Identifier: brazilamazonscoa00smit (find matches)
Title: Brazil, the Amazons and the coast
Year: 1879 (1870s)
Authors: Smith, Herbert H. (Herbert Huntington), 1851-1919
Subjects: Folklore -- Brazil Brazil -- Description and travel Brazil -- Economic conditions Amazon River Valley -- Description and travel
Publisher: New York : C. Scribner's Sons
Contributing Library: Brown University Library
Digitizing Sponsor: Brown University

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here is a mysterious, an unfethomable depthbeyond; tired and worn as you are, you know that you haveonly passed the borders of this infinity, where you could goon for weeks, months, and never reach the end ; you com-pare your own littleness with the littleness of a single treewhich, standing alone, would be a beacon for miles around ;and you bow your head with fear and trembling. Think, now. You are separated from the world, morethan you would be in the deserts of Africa or Australia. 186 BRAZIL. You are alone, utterly; an army of men could not find you ;your dearest friend, your most hated foe could not trackyou ; the vultures would not reach your body if you diedhere. You could not find your own way out, but by thepath you came over, or the noted direction. Very few men will care to go far into the forest withoutcompanions. There is always a possible jaguar to fear ; andthen one may get lost; I have been, once or twice; onlyfor a few hours, but the sensation was not an enviable one.
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In the Forest. Some years ago a boy wandered off in these woods andwas never heard of again ; the whole colony turned out andhunted for three days. The boy may have been killed bywild animals ; he may have died of hunger or thirst. Whocan ^ay ? There are such terrible possibilities in the wordlost. But we would go deeper into the mystery. We plan anexcursion with the young Americans ; half a dozen are will- THE FOREST, 18/ ing to go for the hunting, or the fun, or the mere pleasureof going where nobody else has been. We engage two In-dians to accompany us ; each man carries a hammock andblanket, a sack of mandioca-meal, his wood-knife, and a gunif he has one ; a calabash jug of water, also, for we can-not expect to find any, during the first day at least. Thusheavily laden, we leave the house at sunrise and file offthrough the cane-field, where the dew rattles off and soaksus all thoroughly. Once in the deep woods we seek for asurveying-line which was cut, seven or eight years ago, by

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