In Search of an Unknown Race — page 45: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

° VAN. 37 As Van at once began a full explanation of the whole matter, Martin gradually recovered his usual quiet, self- contained manner. ‘‘It’s all plain sailing enough now I begin to under- stand it,” he said, tugging thoughtfully at his heavy beard ; ‘‘that is, all but this running across each other as we've done.” Little by little, and rather shame-facedly, Bob Martin told the whole story. How one of the penalties of leaving Itambez was that in place of the easier route known to its head men he was compelled to make his way overland through more than a thousand miles of unexplored territory, across the Peruvian boundaries to the coast. Afteralmost incredible privations and hard- ships he succeeded in reaching Callao, more dead than alive, and from thence the American consul sent him on board the ship Springhaven, which was loading at the Chinchas. But when he finally reached New England, after an absence of some fifteen years, Martin found no one to welcome him at his old home on the cape. His parents were no longer living, so, drifting back to the city, he literally and figuratively fell among thieves, who man- aged in less than a year to get possession of the little fortune realized from the sale of his Itambez diamonds. Then it was that he made up his mind to return to ltambez, desperate as seemed the undertaking. ‘‘Before I left there it was predicted that I should come back sooner or later,” he said quietly; ‘‘ and I knew if I could only reach Para the way would open somehow, and you see I was right.” ‘“As it so happened—yes,” returned Van, with an in- GEoOmicboo Hale