"Do not shoot them, Alcides: these men have been good (sic) until now because they were in good health. They are bad now because they are ill. I will cure them."
And so saying I felt the pulse and forehead of the astonished rioters.
"Yes, indeed, these men are very, very ill. They need medicine. Alcides, get the castor oil—the large tin."
I had two kinds of castor oil: one tasteless—pour façon 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 would be between the lovely refined face of an aristocratic woman and that of a handsome massive peasant girl.
Water was certainly not lacking in that country. We crossed the Rio Striminho, then the Rio Stacco flowing from south-west to north-east into a lagoon formed by the Rio Claro. We camped on the bank of the Rio Stacco. The water was delicious.
