IMMUNITY OF THE BOTANIST. 137 



behind the town, and I felt free to give every available 

 moment to collecting the singular plants of this 

 region. 



One of the minor satisfactions of a naturalist in 

 South America arises from the fact that the in- 

 habitants are so thoroughly used to seeing strangers 

 of every nationality, and in the most varied attire, 

 that his appearance excites no surprise and provokes 

 no uncivil attentions. Going about almost always 

 alone, with a large tin box slung across my back, I 

 never found myself even stared at, which, in most 

 parts of Europe, is the least inconvenience that befalls 

 a solitary botanist. The amount of attention varies, 

 indeed, in different countries. In Sicily and in Syria 

 one is an object of general curiosity, and one's every 

 movement, as that of a strange animal, watched by 

 a silent crowd ; but it is only in Spain that the in- 

 offensive stranger is subject to personal molestation, 

 and the little boys pelt him with stones without 

 rebuke or interference from their seniors, who never- 

 theless boast of their national courtesy.* Fortunately 

 it nowhere occurs to the most ill-disposed populations 

 that a shabbily dressed man, engaged in grubbing up 

 plants by the roots, can be worth robbing. Usually 

 regarded as the assistant to some pharmacist, the 

 botanist is, I think, less subject to molestation than 



* While botanizing in the Tajo de Ronda, the singular cleft which 

 cuts through the rocky hill on which the town is built, I was once for 

 some time in positive danger. The boys, having espied me, assembled 

 on the bridge that crosses the cleft, some three hundred feet above my 

 head, and commenced a regular fire of stones, that drove me to take 

 shelter under an overhanging rock until, being tired of the sport, they 

 turned their attentions elsewhere. 



