lieve every single word he said to you was the truth," said he,
earnestly, "and, mind you, I have something to go on when I speak like
that. South America is a place I love, and I think, if you take it
right through from Darien to Fuego, it's the grandest, richest, most
wonderful bit of earth upon this planet. People don't know it yet, and
don't realize what it may become. I've been up an' down it from end to
end, and had two dry seasons in those very parts, as I told you when I
spoke of the war I made on the slave-dealers. Well, when I was up
there I heard some yarns of the same kind--traditions of Indians and
the like, but with somethin' behind them, no doubt. The more you knew
of that country, young fellah, the more you would understand that
anythin' was possible--ANYTHIN'! There are just some narrow
water-lanes along which folk travel, and outside that it is all
darkness. Now, down here in the Matto Grande"--he swept his cigar over
a part of the map--"or up in this corner where three countries meet,
nothin' would surprise me. As that chap said to-night, there are
fifty-thousand miles of water-way runnin' through a forest that is very
near the size of Europe. You and I could be as far away from each
other as Scotland is from Constantinople, and yet each of us be in the
same great Brazilian forest. Man has just made a track here and a
scrape there in the maze. Why, the river rises and falls the best part
of forty feet, and half the country is a morass that you can't pass
over. Why shouldn't somethin' new and wonderful lie in such a country?
And why shouldn't we be the men to find it out? Besides," he added,
his queer, gaunt face shining with delight, "there's a sportin' risk in
every mile of it. I'm like an old golf-ball--I've had all the white
paint knocked off me long ago. Life can whack me about now, and it
can't leave a mark. But a sportin' risk, young fellah, that's the salt
of existence. Then it's worth livin' again. We're all gettin' a deal
too soft and dull and comfy. Give me the great waste lands and the
wide spaces, with a gun in my fist and somethin' to look for that's
worth findin'. I've tried war and steeplechasin' and aeroplanes, but
this huntin' of beasts that look like a lobster-supper dream is a
brand-new sensation." He chuckled with glee at the prospect.

Perhaps I have dwelt too long upon this new acquaintance, but he is to
be my comrade for many a day, and so I have tried to set