62 
NOTES OF A BOTANIST 
CHAP. 
valley, partly bare of wood but clad with natural 
meadow, where Chumbi had placed a few young 
cattle. The dwelling-house, being at a little more 
than a thousand metres above the sea, was in a 
very pleasant climate. The temperature at sunrise 
was usually from 64° to 68" — once down to 6i^° — 
and the maximum rarely exceeded 81°, though it 
once rose to 87''. The weather was fine and dry 
during the three weeks of our stay, except one day 
of heavy rain with thunder. When we had been 
there a few days, incessantly occupied from earliest 
dawn till nightfall in collecting and preserving 
specimens of the beautiful plants that everywhere 
abounded, I began to grow tired of the salt beef 
and fish which, with plantains and yucas, were our 
only fare ; and as Chumbi told me there was plenty 
of game in the woods, I sent him out one morning 
before daybreak to shoot paujfles (curassows or 
wood-turkeys). At 5.30 a.m. Nelson and I had 
our coffee, and then set off to herborize. Fortu- 
nately I indicated to Chumbi's wife the direction we 
should take, and we had been gone but a little 
while when her son came running after us to beg 
that we would return instantly, as his father had 
been stung by something in the wood and had 
reached home in a dying state. We hurried back, 
and on arriving at the house found Chumbi sitting 
on a log, looking deadly pale, and moaning from 
the pain of a snake-bite in the wrist of the right 
arm. He told us in a few broken words that he 
was creeping silently through the bush to get 
within shot of a turkey, when, on pushing gently 
aside an overhanging branch, he felt himself seized 
by the wrist, and was immediately attacked with so 
