"We are Brazilians," said they, "and like plenty to eat. When there is no more we will go without food. You do not know Brazilians, but Brazilians can go thirty or forty days without anything to eat!"
"All right," said I—"we shall see."
Forty minutes—and perhaps not so long—had been, so far, the longest time I had seen them cease munching something or other. Not satisfied with the lavish food they were supplied with—heaps of it were always thrown to the dogs, after they had positively gorged themselves—yet they would pick up anything on the way: a wild fruit, a scented leaf of a tree, a nut of some kind or other, a palmito, a chunk of tobacco—all was inserted in the mouth. It was fortunate that we took enough exercise, or surely they would have all perished of indigestion. In my entire experience I have never seen men eat larger quantities of food and more recklessly than my Brazilian followers did. In the morning they were almost paralyzed with rheumatism and internal pains all over the body. Frequently those pains inside were accentuated by the experiments they made in eating all kinds of fruit, some of which was poisonous. Many a time on our march did we have to halt because one man or another was suddenly taken violently ill. My remedy on those occasions was to shove down their throats the end of a leather strap, which caused immediate vomiting; then when we were in camp I gave them a powerful dose of castor oil. After a few hours they recovered enough to go on.
On May 21st the minimum temperature of the atmosphere was 55° Fahr., the maximum 79°, the elevation 1,250 ft. at the stream Agua Emeindata. My men declared again they were half-frozen during the night and would not go on with me, as it was getting colder all the time and they would certainly die. When I told them that it was not cold at all—on the contrary, I considered that temperature quite high—they would not believe me.
With the temperature in the sun during the day at 98°, most of the aches of the men disappeared, and I had little trouble with them until after sunset, when there was generally a considerable drop in the temperature.
We went on. We had a volcanic mountain to the left of us—half the crater of a volcano formed of red lava and friable red-baked rock. In the northern and central part of the mountain were masses of lava which had been shot out of the mouth of the volcano and had solidified into all kinds of fantastic forms, some sharply pointed, some red, others black. On the east side of the crater was a dome covered with earth with an underlying flow of lava. Then could be observed a circular group of huge rocks, pear-shaped, with sharp points upward. While the volcano was active these rocks had evidently stood on the rim of the then cylindrical crater. The mountain behind those rocks was formed by high accumulations of red volcanic sand, which in time had gradually, by the action of rain and sun, consolidated into soft rock.
The plateau extending northward, which was disclosed in all its entirety before me from the elevation of 1,600 ft. which we had reached, also seemed to possess an extinct crater shaped like a crescent with steep slopes and two rounded promontories on its side.
The sky that day was partly covered by transparent feathery clouds and by dense mist near the horizon line to the east, but was quite clear to the west. As usual, that evening we were again treated to fairly handsome radiating white lines from the sun reaching half way up the sky vault, but this time they were flimsy and not to be compared to the magnificent displays we had observed before.
Our animals still sank in ochre-coloured sand, or stumbled on conglomerate rocks of spattered lava pellets embedded in sandstone. Capping the higher undulations we again found deposits of ashes.
