«In the dampness of this lush forest mysterious monuments are sometimes concealed! Sometimes even entire cities are consumed by the trees and various sorts of vines... This green atmosphere persists regardless of the season, to the point where both the light of the sun and raindrops take on, for an instant, the tint of a vegetal emerald! ... However, this kingdom is also filled with dangers surprisingly worse than those of deserts, glaciers, or even volcanoes... This hellish greenery also hides animals as venomous as they are varied, and poisonous plants bloom everywhere, and that’s without counting a multitude of leeches and mosquitoes who will drain every last drop of your blood! In this dense, damp, and vegetation-rich place where the smallest wound can turn gangrenous, we had begun to slowly lose our porters, who were from a local village whose inhabitants have a reputation for courage and endurance. A number of them fled due to fear of an obscure curse, another succumbed to dysentery and other bacterial infections, and finally some were slain by small critters or dragged off by large predators... The list of killers is quite long in this terrible place, ranging from five-step snakes, spiders, scorpions, centipedes, frogs, to anacondas, monitor lizards, crocodiles, piranhas, to jaguars, the utmost lords of this jungle. The few porters who remained faithful to the mission did so due to the offer of a share of the loot in addition to their already large salary... And while we numbered over a hundred when we left, our hearts filled with prudence, we numbered barely twenty-five when we reached the entrance to the City we sought so desperately, exhausted and on the verge of despair!»