ACROSS UNKNOWN SOUTH AMERICA 
anything at all, I thought it was high time to open the 
valuable tin of anchovies — the only one in our possession. 
We had a terrible disappointment when I opened the tin. 
I had purchased it in S. Manoel from Mr. Barretto. 
To our great distress we discovered that instead of food 
it contained merely some salt and a piece of slate. It 
was a Brazilian counterfeit of a box of anchovies. This 
was a great blow to us. It was disheartening to discover 
the fraud at so inopportune a moment. I had reserved 
the tin until the last, as I did not like the look of it from 
the outside. We kept the salt, which was of the coarsest 
description. 
On September eighth we were slightly more for¬ 
tunate, as the country was flatter. I was steering a 
course of 290° bearings magnetic (northwest). I found 
that by going farther south we would have encountered 
too mountainous a country. 
We crossed several streamlets, the largest three 
metres wide, all of which flowed south. We had no 
particular adventure that day, and considering all things, 
we marched fairly well — some twenty kilometres. 
Towards the evening we camped on a hill. When 
we got there we were so exhausted that we made our 
camp on the summit, although there was no water near. 
On September ninth, after marching for half an hour, 
we arrived at a stream fifteen metres wide, which I took 
at first to be the river Secundury, a tributary of the 
Madeira River. Near the banks of that stream we found 
indications that human beings had visited that spot — 
perhaps the Indians we had heard so much about. The 
marks we found, however, were, I estimated, about one 
year old. Although these signs should have given us a 
little courage to go on, we were so famished and ex¬ 
hausted that my men sat down on the river bank and 
would not proceed. By that time we had got accustomed 
even to the fierce bites of the ants. We had no more 
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