Across Unknown South America

by Arnold Henry Savage Landor

It was rather pathetic, looking back on those days, to think of the small cooking pot I carried during that time of starvation in hopes that we might find something to cook. Its weight was not great, but it was a cumbersome thing to carry, as it dangled about and caught in all the vegetation.

As the days went by and our strength got less and less every hour, I decided not to cut the forest any more, but to go through without that extra exertion. As I could not trust my men with the big knife, I had to carry it myself, as occasionally it had to be used—especially near streams, where the vegetation was always more or less entangled.

That evening (September 9th) we had halted at sunset—simply dead with fatigue and exhaustion. The sauba ants had cut nearly all the strings of Filippe's hammock; while he was resting peacefully on it the remainder of the strings broke, and he had a bad fall. He was so exhausted that he remained lying on the ground, swarming all over with ants and moaning the whole time, having no strength to repair the hammock.

When Filippe eventually fell into a sound slumber I had a curious experience in the middle of the night. I was sleeping in my improvised hammock, when I felt two paws resting on my body and something sniffing in my face. When I opened my eyes I found a jaguar, standing up on its hind paws, staring me straight in the face. The moment I moved, the astonished animal, which had evidently never seen a human being before, leapt away and disappeared.

I find that people have strange ideas about wild animals. It is far from true that wild beasts are vicious. I have always found them as gentle as possible. Although I have seen nearly every wild beast that it is possible for man to see in the world, I have never once been attacked by them, although on dozens of occasions I have come into close contact with them. I invariably found all wild animals—except the African buffalo—quite timid and almost gentle, unless, of course, they have been worried or wounded. These remarks do not apply to wild animals in captivity.

On September 10th—that was the seventh day of our involuntary fast—we had another dreary march, again without a morsel of food. My men were so downhearted that I really thought they would not last much longer. Hunger was playing on them in a curious way. They said that they could hear voices all round them and people firing rifles. I could hear nothing at all. I well knew that their minds were beginning to go, and that it was a pure hallucination. Benedicto and Filippe, who originally were both atheists of an advanced type, had now become extremely religious, and were muttering fervent prayers all the time. They made a vow that if we escaped alive they would each give £5 sterling out of their pay to have a big mass celebrated in the first church they saw.

They spoke in a disconnected way, and looked about in a dazed condition, alternating hysterical laughter with abundant tears. After Filippe's tobacco had come to an end he had become most dejected, all the time wishing to commit suicide.

"What is the use of more suffering?" he exclaimed fifty times a day. "Let me die quickly, as I can stand the pain no more!" Then all of a sudden his eyes would shine, he would prick up his ears, crying: "We are near people!—we are near people! I can hear voices! Let us fire three shots" (the signal all over Central Brazil of an approaching stranger or of help required), "so that people can come to our assistance!"

That was much easier said than done, because none of our cartridges would go off. We had one box of matches left. We had taken several boxes of them, but Filippe had used them all in lighting his cigarettes, and we had only one left, which I guarded with much care. To please my men we lighted a big fire, and in it we placed a number of cartridges so that they should explode. In fact some of them actually did explode, and my men strained their ears in order to discover responding sounds. But no sounds came, although they imagined they could hear all kinds of noises.

At this place I abandoned the few cartridges we had, as they were absolutely useless. They were Mauser cartridges which I had bought in Rio de Janeiro, and it is quite possible that they were counterfeits.