WANDERINGS IN SOUTH AMERICA. 213 



temples, and holding a wet handkerchief there. The next 

 morning the fever ran very high, and I took five more 

 grains of calomel and ten of jalap, determined, whatever 

 might be the case, this should be the last dose of calomel. 

 About two o'clock in the afternoon the fever remitted, and 

 a copious perspiration came on ; there was no more head- 

 ache, nor thirst, nor pain in the back, and the following 

 night was comparatively a good one. The next morning I 

 swallowed a large dose of castor-oil: it was genuine, for 

 Louisa Backer had made it from the seeds of the trees 

 which grew near the door. I was now entirely free from 

 all symptoms of fever, or apprehensions of a return ; and 

 the morning after I began to take bark, and continued it 

 for a fortnight. This put all to rights. 



The story of the wound I got in the forest, and the mode 

 of cure, are very short. I had pursued a red-headed wood- 

 pecker for above a mile in the forest, without being able to 

 get a shot at it. Thinking more of the woodpecker, as I 

 ran along, than of the way before me, I trod upon a little 

 hardwood stump, which was just about an inch or so above 

 the ground ; it entered the hollow part of my foot, making 

 a deep and lacerated wound there. It had brought me to 

 the ground, and there I lay till a transitory fit of sickness 

 went off. I allowed it to bleed freely, and on reaching head- 

 quarters, washed it well and probed it, to feel if any foreign 

 body was left within it. Being satisfied that there was 

 none, I brought the edges of the wound together, and then, 

 put a piece of lint on it, and over that a very large poultice, 

 which was changed morning, noon, and night. Luckily, 

 Backer had a cow or two upon the hill : now as heat arid 

 moisture are the two principal virtues of a poultice, nothing 

 could produce those two qualities better than fresh cow- 

 dung boiled : had there been no cows there, I could have 

 made it with boiled grass and leaves. I now took 



