one tasteless--_pour facon de parler_--for
my own use and cases of serious illness; another in large tins, of the
commonest kind, with an odour that would kill an ox, which I used
occasionally for punishment on my men when they were disobedient.

Alcides, who quickly entered into the spirit of that little joke,
immediately produced the deadly tin, collecting upon the ground the four
cups belonging to the strikers. Taking my instructions, he poured some
four ounces of the sickening oil into each cup--and perhaps a little
more. I handed a cup to each man and saw that he drank it. They all
eventually did so, with comic grimaces and oaths. The men, I must tell
you, had great faith in my powers as a medicine man. Once or twice before
I had already cured them of insignificant ailments, and whenever I told
them seriously that they were ill they believed, in their ignorance, that
they were really ill.

This done, and to put them again in a good temper, I patted them on the
back and, handing each of them a fish-hook and a line, sent them all to
fish in the river, saying that as they were so ill I would delay my
departure until the afternoon.

"That pool, over there," some three hundred yards distant, I suggested
would be an excellent place for them to fish in. In that direction, as
meek as lambs, like so many naughty children they all went, carrying the
lines away and some _toucinho_ (lard) for bait. Alcides, who was an
enthusiastic fisherman, also went off with a line, and had good sport. He
reported that the other men lay flat upon their backs most of the time,
groaning and moaning, upon the rocks, basking in the sun instead of
fishing. The castor oil in any case had the desired effect that the men
did not mutiny again for some time.

We did not leave camp until 2 p.m. The country was teeming with plants of
great medicinal value, such as the _sucupira_, which gave a bean much
used in Goyaz to relieve stomach troubles; the _algudanzinho_, with its
lovely cadmium-yellow cup-shaped flower--a plant which was most plentiful
in that region, and the root of which was said to be very beneficial for
the worst of venereal complaints; and also the _acaraiba_. Many were the
handsome wild flowers we came across, principally red and yellow; but to
my mind they could bear no comparison with even the ugliest European wild
flowers. They were coarse in shape and crude in colour, and in their
beauty there was the same difference as there woul