ACROSS UNKNOWN SOUTH AMERICA 
— after their appetites had been fully satisfied, and they 
had left next to nothing for me — they said I could keep 
the money, as they did not want it; they were sorry for 
what they had said, and would go on wherever I ordered 
them to go. They said that I certainly must have a 
guardian angel watching over me, and they were sure 
that as long as they were in my company they would never 
die of starvation. 
“ I have never seen anything like it! ” exclaimed the 
man X, who was the humourist of the party. “ We want 
food and cannot get it, and there el senhor strolls a few 
yards away from us and a huge fish jumps almost into 
his arms in order to be eaten.” 
I never cared to let them know of my own surprise at 
the extraordinary occurrence. 
I was rather pleased that day, for my men, in an out¬ 
burst of friendliness, said they knew that if ever we did 
die of starvation it would not be my fault, because had 
they been careful we would still have had three or four 
months’ supply of provisions left. They themselves said 
how foolish they had been; the provisions we carried 
had lasted us only thirty days. Nearly three weeks before 
I had warned Alcides to economize, and the result 
was that, instead of sorting out food twice a day to 
the men, he sorted it out four times a day and in double 
quantities. 
That day we were really in great luck. We had the 
good fortune to find a bacopari tree simply laden with 
delicious yellow fruit, not unlike unripe cherries, and we 
absolutely feasted on them. 
To show how unpractical my men were, it is sufficient 
to tell that, unlike any other human being on the face of 
the globe when under a fruit-tree, they did not proceed to 
shake the cherries down by throwing sticks or by climbing 
up the tree. No, indeed; but they cut down the huge 
tree, which required about an hour and a half of very 
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