284 WANDERINGS IN SOUTH AMERICA. 



lana, y vuelven trasquilados ; " many go for wool, and 

 come home shorn. In order to pick up matter for natural 

 history, I have wandered through the wildest parts of 

 South America's equatorial regions. I have attacked and 

 slain a modern Python, and rode on the back of a cayman 

 close to the water's edge ; a very different situation from 

 that of a Hyde-park dandy on his Sunday prancer before 

 the ladies. Alone and barefoot I have pulled poisonous 

 snakes out of their lurking-places ; climbed up trees to 

 peep into holes for bats and vampires, and for days together 

 hastened through sun and rain to the thickest parts ot the 

 forest to procure specimens I had never got before. In 

 fine, I have pursued the wild beasts over hill and dale, 

 through swamps and quagmires, now scorched by the 

 noon-day sun, now drenched by the pelting shower, and 

 returned to the hammock, to satisfy the cravings of 

 hunger, often on a poor and scanty supper. 



These vicissitudes have turned to chestnut hue a once 

 English complexion, and changed the colour of my hair, 

 before father Time had meddled with it. The detention of 

 the collection after it had fairly passed the Customs, and 

 the subsequent order from the Treasury that I should pay 

 duty for the specimens, unless they were presented to 

 some public institution, have cast a damp upon my energy, 

 and forced, as it were, the cup of Lethe to my lips, by 

 drinking which I have forgot my former intention of 

 giving a lecture in public on preparing specimens to 

 adorn museums. In fine, it is this ungenerous treatment 

 that has paralyzed my plans, and caused me to give up 

 the idea I once had of inserting here the newly-discovered 

 mode of preparing quadrupeds and serpents ; and without 

 it, the account of this last expedition to the wilds of 

 Guiana is nothing but a — fragment. 



Farewell, Gentle Reader, 



