74 
NOTES OF A BOTANIST 
CHAP. 
August. I shall thus be able to gather a few 
things which illness and fatigue obliged me to 
leave at the time of my arrival. I have been on 
the top of three mountains, and their vegetation 
is so nearly identical, that I should hardly find 
work at Tarapoto for a second year. . . . 
[The next letter from Tarapoto to Mr. Bentham, 
dated April 7, 1856, is chiefly personal and botanical 
gossip relating to his work and future travels. 
After describing how a box from England was 
damaged and nearly lost by the boat being wrecked 
in the rapids of the Huallaga, he adds : " The diffi- 
culty, risk, and expense of getting plants from here 
all the way down to the mouth of the Amazon are 
so great, that I see my Tarapoto collections are 
not likely to repay more than the expense of 
collecting." 
The letter concludes with a reference to the 
news he had just received of the ravages of yellow 
fever at the Barra, and then gives a short bio- 
graphical note about a bird-collector, whose name 
and specimens must be well known to most English 
ornithologists. I therefore give it.] 
" I am sorry to say that Hauxwell is about per- 
dido (lost) as far as natural history is concerned, 
which is a pity, as no one has come here who puts 
up birds so beautifully as he does. He has got an 
Indian squaw and a child, and is turned ' merchant.* 
I am surprised he writes English (with a small 
taste of 'Yorkshire') so well as he does. His 
parents removed from Hull (where he was born) 
to Oporto when he was a little boy ; thence he 
came out to the coast of Brazil as merchant's clerk, 
and anon turned naturalist." 
