ACROSS UNKNOWN SOUTH AMERICA 
in order to make a start from Goyaz. The camp was a 
regular armoury. Beautiful magazine rifles, now rusty 
and dirty owing to the carelessness of the men, were lying 
about on the ground; revolvers and automatic pistols 
stuck half out of their slings on the men’s belts, as they 
walked about the camp; large knives and daggers had 
been thrown about, and so had the huge, heavy, nickel- 
plated spurs of the men, with their gigantic spiked wheels. 
These wheels were as much as two inches in diameter and 
even more. It was the habit of Brazilians to wear the 
spurs upside down, so that when they got off their mounts 
they had to remove them or it would have been impossible 
for them to walk. Naturally, worn like that, they were 
much more effective, and were intended to torment the 
animals with greater success. 
I reprimanded the men for keeping their weapons so 
dirty. One man thereupon sat himself three feet away 
from me and proceeded to clean his rifle, keeping the 
muzzle pointed constantly at me. On my suggesting that 
he might point the weapon in another direction, he roughly 
replied the usual thing: “ There is nothing to be afraid 
of, it is not loaded,” and he was just about to pull the 
trigger, the gun pointed straight at me, when I leapt up 
and snatched it out of his hands. There was a cartridge 
in the barrel and several cartridges in the magazine. 
During the night the fusillade was constant. It was 
enough for the men to hear a leaf fall. Immediately 
there was an alarm and the rifles were fired. Once or 
twice the bullets came so unpleasantly near me that I 
suspected they were intended for me. I thanked my 
stars that my men were bad shots. To make sure of this 
fact, I one day had a shooting competition. After that 
I became quite assured that it was sufficient to be at the 
spot where they aimed to consider myself in absolute 
safety. It was not so, of course, when they aimed some¬ 
where else. I did not care to take away the cartridges 
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