MEMOIR. XXV 
‘‘T have now,”’ he says in his Journal, January roth, 1850, ‘‘only £11 
for my expenses at Barra, and payment of passage. Shall not be able to 
stay there till the fine season, and be obliged to return to Para without 
forming a good collection after @// this toil in ascending the river. Shows 
what a booby I am at travelling. Undertaking this voyage without letters of 
credit from S. & Co., of Para. But my gains were so uncertain, I did not 
like to ask for credit.’’ ; 
Fortunately he met at Barra, among other Europeans, Messrs. 
Bradley and Williams, of whom he writes as follows in his journal, 
March 12th :— 
“‘They are two men of business, trading between Peru and Para; clever, 
good-natured iellows. Am indebted to them for encouragement to go and 
collect on the Solimoens, and advances of little money to enable me to do it, 
so that I have resolved to stay up here some time further. They keep free 
table here whilst detained a few weeks on business, and fine frolicking goes 
forward almost every day.’’ 
He embarked at Barra on March 26th, in a cuderta for Ega, 
three hundred and seventy miles distant, arriving on May-day, 
1850. There he stayed more than a year, busily collecting, but 
depressed through bad health, poverty, and isolation. Twelve 
months had passed without the receipt of letters or remittances ; 
his clothes were worn to rags; he was shoeless, and, through 
robbery by a servant, penniless. “I am a prisoner here; at this 
season (Journal, September 5th) no vessels descend to the city, 
on account of the trade winds blowing strong up river ; am in 
greatest uncertainty whether Bradley will return and bring me 
money. I am reduced to low ebb.” Worse even than these ills 
to one who, imbued with the spirit of Abou ben Adhem, “loved 
his fellow-men,” was the absence of intellectual society ; so that, 
to use his own words, life became “almost insupportable.” In a 
letter dated December 23rd, 1850 (printed in the Zoologzst, vol. ix., 
Pp. 3143), he announces his intention to return home. 
‘Letters from home, all pressing my return, have caused me to change my 
mind. Considering the unsatisfactory nature of my future prospects in this 
profession, I think I do better in returning to a more certain prospect of 
establishing myself. I have now, therefore, only one idea, that of returning 
to England ’”’ (Journal, January 2nd, 1851). 
But the receipt of encouraging letters with remittances from 
Mr. Stevens a few days after this made him waver. 
He left Ega in the following March, and, before embarking, sets 
down the net results of his labours :— 
