FILIPPE’S DREAM 
likely to earn. It evidently seemed to him a large fortune 
— indeed it was — and his plans of what he would do 
with all that money in the future were amusing. First of 
all, the idee fiooe in his mind was the purchase of a 
mallettinha, a small trunk with a strong lock, in which to 
keep his money and his clothes. I took advantage of this 
to tell Filippe — they were all just like spoiled children 
— that the best place for mallettinhas was Manaos, our 
chief objective on the river Amazon, some 1,800 kilo¬ 
metres away from that point as the crow flew, and at least 
about four times that distance by the way we should travel. 
Many times a day I had to repeat to Filippe glowing 
descriptions of the wonders of the mallettinhas, and I got 
him so enamoured of the mallettinhas to be got at Manaos 
that I made certain that Filippe at least would come along 
and not leave me. I was sure of one thing: that nowhere 
in the intervening country would he be able to procure 
himself a little trunk — nor, indeed, could one procure 
oneself anything else. 
I supplied my men with ample tobacco. Filippe, all 
day and a great part of the night, was smoking a pipe. 
Owing to constant quarrels among my men, I had turned 
him into a cook. When in camp he had to sit hour after 
hour watching the boiling of the feijao . Enveloped in 
clouds of smoke, Filippe, with his pipe, sat in a reverie, 
dreaming about the mallettinha . He was quite a good 
fellow, and at any rate he did work when ordered. 
All my men had been given small pocket mirrors — 
without which no Brazilian will travel anywhere. It was 
amusing to watch them, a hundred times a day, gazing 
at the reflection of their faces in the glasses. It was 
nevertheless somewhat trying to one’s temper when one 
ordered a man to do something and then had to watch 
him for an endless time admiring his own features in the 
little mirror, and had to repeat the order half a dozen 
times before the glass was duly cleaned with his elbow 
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