CHAPTER XX.
THE HAPPY VALLEY.
My gloomy forebodings were only too fully realized.

Never was a more miserably monotonous journey.

After riding for weeks, through sodden, sunless forests and trackless wastes we had to abandon our mules and take to our feet, spend weeks on nameless rivers, poling and paddling our canoe in the terrible heat, and tormented almost to madness by countless insects.

Then the rains came on, and we were weather-stayed for months in a wretched Indian village.

But for the help of friendly aborigines--and fortunately the few we met, being spoken fair showed themselves friendly--we must all have perished.