Page:Following the Equator (Mark Twain).djvu/270

262 not in a body; they were scattered, immense distances apart, over regions so desolate that even the birds could not make a living with the chances offered—scattered in groups of twenty, a dozen, half a dozen, even in groups of three. And the mission must go on foot. Mr. Bonwick furnishes a description of those horrible regions, whereby it will be seen that even fugitive gangs of the hardiest and choicest human devils the world has seen—the convicts set apart to people the "Hell of Macquarrie Harbor Station"—were never able, but once, to survive the horrors of a march through them, but starving and struggling, and fainting and failing, ate each other, and died:

Mr. Bonwick says that Robinson's friendly capture of the Big River tribe remember, it was a whole tribe—"was by far the grandest feature of the war, and the crowning glory of his efforts." The word "war" was not well chosen, and is