f the fact.

On September 7th I had the greatest difficulty in getting the men out of
their hammocks. They were so exhausted that I could not rouse them. We
had had a terrific storm during the night, which had added misery to our
other sufferings. Innumerable ants were now causing us a lot of damage.
Filippe's coat, which had dropped out of his hammock, was found in the
morning entirely destroyed. Those miniature demons also cut the string to
which I had suspended my shoes in mid-air, and no sooner had they fallen
to the ground than the ants started on their mischievous work. When I
woke up in the morning all that remained of my shoes were the two
leather soles, the upper part having been completely destroyed.

Going through the forest, where thorns of all sizes were innumerable,
another torture was now in store for me. With pieces of string I turned
the soles of the shoes into primitive sandals; but when I started on the
march I found that they hurt me much more than if I walked barefooted.
After marching a couple of kilometres, my renovated foot-gear hurt me so
much in going up and down the steep ravines that I took off the sandals
altogether and flung them away.

That day we went over eleven successive hill ranges and crossed as many
little streamlets between them. My men were terribly downhearted. We had
with us a Mauser and two hundred cartridges, but although we did nothing
all day long but look for something to kill we never heard a sound of a
living animal. Only one day at the beginning of our fast did I see a big
_mutum_--larger than a big turkey. The bird had never seen a human being,
and sat placidly perched on the branch of a tree, looking at us with
curiosity, singing gaily. I tried to fire with the Mauser at the bird,
which was only about seven or eight metres away, but cartridge after
cartridge missed fire. I certainly spent not less than twenty minutes
constantly replenishing the magazine, and not a single cartridge went
off. They had evidently absorbed so much moisture on our many accidents
in the river and in the heavy rain-storms we had had of late, that they
had become useless.

While I was pointing the gun the bird apparently took the greatest
interest in my doings, looked at me, stooping down gracefully each time
that the rifle missed fire, singing dainty notes almost as if it were
laughing at me. The funny part of it all was that we eventually had to go
away disappointed, leaving the bird perch