XVI 



RESIDENCE AT TARAPOTO 81 



speedily dispatched with bullets and lances. He 

 made indeed no sign of resistance, and seemed 

 stupefied by the savage shrieks and cries of his pur- 

 suers, who must have been near upon a thousand. 

 They then carried him out to a piece of open 

 ground, skinned, roasted, and ate him. This un- 

 fortunate tiger had been surprised while quietly 

 breakfasting on a fat turkey. Tiger-skins both of 

 the red puma and the spotted jaguar may be 

 bought here for the merest trifle a knife or a 

 handkerchief. They serve me for cushions and 

 mats, and my dog's bed is usually a tiger's skin- 

 stretched across the doorway by night, for I 

 generally sleep with the door wide open on account 

 of the heat. The dog amuses himself by gnawing 

 at them, and in this way has eaten me up three 

 tigers' skins. 



In a box of plants I am dispatching to Mr. 

 Bentham I have enclosed a small parcel for you 

 containing two " monteras," which are broad- 

 brimmed cloth hats of many colours, worn by all 

 the women of Tarapoto in out-of-door work. It 

 they reach you safely, will you keep one of them for 

 Mrs. Teasdale and keep the other for my sister 

 Lizzie. Although they may never be worn, they 

 will serve as memorials of the usages of a strange 

 land, and of a friend whom you may never 

 again. They will probably seem to you out- 

 rageously gaudy and harlequin-like, but somehow 

 they harmonise excellently hen- with everything 

 around them. They arc worn by the 

 chiefly when spinning cotton yarn in the 

 or in the open grounds near the town, 

 of spinning is this. A little child 



VOL. II 



