The most critical moments of peril, demanding the
utmost coolness and most dauntless courage, would sometimes occur during
the stage of depression after fever; it was then he had to extricate
himself from savage warriors, who vowed that he must go back, unless he
gave them an ox, a gun, or a man. The ox he could ill spare, the gun not
at all, and as for giving the last--a man--to make a slave of, he would
sooner die. At the best, he was a poor ragged skeleton when he reached
those who had hearts to feel for him and hands to help him. Had he not
been a prodigy of patience, faith, and courage, had he not known where
to find help in all time of his tribulation, he would never have reached
the haunts of civilized men.
[Footnote 40: The number of attacks was thirty-one.]
His traveling-kit was reduced to the smallest possible ilk; that he
minded little, but he was vexed to be able to take so few books. A few
days after setting out, he writes in his private Journal;
"I feel the want of books in this journey more than anything
else.
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