Page:A Thousand-Mile Walk To The Gulf.djvu/33

Rh doubt, a misfortune in itself, and a severe test for his vigorous constitution. But it was also a blessing in disguise, inasmuch as it prevented him from carrying out his foolhardy plan of penetrating the tropical jungles of South America along the Andes to a tributary of the Amazon, and then floating down the river on a raft to the Atlantic. As readers of the journal will perceive, he clung to this intention even during his convalescence at Cedar Keys and in Cuba. In a letter dated the 8th of November he describes himself as “just creeping about getting plants and strength after my fever.” Then he asks his correspondent to direct letters to New Orleans, Louisiana. “I shall have to go there,” he writes, “for a boat to South America. I do not yet know to which point in South America I had better go.” His hope to find there a boat for South America explains an otherwise mystifying letter in which he requested his brother David to send him a certain sum of money by American Express order to New Orleans. As a matter of fact he did not