Now and then we came across a mule or ox which had been abandoned by Captain Amilcar's party, ahead of us. The animal had been left with the hope that when night came it would follow along the trail to water. Sometimes it did so. Sometimes we found it dead, or standing motionless waiting for death. From time to time we had to leave behind one of our own mules.
The first night they did this I got no sleep until morning, when it was cool enough for me to roll myself in my blanket and put on a head-net. Afterward we used fine nets of a kind of cheese-cloth. They were hot, but they kept out all, or almost all, of the sand-flies and other small tormentors. Here we overtook the rearmost division of Captain Amilcar's bullock- train.
The latter were from seeds brought down by the American engineers who built the Madeira Marmore Railroad a work which stands honorably distinguished among the many great and useful works done in the development of the tropics of recent years. Amilcar's pack-oxen, which were nearly worn out, had been left in these fertile pastures.
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