104 NOTES OF A BOTANIST CHAP. 



scribed in his first letter to Mr. Bentham from 

 Bafios, and is as follows : ] 



I arrived here on the ist of July, after a voyage 

 of exactly a hundred days from Tarapoto. Such 

 a journey ! I can hardly bear to think of it, much 

 less to write at length of what I saw and suffered. 

 In a postscript to my last letter written at Yurim- 

 aguas, I mentioned that my canoe had been nearly 

 swallowed up in a whirlpool in the pongo of the 

 Huallaga. That the peril had not been slight you 

 may have some idea from the following circum- 

 stance. I had with me a large handsome dog 

 whom I had reared from a pup. There was not 

 such another dog in all Maynas, and latterly he 

 made my house respected by the drunken cholos, 

 who, instead of pestering me as formerly, took care 

 to give us a wide offing. In one of my last walks 

 about Tarapoto, he pulled me down a fine deer. 

 When my canoe was caught in the whirlpool, the 

 horrid roar of the waters, which drowned our 

 voices, and the waves, which splashed over us, 

 so frightened the dog that he went mad ! From 

 that hour he would drink no water, and after the 

 first day would take no food. Six days I kept him 

 by my side, at great personal risk, hoping to cure 

 him. When we went on shore in the villages he 

 ran straight off, uttering the most unearthly sounds, 

 and putting to flight dogs, pigs, and cows, some- 

 times biting them severely. At length he began 

 to snap at the people in the canoe, and being worn 

 almost to a skeleton, I saw all hope of saving him 

 was vain, and was obliged to shoot him. 



Respecting the voyage, I may say in brief that 

 from the first clay to the last my progress has been 



