CHAPTER XXII 
In Search of the Highest Point of the Brazilian Plateau —Mutiny 
— Great Domes — Travelling by Compass — A Gigantic Fissure 
in the Earth’s Crust 
I MADE up my mind that I would continue my 
journey westward no farther, and would now proceed 
due north in order to explore the most important part 
of the Central Plateau, the very heart of Brazil, precisely 
where the great rivers Xingu and Tapajoz had their 
birth. I believed that we should there find the highest 
point of the Central Brazilian Plateau. I expected to 
find in that region the most interesting portion of my 
journey from the geographical, anthropological, and 
geological points of view. I was greatly disappointed 
from the anthropological aspect, since I met no one at 
all; but from the geological and geographical I was cer¬ 
tainly well repaid for my trouble, great as the trouble was. 
We had already ridden to a distance of 1,400 kilometres 
from the nearest railway. 
My men mutinied on hearing of my plan, which I 
had kept concealed from them. They acted in a most 
abject manner. They tried to compel me to return the 
way we had come instead of going forward. As I flatly 
refused, they claimed their pay and wished to leave me 
there and then. Without an instant’s hesitation they were 
handed their pay up to date and told they could go. The 
men had not quite realized that they would have to walk 
back some 858 kilometres to Goyaz, without food and 
without animals. Alcides and Filippe the negro had re- 
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