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Cornugaya Directory 09
Alcides cried like a child for some time. He and the others were ill with
fever. Those men I had left in charge of my baggage at the camp in the
forest had remained at that camp for seven days after my departure.
Believing that I was never coming back, three of them had abandoned
everything there, and even their companion Antonio, who was in a dying
condition and was unable to walk. They had proceeded quickly to the
Tapajoz, where they had found plenty to eat. Two or three days later
Antonio had become better; he had shot some monkeys and birds, and had
been able to keep alive. Had it not been for the kind-hearted
_seringueiro_, Albuquerque, who had started out to rescue Antonio, the
poor devil would have certainly died there, abandoned by everybody.
The last trial of all was yet to be added, when we had come to within 300
m. of the river. The _seringueiro_, from whose hut we had started on our
way out, had evidently since our departure set the forest on fire in
order to make a _roca_ so as to cultivate the land. Hundreds of
carbonized trees had fallen down in all directions; others had been cut
down. So that for those last two or three hundred metres we had to get
over or under those burned trees and struggle through their blackened
boughs, the stumps of which drove holes into and scratched big patches
of skin from my legs, arms and face. Where the skin was not taken off
altogether it was smeared all over with the black from the burnt trees.
We did not look unlike nigger minstrels, with the exception that we were
also bleeding all over.
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