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All
that dreary way we passed through a region of almost endless swamp, and
I can only attribute our escape from fever and death to the constant
doses of quinine and purgatives which we took, and the unceasing toil
which we were forced to undergo. On the third day of our journey up the
canal we had sighted a round hill that loomed dimly through the vapours
of the marsh, and on the evening of the fourth night, when we camped,
this hill seemed to be within five-and-twenty or thirty miles of us. We
were by now utterly exhausted, and felt as though our blistered hands
could not pull the boat a yard farther, and that the best thing that
we could do would be to lie down and die in that dreadful wilderness of
swamp. It was an awful position, and one in which I trust no other white
man will ever be placed; and as I threw myself down in the boat to sleep
the sleep of utter exhaustion, I bitterly cursed my folly in ever having
been a party to such a mad undertaking, which could, I saw, only end in
our death in this ghastly land.


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