on a trading boat?

On September 6th it was all I could do to wake up my men. When they did
wake, they would not get up, for they said the only object in getting up
was to eat, and as there was nothing to eat there was no use in getting
up. They wanted to remain there and die.

I had to use a great deal of gentle persuasion, and even told them a big
story--that my _agulha_ or needle (the compass) was telling me that
morning that there was plenty of _feijao_ ahead of us.

We struggled on kilometre after kilometre, one or another of us
collapsing under our loads every few hundred metres. We went over very
hilly country, crossing eight hill ranges that day with steep ravines
between. In fact, all that country must once have been a low tableland
which had been fissured and then eroded by water, leaving large cracks.
At the bottom of each we found brooks and streamlets of delicious water.
Of the eight rivulets found that day one only was fairly large. It fell
in little cascades over rock. We could see no fish in its waters.

The forest was fairly clean underneath, and we had no great difficulty in
getting through, a cut every now and then with the knife being sufficient
to make a passage for us. I had by that time entirely given up the idea
of opening a regular _picada_, over which I could eventually take the men
and baggage I had left behind.

We found that day a palm with a bunch of small nuts which Benedicto
called _coco do matto_; he said they were delicious to eat, so we
proceeded to cut down the tall palm tree. When we came to split open the
small _cocos_ our disappointment was great, for they merely contained
water. There was nothing whatever to eat inside the hard shells. We spent
some two hours that evening cracking the _cocos_--some two hundred of
them--each nut about the size of a cherry. They were extremely hard to
crack, and our expectant eyes were disappointed two hundred times in
succession as we opened every one and found nothing whatever to eat in
them.

We were beginning to feel extremely weak, with a continuous feeling of
emptiness in our insides. Personally, I felt no actual pain. The mental
strain, perhaps, was the most trying thing for me, for I had no idea when
we might find food. I was beginning to feel more than ever the
responsibility of taking those poor fellows there to suffer for my sake.
On their side they certainly never let one moment go by during the day or
night without reminding me o