ACROSS UNKNOWN SOUTH AMERICA 
overboard and were lost forever; a bag of flour and a bag 
of rice had vanished in those terrible waters; a package 
containing a great part of my clothes had also gone for 
ever, as well as some of the clothing of my men. What 
was worse than all for me, my camp-bed and all my 
bedding were lost, which would compel me in the future 
to sleep either on the ground, which was practically im¬ 
possible in that region, owing to the number of ants and 
other insects, or else do as I did, sleep on four wooden 
packing-boxes, which I placed in a line. They made a 
most uneven and hard bed, as I had, of course, no mattress 
and no covering of any kind. A despatch-box, with some 
money, a lot of important official letters and other docu¬ 
ments, were lost, and also my mercurial artificial horizon 
and one of my chronometers. A number of other things 
of less importance were also gone and quite beyond 
recovery. 
We worked hard all that afternoon and the greater 
part of the night in shaping new paddles out of trees we 
had cut down with the axes, which were fortunately not 
lost. The new paddles were even more primitive and 
clumsy than those we had before. 
We dried what remained of our baggage in the sun 
during the afternoon. The beautiful sandy beach on 
which we had landed looked very gay with all the articles 
I had spread out from some of my trunks, including a 
dress-suit which I hung on a young palm, and other such 
articles, which looked rather incongruous in that particular 
region. All the white linen clothes I possessed had gone, 
and there remained only some good serge clothes which I 
had kept for my arrival in civilized places again. My 
water-tight boxes had been knocked about so much that 
they had got injured and let in a good deal of moisture. 
One of my valuable cameras was badly damaged in 
the accident, and one of my sextants was soaked to such 
an extent that it took me the best part of two hours to 
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