TROUBLESOME INSECTS 
noon it became slightly clouded, while in the afternoon 
one third of the sky was covered. A light breeze blew 
from the west. 
Some twenty-eight kilometres from the Araguaya we 
came to a small, miserable farmhouse. After a great deal 
of bargaining, I was able to purchase extra horses. The 
people had no idea whatever of the value of money, and 
named sums at first which would have easily purchased 
the finest horses on the English turf. They descended in 
time to more reasonable figures. 
Our life was rendered miserable all day by the 
millions of pium or gnats that swarmed around us and 
stung us with incredible fierceness and viciousness. The 
itching was most trying. Those little brutes left on our 
skins black marks fully as large as themselves, wherever 
they stung us. Those marks remained for several weeks, 
and disappeared only when we perforated them with a 
needle to let the blood out, or waited long enough for them 
to become desiccated and the skin re-formed. 
Pium is a word of the Tupi and Tupinamba Indians’ 
language. Those tiny insects entered your eyes, leaving 
behind an odoriferous acid which caused great irritation 
of the lids. We removed dozens every day from our eyes. 
Fortunately they were easily extracted. They also dashed 
into your ears, up your nose, and, whenever you opened it, 
inside your mouth. 
It was well worth going to Matto Grosso to enjoy 
the lovely moonlight nights, only comparable in their 
luminous splendour to nights of Central Africa in the 
middle of the Sahara desert, and to those on the high 
Tibetan plateau in Asia. The light of the moon was so 
vivid that one could see almost as well as in the daytime. 
Personally, the crisp, cool air (minimum 59° Fahren¬ 
heit) made me feel in most excellent health and spirits, 
but my men, who had putrid constitutions, were a mass of 
aches and pains. Some cried like children the entire night 
151 
