EQUIPMENT OF THE EXPEDITION 
involved in a lawsuit, the negotiations were suddenly 
interrupted. 
I endeavoured to find suitable civilians. No one 
would go. The Brazilian forest was worse, more im¬ 
penetrable than any other forest in the world. Brazilian 
rivers were broader, deeper, and more dangerous than any 
other river on earth. Wild beasts in Brazil were more 
numerous and wilder than the wildest animals of Africa 
or Asia. As for the Indians of Central Brazil, they were 
innumerable — millions of them — and ferocious beyond 
all conception. They were treacherous cannibals, and 
unfortunate was the person who ventured among them. 
They told stories galore of how the few who had gone had 
never come back. Then the insects, the climate, the 
terrible diseases of Central Brazil were worse than any 
insect, any climate, any terrible disease anywhere. That 
is more or less the talk one hears in every country when 
about to start on an expedition. 
I had prepared my expedition carefully, at a cost of 
some £2,000 for outfit. Few private expeditions have 
ever started better equipped. I carried ample provisions 
for one year (tinned meats, vegetables, a thousand boxes 
of sardines, fruits, jams, biscuits, chocolate, cocoa, coffee, 
tea, etc.), two serviceable light tents, two complete sets 
of instruments for astronomical and meteorological ob¬ 
servations, and all the instruments necessary for making 
an accurate survey of the country traversed. Four 
excellent aneroids — which had been specially constructed 
for me — and a well-made hypsometrical apparatus with 
six boiling-point thermometers, duly tested at the Kew 
Observatory, were carried in order to determine accurately 
the altitudes observed. Then I possessed two prismatic 
and six other excellent compasses, chronometers, six 
photographic cameras, specially made for me, with the 
very best Zeiss and Goertz lenses, and some fourteen 
hundred glass photographic plates — including some for 
11 
