AN INCESSANT TALKER 
and his men towards us was most pathetic. Drenching 
rain fell during the night. 
On September twenty-second we made an early start. 
Pedro Nunes went away in a small boat, as he wanted 
to explore a small tributary of the Secundury. The ex¬ 
pedition travelled up the main stream at a great pace, 
with the many men who were rowing and punting. 
Filippe, Renedicto, and I suffered horrible internal 
pains that day, owing to our careless eating the previous 
afternoon. 
I was greatly worried by the man who had been left 
in charge of the expedition — a man of extreme kindness, 
but an incessant talker. He spoke so loudly, repeating 
the same things over and over again, that in my weak 
state, and accustomed as we were to the deathly silence 
of the forest, it tired me inexpressibly. His conversation 
consisted entirely of accusing everybody he knew of being 
robbers and assassins, and in long descriptions, with num¬ 
berless figures, to show how he had been robbed of small 
sums of money by various people he had met in his 
lifetime. 
I presented him with <£10 sterling, hoping that he 
would keep quiet, as that seemed to be the entire sum 
of which he had been robbed by his relatives and friends; 
also because, on seeing our wretched condition, he had 
presented me with an enormous pair of shoes, about six 
sizes too large for me. When I walked in them, espe¬ 
cially up and down the steep banks, I lost now one shoe, 
now the other, so big were they. Rut I was grateful to 
him, as he would not take payment for them, and they 
saved my feet to a certain extent-—when I could keep 
them on — from the thorns, which were numerous in that 
region. 
The prolonged immersion in the water the day before, 
while we were navigating the raft, and the subsequent 
rest, had caused my feet to swell enormously, while my 
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