In Search of an Unknown Race — page 189: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

VAN. 177 How anxiously he counted the days pending the arrival of the expected steamer, needs not to be told. It was too warm for sight-seeing, even if Van had not experienced an abundance of that sort of thing since » leaving Para months before. So he passed the greater part of his time in reading, writing up his journal, and chatting with the few English or American residents whose acquaintance he made from time to time. Among them, of course, was the ubiquitous reporter, city editor, and compositor combined, of asmall weekly paper, published in both English and Spanish. It seemed that Mr. Blank, always on the lookout for something new, had scraped an acquaintance with Flores on the arrival of the party some weeks before, and by dint of skillful questioning extracted from him the fact that they had come from the mysterious pro- vince of Itambezi, but nothing more. How he had discovered that Van had been in some way connected with the party, no one knows; but he made that youth's life a burden during his brief stay, by his attempts at pumping and cross-examination, but all to no avail. Still, the two were very good friends, and Mr. Blank loaned Van some back files of the Para News Letter, by means of which he got an idea of what had been going on during his absence. Suddenly, in one of the numbers dated a day or two after his first arrival in Para, Van saw something which caused him to spring from his chair, and utter a sort of triumphant yell, to the manifest astonishment of passing pedestrians. The paragraph, which was headed ‘‘A Startling Sea Tragedy,” read thus: GComichooks ALL (E(0)