ACROSS UNKNOWN SOUTH AMERICA 
I was to have come there out of my own free will to suffer 
like that. My own dreams were constantly interrupted 
by Benedicto and Filippe, who also had similar dreams 
of the wonderful meals they had had in their own houses, 
and the wonderful ways in which their feijaozinho —- a 
term of endearment used by them for their beloved beans 
—- had been cooked at home by their sweethearts or their 
temporary wives. 
“ Why did we leave our feijaozinho " — and here they 
smacked their lips —■ “ to come and die in this rotten 
country? ” 
All day I heard them talk of feijaozinho; feijaozinho, 
until I was wearied to distraction by that word —par¬ 
ticularly as, even when starving, I had no desire whatever 
to eat the beastly stuff. 
The negro Filippe and Benedicto were really brave 
in a way. I tried to induce them all the time to march as 
much as they could, so as to get somewhere; but every 
few moments they sat or fell down, and much valuable 
time was wasted. 
In a way it was amusing to watch them — poor 
Benedicto particularly, who every few minutes would 
take out a little pocket looking-glass to gaze at his 
countenance. 
“ Am I not thin? ” he would ask me a dozen times 
a day. “ I have never been so thin before. If I had 
not come with you I should not be so thin. It is all 
because we have no food that I am so thin. . . . If I 
had not met you I would never have been so thin 1 ”— 
and so on. 
I reminded him that when we were travelling on 
the river he had complained of baling the water out of 
the canoe and preferred to travel overland; now that 
we were travelling overland he had a new complaint to 
make. It was quite unreasonable. He was not the only 
one to get thin; we were all getting thin. 
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