EXPEDITION TO THE OEINOCO. 285 



pitched boards, and other preservatives successful in a European 

 climate, prove quite unavailing here ; nor have we found any 

 benefit from hanging the cases up in the open air, so that our 

 patience has been almost exhausted. After an interval of 

 barely four months our herbariums were scarcely to be recog- 

 nised ; out of eight specimens five had to be thrown away, 

 especially of those collected in Guiana, El Dorado, and the 

 regions near the Amazon, where we were daily exposed to 

 torrents of rain. 



6 During four months of this journey we passed the night in 

 forests, surrounded by crocodiles, boa constrictors, and tigers, 

 which are here bold enough to attack a canoe, while for food 

 we had nothing better than rice, ants, maniocs, bananas, and 

 occasionally the flesh of monkeys, with only the waters of the 

 Orinoco whereby to quench our thirst. Thus have we with 

 difficulty toiled, our hands and faces swollen with mosquito 

 bites, from Mondavaca to the volcano of Duida, from the limits 

 of Quito to the frontier of Surinam through tracts of country 

 extending over 20,000 square miles, in which no Indian is to 

 be met with, and where the traveller encounters only apes or 

 serpents. 



' In Guiana the mosquitoes abound in such clouds as to 

 darken the air, and as it is absolutely necessary to keep head 

 and hands constantly covered, no writing can be done by day- 

 light ; the intolerable pain produced by the attacks of these 

 insects renders it impossible to hold the pen steadily. All our 

 work had therefore to be carried on by the light of a fire, in 

 an Indian hut, where no ray of sunlight could penetrate, and 

 into which we had to creep on our hands and knees. Here, 

 if we escaped the torment of the mosquitoes, we were almost 

 choked by the smoke. At Maypures we and the Indians took 

 refuge in the midst of the cascade, where the spray from the 

 foaming stream kept off the insects. At Higuerote the people 

 are accustomed at night to lie buried three or four inches deep 

 in -sand, with only the head exposed. If we had not seen it, we 

 should have considered the account fabulous. It is remarkable 

 that where the rivers assume a darker colour, that is to say, in 

 the coffee-brown streams of the Atabapo, Guainia, &c., neither 

 mosquitoes nor crocodiles are to be found. 



