A MISERABLE NIGHT 
the pain which I always had whenever I ate, especially 
a stabbing pain in my heart which was almost unbearable 
at times. We crossed several streamlets, one fairly large, 
all of which flowed into the Secundury. Rain, which came 
down in torrents, greatly interfered with our march that 
day, the new man I had employed worrying me all the 
time, saying that he did not like to march in wet clothes. 
Benedicto and I could not help laughing at him, as we 
had not been dry one moment since the beginning of July, 
and we were now at the end of September. Wet or not 
wet, I made the man come along. Finding the forest 
comparatively clean, we covered another twenty kilometres 
that day. We had a most miserable night, rain coming 
down in sheets upon us. I was suffering from high fever, 
chiefly from exhaustion and the effects of over-eating, 
which had nearly burst my internal arrangements, which 
had got dried up during the long sixteen days’ fast. I 
shivered with cold the entire night. 
When we got up the next morning, dripping all over, 
with water still pouring down in bucketsful upon us from 
above, Benedicto said that if it went on much longer like 
that he should surely turn into a fish. He looked comical, 
with water streaming down from his hair, his ears, nose, 
and coat. 
The trousers which our friend Pedro Nunes had given 
me were made of cheap calico, printed in little checks. 
They were of the kind that was usually sold to the serin- 
gueiros , and looked pretty when they were new. But they 
were a little too small, and had evidently not been shrunk 
before they were made. With the great moisture that 
night they shrank so badly all of a sudden that they split 
in four or five different places. I had no way of mend¬ 
ing them. 
As we went on — September twenty-eighth — we en¬ 
countered a great deal of entangled vegetation, many 
liane and thorns, which completely demolished my lower 
VOL. n.— 20 3 05 
