Forced to find a local substitute for such vital equipment, the men were obliged to make do with a set of seven roughly hewn dugouts that Rondon purchased from a group of Nhambiquara Indians, and which were now tethered to the base of the telegraph bridge. Rondon assured Roosevelt that these dugouts were all “recently built,” but they had been built by one of the Amazon’s most primitive tribes, a group that was reviled by other tribes for its lack of even the most rudimentary hammock.
