ACROSS UNKNOWN SOUTH AMERICA 
We crossed two streamlets flowing north. After that 
we came upon a most troublesome patch of swampy land 
with high reeds in it, the leaves of which cut our hands 
like razors when we forced our way through them, 
struggling in mud and slush up to our knees, sometimes 
as high as our waists. A streamlet flowing north formed 
the marsh in that low place. The moment we had got 
out of the marsh the men threw themselves down and 
said they could go no farther. I pointed out to them 
that that spot was most unhealthy, and tried to persuade 
them to go some distance from that pestilential place. 
But they would not listen to reason, and there they 
would stay. 
Although I had offered them every possible induce¬ 
ment to come on — their original high pay had been 
practically trebled as long as the hard work should last 
— and I had treated them with the greatest consideration, 
yet they refused to come any farther. They said they 
had decided to go back. 
In examining my loads I found that they had 
abandoned my sextant and other instruments in the forest, 
and it was only after a great deal of talking that I could 
induce the man X to go back with me to recover them, 
for which service he received an immediate present of one 
pound sterling. 
As luck would have it, that evening my men shot a 
plump jaho (Crypturus notivagus) and a large mutum 
(Crax pinima ), two enormous birds, most excellent to eat. 
That camp was stifling, the moisture being excessive, 
and the miasma rising from the putrid water poisoning 
my men in a disastrous way. The drinking-water, too, 
from that swamp, was full of germs of all sizes, so big 
that with the naked eye you could see hundreds of them 
in your cup. We could not boil the water because all our 
matches had got wet. We wasted hundreds of them in 
trying to light a fire, but with no success. Flint and steel 
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