field-naturalists I have met, he was an unusually efficient and
fearless man; and willy-nilly he had been forced at times to vary his
career by taking part in insurrections. Twice he had been behind the
bars in consequence, on one occasion spending three months in a prison
of a certain South American state, expecting each day to be taken out
and shot. In another state he had, as an interlude to his
ornithological pursuits, followed the career of a gun-runner, acting
as such off and on for two and a half years. The particular
revolutionary chief whose fortunes he was following finally came into
power, and Cherrie immortalized his name by naming a new species of
ant-thrush after him--a delightful touch, in its practical combination
of those not normally kindred pursuits, ornithology and gun-running.

In Anthony Fiala, a former arctic explorer, we found an excellent man
for assembling equipment and taking charge of its handling and
shipment. In addition to his four years in the arctic regions, Fiala
had served in the New York Squadron in Porto Rico during the Spanish
War, and through his service in the squadron had been brought into
contact with his little Tennessee wife. She came down with her four
children to say good-by to him when the steamer left. My secretary,
Mr. Frank Harper, went with us. Jacob Sigg, who had served three years
in the United States Army, and was both a hospital nurse and a cook,
as well as having a natural taste for adventure, went as the personal
attendant of Father Zahm. In southern Brazil my son Kermit joined me.
He had been bridge building, and a couple of months previously, while
on top of a long steel span, something went wrong with the derrick, he
and the steel span coming down together on the rocky bed beneath. He
escaped with two broken ribs, two teeth knocked out, and a knee
partially dislocated, but was practically all right again when he
started with us.