ACROSS UNKNOWN SOUTH AMERICA 
clinical thermometer on my person. My temperature was 
104° Fahrenheit. From ten o’clock in the morning until 
three in the afternoon the attack of fever was so acute 
that several times I fell down. My men, who were in 
a pitiable condition that day, also collapsed, now one, now 
another, although their loads were less than half the 
weight of mine, each man carrying about forty pounds. 
We marched until four o’clock that afternoon, but cov¬ 
ered a distance of only six kilometres in that entire day. 
Two of the men abandoned their loads altogether, as 
they could not carry them any farther. What vexed me 
considerably was that they had discarded my valuable 
things in preference to leaving the great weight of rubbish 
of their own which they insisted on carrying, such as 
looking-glasses, combs, brushes, a number of old clothes 
in shreds, and the heavy hammocks, which weighed not 
less than twenty pounds each. 
We found water in a streamlet which formed a marsh. 
There my men insisted on making camp. It was a most 
unhealthy spot. Ill as I was, I endeavoured to induce 
them to come on a little farther and see if we could 
improve on that halting-place. Miguel, the Indian, who 
had slightly scratched his finger, now refused to cut the 
picada any longer, as he said the pain was intense. It 
was only by giving him a present of money that I had 
succeeded in leading the men on until we reached the 
marsh. 
Curiously enough, the man X, who was the champion 
rascal of the crowd, proved himself that day to be the best 
of the whole lot. He even went back with me to try and 
recover some of the most important things from the loads 
which the men had abandoned, some two kilometres before 
we had made our camp. 
As we stumbled along, we could not even lean against 
the trees for a little rest, as most of them had thousands 
of horizontal thorns of great length sticking out all around 
252 
