ed on that very same branch.

As the days went by and we could find nothing to eat, my two men lost
their courage entirely. They now refused to suffer any longer. They said
they had not the strength to go back, so they wanted to lie down and die.
Many times a day did I have to lift them up again and persuade them
gently to come on another few hundred metres or so. Perhaps then we might
find the great river Madeira, where we should certainly meet traders from
whom we could get food.

Filippe the negro was a great smoker. He had brought some tobacco with
him, and he had so far smoked all the time. He said that as long as he
had a cigarette in his mouth he did not feel the pangs of hunger quite so
much.

Since my return to civilization I have been constantly told by smokers
that if I had been a smoker too I might have suffered less than I did.
Now let me tell you what happened to smoker Filippe when his tobacco came
to an end on that painful march. Filippe became a raving lunatic, and in
a fit of passion was about to stick right through his heart the large
knife with which we cut our way through the forest. I had quite a
struggle in order to get the knife away from him, and an additional
strain was placed upon my mind by keeping a constant watch on the knife
so that it could not be used for suicidal purposes.

Poor Benedicto, who was of a less violent nature, from morning to night
implored to be killed. The two together moaned and groaned incessantly,
and accused me a hundred times a day of taking them there on purpose to
die. They certainly made me feel the full and heavy weight of our tragic
position. The mental strain of leading along those two poor fellows was
indeed much more trying to me than the actual lack of food.

In order to save as much as possible of the baggage we carried, I
promised Filippe and Benedicto a considerable present of money if they
were able to take the stuff until we reached the Madeira River.

Late in the afternoon of September 7th, as we were on a high point above
the last range of hills met that day, a large panorama opened before us,
which we could just see between the trees and foliage of the forest.

To obtain a full view of the scenery it was necessary to climb up a tree.
I knew well that we could not yet have reached the river we were looking
for, but perhaps we were not far from some large tributary of the
Madeira, such as the Secundury.

Climbing up trees in the Brazilian fores