Adventure Magazine Cover, October 1911 — page 95: what you’re looking at

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

Through Perilous Peru around that my shoulder and back* were left entirely exposed, but luckily, some- where in its arc, the sharp point of the machete flicked his nose and with a splutter of rage the animal spun around on its haunches and disappeared. As may be expected, when lappeared with the coypu on my back there was a wild shout of joy and arush to relieve me of my burden. ‘““What kept you so long?” they asked. ‘“We could hear you singing and shouting hardly two hundred yards away.” “‘T had to take the coypu away from a jaguar,’ I answered with what I thought the right amount of carelessness. Fleming and Brown exchanged looks. ‘“‘Oh, I know what you're thinking!” I said wearily. ‘‘ But McClure, here, will tell you that such things have been done often enough.” I didn’t think it was right for them to disbelieve me after all that work. Besides, he had been the stingiest jaguar ‘I'd ever seen. “Sure!” said McClure promptly. “I stole a sheep away from a grizzly once.” After that I saw there was no good in saying anything more about the jaguar. I couldn’t have made him small enough. But that’s what one gets in this world for being truthful and unselfish and describing things just as they happened. LATE in the afternoon of the eight- Be eenth we heard shouts coming from “~-. the mountainside above us and a few hours later were much relieved to see the first of twenty-five carriers coming into camp with fresh supplies. On ques- tioning them we found that they, like the men with us, had been impressed into service, and so had systematically loafed over the whole trip. I saw at once that not only had the matter of bringing provisions up to us assumed serious proportions, but also that we were in for trouble with our men, especially those who had already gone through our hardships. So I was not surprised when, five days later, four of our original string deserted us during the night. We had, at that time, crossed our second range of mountains and were camped on a branch of the Tulumayo River, which flows into the Huallaga, but knowing that we must at least make a show of discipline, I sent McClure with a Win- chester back to the summit of the range in an attempt to head off the packers when IOAI they had left the jungle and come back into the trail. Two days later McClure re- joined us. He had had a hard time. It had rained heavily each day and night and in the exposed position which he had been obliged to take he had suffered greatly from the cold winds. Inasmuch as the man had been able to take with him only five cans of pea soup by way of food, he had my sympathy. The desertion of the four packers, while not as serious as some other matters, incon- venienced us greatly, but by dint of loading the remaining men more heavily, much to their disgust, and leaving behind what articles we ourselves could not carry, we were able to continue our toilsome journey and October 25 found us camped on the Tulumayo River. At this point the uneasiness among the packers over our approach to the cannibal country became very apparent, and after a consultation with Brown and Fleming I decided to tie them up at night and stand guard over them in order to prevent fur- ther desertions. Probably none but cholos would have submitted to a proceeding so un- usual among exploring parties, in fact, I have never heard of this having been done before, but we were taking no chances now, and this method seemed the simplest way to obviate worry. MONKEYS AS FOOD E WERE now at a much lower eleva- _ tion,than at any time so far and began to find, a ae other game, great quantities of monkeys in the trees around us, more than a dozen varieties of which I have never seen in captivity. Among those that we frequently saw was the ‘‘ Magasapa”’ mon- key, which is generally black in coloring and has.a tail so calloused by use in swinging from tree to tree as to be as tough as the sole of the foot. This monkey will dress about twenty-five pounds and is very good eating. Others we encountered were the “Fraile,”” so called from it’s fancied re- semblance to a tonsured priest, and the “‘Coto-Mono” or howling monkey, which is excessively noisy in the early morning, preferably about four o’clock. As this monkey has a goiter neck, he probably wants to get even with the world. On the afternoon of October 30th, while camped on the summit of the third range of comicloooks CO