the last act in the great American tragedy. To
be succeeded, doubtless, by other and possibly greater tragedies. My
thoughts at that period of suffering were pessimistic in the extreme.
Sometimes, when the almost continuous rain held up for half a day, I
would manage to creep out a short distance; but I was almost past making
any exertion, scarcely caring to live, and taking absolutely no interest
in the news from Caracas, which reached me at long intervals. At the end
of two months, feeling a slight improvement in my health, and with it a
returning interest in life and its affairs, it occurred to me to get
out my diary and write a brief account of my sojourn at Manapuri. I had
placed it for safety in a small deal box, lent to me for the purpose
by a Venezuelan trader, an old resident at the settlement, by name
Pantaleon--called by all Don Panta--one who openly kept half a dozen
Indian wives in his house, and was noted for his dishonesty and greed,
but who had proved himself a good friend to me. The box was in a corner
of the wretched palm-thatched hovel I inhabited; but on taking it out I
discovered that for several weeks the rain had been dripping on it, and
that the manuscript was reduced to a sodden pulp. I flung it upon the
floor with a curse and threw myself back on my bed with a groan.

In that desponding state I was found by my friend Panta, who was
constant in his visits at all hours; and when in answer to his anxious
inquiries I pointed to the pulpy mass on the mud floor, he turned it
over with his foot, and then, bursting into a loud laugh, kicked it out,
remarking that he had mistaken the object for some unknown reptile that
had crawled in out of the rain. He affected to be astonished that I
should regret its loss. It was all a true narrative, he exclaimed; if
I wished to write a book for the stay-at-homes to read, I could easily
invent a thousand lies far more entertaining than any real experiences.
He had come to me, he said, to propose something. He had lived twenty
years at that place, and had got accustomed to the climate, but it would
not do for me to remain any longer if I wished to live. I must go away
at once to a different country--to the mountains, where it was open and
dry. "And if you want quinine when you are there," he concluded, "smell
the wind when it blows from the south-west, and you will inhale it into
your system, fresh from the forest." When I remarked despondingly that
in my condition i