It was foolish to come this far. These mountains send men mad. Today Jenkins came to me with a theory for an overhaul of the public school system that failed to take into account regional differences in income distribution. I was shocked to see how severe his deterioration had become. I recall the first signs we has had of something affecting the mental state of the group, when Jenkins (not the same Jenkins, another Jenkins with the same name) took three lumps of sugar instead of his normal four with his morning cup of Earl Grey. I should have turned back then, and saved us all from this slow, shameful descent into insanity.
And yet here we are, pushing onwards, deeper into the interior of this godless, sleeveless country. As the jungles have grown denser and the canopy has slowly strangled the light from the sky I have felt doubt clouding my mind, and I have even begun to doubt the existence of the fabled lost city of Nougat for which we have searched so long. Were it not for my faith in our Lord and my almost fanatical obsession with seeing an entire freaking city made out of nougat I fear I would not be able to go on.
Today I had the men make camp in a clearing at the base of a mighty hillock. We were a sorry lot indeed. Of our original team of thirty only half that number remained. I recall with regret the day I gave the missing 15 men an out of date train timetable at King’s Cross station. They were never seen again.
I sent two men to water the mules at a stream we had passed an hour before reaching the clearing, and sat with Jenkins (First Lieutenant Jenkins, not to be confused with the other two Jenkinses. I must confess that during my weaker moments I have been tempted to refer to the many Jenkinses by their first names. God help us all if I ever succumb to that urge) to discuss our plans for the coming weeks. We were forced to confront the morale of the men, which was low after repeated disappointments. The false prizes of the Marzipan Village and the Toffee Municipality, both discovered early in the expedition, had left the men disgruntled (although in some cases I doubt they had been gruntled in the first place) and will appalling dental problems.
We resolved to stay where we were for at least three days to allow the men to recouperate and the the mules to rest. Two parties were sent out to hunt some of the less weird fauna for supplement our meagre supplies after months of Marzipan Casserole and Peking Toffee (French Style).
The fantastical creatures encountered on this journey would make many a credulous observer hang up his doubting stick. In the second months of the trek we crossed a vast plain, unbroken save for the fences of farmers and the occasional motorway. Across these verdant fields ran strange creatures, in enormous flocks of sometimes more than twelve at a time. At first glance they appeared to be sheep, but as we drew nearer it became clear that they were in fact goats. But such goats! They were unlike anything we had encountered before or since. Jenkins managed to catch one when he shot it in the head and we estimated that it was up to ten percent larger than most of the domestic goats in England. We were dazzled by the rich off-whiteness of its coat, and the strikingly goaty expression on its face.
The tales we will tell on our return!
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