Through the Brazilian Wilderness
would lighten themselves. We were all armed. We took no cartridges for sport. Cherrie had some to be used sparingly for collecting specimens. The others were to be used — unless in the unlikely event of having to repel an attack — only to procure food. The food and the arms we carried represented all reasonable precau- tions against suffering and starvation; but, of course, if the course of the river proved very long and difficult, if we lost our boats over falls or in rapids, or had to make too many and too long portages, or were brought to a halt by impassable swamps, then we would have to reckon with starvation as a possibility. Anything might happen. We were about to go into the unknown, and no one could say what it held.
