210 



WANDERINGS IN SOUTH AMERICA. 



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 of 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 energ}^, 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 spe- 

 cimens to adorn museums. In fine, it is this ungenerous 

 treatment that has paralysed 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 expedi- 

 tion to the wilds of Guiana is nothing but a— fragment. 



Farewell, Gentle Eeader. 



