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Cornugaya Directory 09
Page 02
On September 27th we started once more quite early, after a hearty
breakfast--notwithstanding the pain which I always had whenever I ate,
especially a stabbing pain in my heart which was almost unbearable at
times. We crossed several streamlets, one fairly large, all of which
flowed into the Secundury. Rain, which came down in torrents, greatly
interfered with our march that day, the new man I had employed worrying
me all the time, saying that he did not like to march in wet clothes.
Benedicto and I could not help laughing at him, as we had not been dry
one moment since the beginning of July, and we were now at the end of
September. Wet or not wet, I made the man come along. Finding the forest
comparatively clean, we covered another 20 kil. that day. We had a most
miserable night, rain coming down in sheets upon us. I was suffering from
high fever, chiefly from exhaustion and the effects of over-eating, most
injurious to my internal arrangements, which had got dried up during the
long sixteen days' fast. I shivered with cold the entire night.
The Secundury was a stream with an average width of 60 m. and in many
places quite deep. It had a great many little springs and streamlets
flowing into it between steep cuts in its high embankments, which were
of alluvial formation mingled with decayed vegetation. The banks almost
all along were from 40 to 50 ft. high. We came across a large tributary
on the right side of the river. It was evidently the stream to which we
had first come on our disastrous march across the forest, and which I had
mistaken for the Secundury. Beyond this river we came across some small
rapids, of no importance and quite easy to negotiate by the large boats,
although in one or two cases tow-ropes had to be used by the men who had
landed in order to pull the boats through.
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