S. MANOEL 
known. It was partly in order to ascertain whether the 
project of the road from S. Manoel to the Madeira were 
feasible, that I decided to leave the river and cross the 
forest due west as far as the Madeira River. 
I spent two or three most delightful days enjoy¬ 
ing the generous hospitality of Mr. Barretto. I was 
able to purchase from him a quantity of provisions, 
enough to last us some three months, and consisting of 
tinned food, rice, beans, farinha , sugar, coffee, and dried 
meat. 
Mr. Barretto kindly arranged to send his assistant, 
Mr. Julio Nery, and three Apiacar Indians, in order to 
help me along during the first two or three days of our 
journey into the forest. 
As I should be travelling on foot from that point 
across virgin forest, and we should have to carry whatever 
baggage we had, it was necessary for me to abandon all 
the things which were not of absolute importance, so as 
to make the loads as light as possible. 
I left behind at S. Manoel a tent, some of my rifles, a 
quantity of cartridges, etc., the only articles I took along 
with me besides provisions being my cameras, instruments, 
the photographic plates already exposed, with some two 
hundred plates for further work, and the geological and 
botanical collections, which by that time had got to be 
valuable. 
As I was unpacking the different cases in order to 
sort out the baggage, I came to the box where I expected 
to find the precious fossil human skull and the vertebrae 
I had discovered in Matto Grosso. To my horror the 
fossils were to be found nowhere. I asked Alcides and 
the other men, and pressed them for an answer. I received 
a terrible blow, indeed, when they confessed that nearly 
a month before, one night while I was asleep, they had 
taken the valuable possessions and had flung them into 
the river. Their excuse was that the loads were heavy 
233 
