n AT SAN FERNANDO DE ATABAPO 463 
helpless with continued fever, and to have pro- 
ceeded farther as I then was would have been 
almost certain death. But even in San Fernando 
I very narrowly escaped this result, and I was 
unable to resume my voyage until thirty-eight days 
had passed. 
Indians are sorry nurses, and are ever more 
ready to flee from the sight of a sick man than to 
help him. When they desert even their own sick 
relations, it can hardly be expected of them to abide 
by a stranger in that state. My Indians did not 
leave me, but I might as well have been alone. 
I had violent attacks of fever by night, with short 
respites in the middle of the day, and on the 
second night, on stepping out of my hammock, I 
was seized with vomiting, which symptom being 
desirous to encourage, I called to my men to heat 
water for me to drink. They were all so com- 
pletely stupefied with rum that not one of them 
was able to help me. Although I had given them 
a bottle of rum to keep them in good -humour, 
I found they had sold some of my beef to obtain 
more. I passed a dreadful night, and in the 
morning I resolved to seek better aid. A friend 
wanted men to go to San Miguel on the Guainia, 
so I lent him my Indians on condition that he 
would find a woman who would undertake to nurse 
me. In the afternoon he brought with him an 
elderly woman who agreed to act as my nurse, but 
on condition of my moving to her house, where she 
had a family which she could not leave ; and I had 
no choice but to agree. 
This woman — Carmen Reja by name — I shall 
not easily forget. She was a Zamba — that race by 
