IN SOUTH AMERICA

Greymouth Evening Star, 17 June 1922, Page 2

IN SOUTH AMERICA

N EXPLORER’S HARDSHIPS. A sixteen hundred mile tramp, often a crawl, through dark, poisonous wilds, where at times it was difficult to distinguish a hanging vine from a sleeping serpent, was rue experience of Dr. Henry 11. Rushby, chief of the Mulford biological expedition, which left New York last summer to seek vegetable growths for medicinal use. Dr. Rusby, who is sixty-seven, set out, according to the “Central News,” with seven companions for South America, crossed the Andes, and had reached Bolivia before he was stricken with neuritis. His condition became worse, until he was almost paralysed in one leg, and, to add to his troubles, he suffered from a tooth, a nerve of which became exposed. In order to gain relief he held arsenic against the tooth with his tongue, but the arsenic was finally absorbed in his system, and he was worse off than ever. In this condition he refused to avail himself of offers of companionship, and, after urging his fellow explorers to proceed with the expedition, he set out on the return journey. He had to go 1600 miles to the Amazon River town of Manabs, which is a thousand miles tip the Amazon from Para., the Atlantic coast port. This professor of Columbia University carried a heavy load of foodstuffs, his gun and ammunition, a compass, some tools, clothing and medicine. For several hundred miles he progressed slowly through the wilds-. W hen lie needed a change from the prepared: foods he shot game. Over the uncharted country he kept his course by means of 'the compass- Occasionally he met natives who were not unfriendly to white men, but he never saw whites. Once he found natives with rafts who took him in the desired direction. Then he got passages on small Government launches, and when the rivers increased in size he found tiny steamers. Over two months were taken up in this tedious trip until a small Brazilian river boat 1 swept him abreast; of Mauaos, once the most important lubber shipping port in the world, but now a dead town. In the hospital of sorts that there is in Mai.aos the explorer got relief for his tooth and his leg, and after a couple of weeks’ rest got a steamer which brought him to BrooklynWhen he left the party they had gathered 25,000 sorts of insects, several hundred varieties of fishes, 100 reptiles, and about 12,000 botanical specimens. Moving pictures which were taken included a film of about 8000 feet showing microscopically the life history of a colony of white ants, which lie thinks should be of great scientinc and educational value, and a film of the little-known Aymara Indians, who were photographed as they wore attempting a revolution. Dr. Rusby made a. similar trip in 1885. and was struck when he compared the conditions in South America then and now, by the absence of savages to-day. He believed the savages had died off or had entered a state of semi-civilisation. He describes Brazil as being the worst of the South American nations, and says the party were cheated, robbed, and harassed in every possible way, especially by Petty officials.