INSTINCT 
Naturally I did not exert myself "to enlighten them 
unduly, for there lay my great and only hold over them. 
I had fully realized that I was travelling with an itinerant 
lunatic asylum, and I treated my men accordingly. No 
matter what they did or said, I always managed to have 
things my own way. Never by violence, or by a persuasive 
flow of language — the means used by the average mortal. 
No, indeed; but by mere gentleness and kindness; very 
often by absolute silence. Few people realize the force 
of silence on momentous occasions; but of course few 
people know how to remain silently silent, if I may so 
express it, in moments when their life is seriously at stake. 
Silence is indeed the greatest force a man can use, if he 
knows how to use it. It is certainly invaluable in 
exploring, when naturally one is not always thrown into 
contact with the best of people. 
The animals strayed away during the night, and it 
took all the best part of four hours to recover them in 
the morning. Instinct is a wonderful thing. They had 
all travelled to a place where, over undulating country, 
fairly open campos, slightly wooded with stunted trees, 
were to be found, and where they could obtain something 
to eat. When we crossed those campos after our depar¬ 
ture from camp, foliated rock showed through the surface 
soil in many spots, in strata either displaced and left 
vertical — in many cases at an angle of 38° — or in its 
original, horizontal plane. Elsewhere dips in all kinds of 
directions showed that there must have been a good deal 
of commotion in that region when that part of the country 
subsided and formed the basin we were then crossing. 
The typical feature of all those undulations was their 
arched backs. 
We were at a low elevation, only 1,300 feet above the 
sea level. We were travelling over immense quantities 
of marble pebbles and volcanic debris. We there made 
the acquaintance of the gramadin , a plant with curved 
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