the great American tragedy. To be succeeded, doubtless, by other
and possibly greater tragedies. My thoughts at that period of
suffering were pessimistic in the extreme. Sometimes, when the
almost continuous rain held up for half a day, I would manage to
creep out a short distance; but I was almost past making any
exertion, scarcely caring to live, and taking absolutely no
interest in the news from Caracas, which reached me at long
intervals. At the end of two months, feeling a slight
improvement in my health, and with it a returning interest in
life and its affairs, it occurred to me to get out my diary and
write a brief account of my sojourn at Manapuri. I had placed it
for safety in a small deal box, lent to me for the purpose by a
Venezuelan trader, an old resident at the settlement, by name
Pantaleon--called by all Don Panta--one who openly kept half a
dozen Indian wives in his house, and was noted for his dishonesty
and greed, but who had proved himself a good friend to me. The
box was in a corner of the wretched palm-thatched hovel I
inhabited; but on taking it out I discovered that for several
weeks the rain had been dripping on it, and that the manuscript
was reduced to a sodden pulp. I flung it upon the floor with a
curse and threw myself back on my bed with a groan.

In that desponding state I was found by my friend Panta, who was
constant in his visits at all hours; and when in answer to his
anxious inquiries I pointed to the pulpy mass on the mud floor,
he turned it over with his foot, and then, bursting into a loud
laugh, kicked it out, remarking that he had mistaken the object
for some unknown reptile that had crawled in out of the rain. He
affected to be astonished that I should regret its loss. It was
all a true narrative, he exclaimed; if I wished to write a book