old Portug.uese mine ruin where there was a report of another batcave. m 
\ 
hj 
stumbled down a gigantic stairway of aid rock that twisted and turned down 
I 
the slope, am found our cave, which hr. Dias entered alone, as l 
ino re 
interested in getting ..flower- seeds 
most pec'oliar climbing vine ffell 
down over the rocks. its leaves and stem were a little like those of 
the saandering Jew, but its bbld-s ?/ere c losed, like those of the frin^d 
i fiot some seeds that look as i 
gentian, and of the most heavenly deep blue 
they might grow. A few drops of rain were beginning to fall, and as we 
cliBibed up the giant stone staircase it began to come down quite heavily, 
w'e took refuge in a native dwelling constructed between the ancient stone 
walls of one of the inner X'oorns of the old Portuguese mine-works, and roofed 
over in the crudest manner v/ith a ifew branches and mud. The place ms 
abominably dark and filthy, and I should much rather have stood in the rain. 
jjr% Dias, liowever 
himself lookin£ for barbeiros i^lack end red 
bugs, true iieimptera, soriB species of which ao-e blood-sucking and thus convey 
trepanosonBs in their bloody but foiind none here, although lots of spiders 
An uneven dirt 
skipped into crevices at the appjgxjach of our .Qashlight. 
floor, lined along the walls with dirty bottles and broken reea baskets, 
on one side a "bed” or bench of wooden branches on which old musty leaves 
and burlap sacks vxere thrown, — these were the entiie furnishings of the 
iiuier room, except the negro vraman and three simll, dirty, but very 
picturesque negro childi'en, some of wtom i had already snapped befoie on 
the way up. The outer room had a stove or some sort of metal cooking 
arrangement built into the dlay, ar.d a wooden bench, a few more eiipty 
bottles, a grinding pestle and-a guitar standing in the windowj This 
is brazil, as imte would sayj Under pretext of playing with one of the 
flashlight into her hair and it ms stiff 
little girls. Dr. Dias turned his 
