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MRAP Directory 11
Page 01
We crossed two streamlets flowing north. After that we came upon a most troublesome patch of swampy land with high reeds in it, the leaves of which cut our hands like razors when we forced our way through them, struggling in mud and slush up to our knees, sometimes as high as our waists. A streamlet flowing north formed the marsh in that low place. The moment we had got out of the marsh the men threw themselves down and said they could go no farther. I pointed out to them that that spot was most unhealthy, and tried to persuade them to go some distance from that pestilential place. But they would not listen to reason, and there they would stay.
So again it is with the things that gall us most. What is it that rises up against us at odd times and smites us in the face again and again for years after it has happened? That we spent all the best years of our life in learning what we have found to be a swindle, and to have been known to be a swindle by those who took money for misleading us? That those on whom we most leaned most betrayed us? That we have only come to feel our strength when there is little strength left of any kind to feel? These things will hardly much disturb a man of ordinary good temper. But that he should have said this or that little unkind and wanton saying; that he should have gone away from this or that hotel and given a shilling too little to the waiter; that his clothes were shabby at such or such a gardenparty--these things gall us as a corn will sometimes do, though the loss of a limb way not be seriously felt.
As they had not been able to spend a single penny since we had left Diamantino they had accumulated a considerable sum of cash. I warned them, as I had done with Benedicto, to be careful and not waste their money. They went out for a walk. Some hours later they returned, dressed up in wonderful costumes with fancy silk ties, patent leather shoes, gold chains and watches, and gaudy scarf-pins. In a few hours they had wasted away nearly the entire sum I had paid out to them. Everything was extremely expensive in Para--certainly three or four times the price which things would fetch in London or New York.
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