62 NOTES OF A BOTANIST CHAP. 



valley, partly bare of wood but clad with natural 

 meadow, where Chumbi had placed a few young 

 cattle. The dwelling-house, being at a little more 

 than a thousand metres above the sea, was in a 

 very pleasant climate. The temperature at sunrise 

 was usually from 64 to 68 J -- once down to 6i^- 

 and the maximum rarely exceeded 81, though it 

 once rose to 87. The weather was fine and dry 

 during the three weeks of our stay, except one day 

 of heavy rain with thunder. When we had been 

 there a few days, incessantly occupied from earliest 

 dawn till nightfall in collecting and preserving 

 specimens of the beautiful plants that everywhere 

 abounded, I began to grow tired of the salt beef 

 and fish which, with plantains and yucas, were our 

 only fare ; and as Chumbi told me there was plenty 

 of game in the woods, I sent him out one morning 

 before daybreak to shoot paujiles (curassows or 

 wood-turkeys). At 5.30 A.M. Nelson and I had 

 our coffee, and then set off to herborize. Fortu- 

 nately I indicated to Chumbi's wife the direction we 

 should take, and we had been gone but a little 

 while when her son came running after us to beg 

 that we would return instantly, as his father had 

 been stung by something in the wood and had 

 reached home in a dying state. We hurried back, 

 and on arriving at the house found Chumbi sitting 

 on a log, looking deadly pale, and moaning from 

 the pain of a snake-bite in the wrist of the right 

 arm. He told us in a few broken words that he 

 was creeping silently through the bush to get 

 within shot of a turkey, when, on pushing gently 

 aside an overhanging branch, he felt himself seized 

 by the wrist, and was immediately attacked with so 



