The things he had seen and done and undergone often enabled him to cast the light of his own past experience on unexpected subjects.  Once we were talking about the proper weapons for cavalry, and some one mentioned the theory that the lance is especially formidable because of the moral effect it produces on the enemy.  Cherrie nodded emphatically; and a little cross-examination elicited the fact that he was speaking from lively personal recollection of his own feelings when charged by lancers.  It was while he was fighting with the Venezuelan insurgents in an unsuccessful uprising against the tyranny of Castro.  He was on foot, with five Venezuelans, all cool men and good shots.  In an open plain they were charged by twenty of Castro’s lancers, who galloped out from behind cover two or three hundred yards off.  It was a war in which neither side gave quarter and in which the wounded and the prisoners were butchered—­just as President Madero was butchered in Mexico.  Cherrie knew that it meant death for him and his companions if the charge came home; and the sight of the horsemen running in at full speed, with their long lances in rest and the blades glittering, left an indelible impression on his mind.  But he and his companions shot deliberately and accurately; ten of the lancers were killed, the nearest falling within fifty yards; and the others rode off in headlong haste.  A cool man with a rifle, if he has mastered his weapon, need fear no foe.

At this camp the auto-vans again joined us.  They were to go direct to the first telegraph station, at the great falls of the Utiarity, on the Rio Papagaio.  Of course they travelled faster than the mule-train.  Father Zahm, attended by Sigg, started for the falls in them.  Cherrie and Miller also went in them, because they had found that it was very difficult to collect birds, and especially mammals, when we were moving every day, packing up early each morning and the mule-train arriving late in the afternoon or not until nightfall.  Moreover, there was much rain, which made it difficult to work except under the tents.  Accordingly, the two naturalists desired to get to a place where they could spend several days and collect steadily, thereby doing more effective work.  The rest of us continued with the mule-train, as was necessary.

It was always a picturesque sight when camp was broken, and again at nightfall when the laden mules came stringing in and their burdens were thrown down, while the tents were pitched and the fires lit.  We breakfasted before leaving camp, the aluminum cups and plates being placed on ox-hides, round which we sat, on the ground or on camp-stools.  We fared well, on rice, beans, and crackers, with canned corned beef, and salmon or any game that had been shot, and coffee, tea, and matte.  I then usually sat down somewhere to write, and when the mules were nearly ready I popped my writing-materials into my duffel-bag/war-sack, as we would have called it in the old days on the plains.  I found that