ACROSS UNKNOWN SOUTH AMERICA 
the pain no more! ” Then all of a sudden his eyes would 
shine, he would prick up his ears, crying: “ We are near 
people! — we are near people! I can hear voices! Let 
us fire three shots ” (the signal all over Central Brazil 
of an approaching stranger or of help required), “ so 
that people can come to our assistance! ” 
That was much easier said than done, because none 
of our cartridges would go off. We had one box of 
matches left. We had taken several boxes of them, but 
Filippe had used them all in lighting his cigarettes, and 
we had only one left, which I guarded with much care. 
To please my men we lighted a big fire, and in it we 
placed a number of cartridges so that they should ex¬ 
plode. In fact some of them actually did explode, and 
my men strained their ears in order to discover respond¬ 
ing sounds. But no sounds came, although they imag¬ 
ined they could hear all kinds of noises. 
At this place I abandoned the few cartridges we had, 
as they were absolutely useless. They were Mauser cart¬ 
ridges which I had bought in Rio de Janeiro, and it is 
quite possible that they were counterfeits. 
Taking things all round, my men behaved very well, 
but these were moments of the greatest anxiety for me, 
and I myself was praying fervently to God to get us out 
of that difficulty. My strength was failing more and 
more daily, and although I was suffering no actual pain, 
yet the weakness was simply appalling. It was all I could 
do to stand up on my legs. What was worse for me was 
that my head was still in good working order, and I fully 
realized our position all the time. 
The country we were travelling over was fairly hilly, 
up and down most of the time, over no great elevations. 
We passed two large tributaries of the main stream we 
had found before, and a number of minor ones. The 
main stream was strewn with fallen trees, and was not 
navigable during the dry season. The erosion of the 
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