XVI RESIDENCE AT TARAPOTO 8i 
speedily dispatched with bullets and lances. He 
made indeed no sign of resistance, and seemed 
stupefied by the savage shrieks and cries of his pur- 
suers, who must have been near upon a thousand. 
They then carried him out to a piece of open 
ground, skinned, roasted, and ate him. This un- 
fortunate tiger had been surprised while quietly 
breakfasting on a fat turkey. Tiger-skins — both of 
the red puma and the spotted jaguar — may be 
bought here for the merest trifle — a knife or a 
handkerchief. They serve me for cushions and 
mats, and my dog's bed is usually a tiger's skin — 
stretched across the doorway by night, for I 
generally sleep with the door wide open on account 
of the heat. The dog amuses himself by gnawing 
at them, and in this way has eaten me up three 
tigers' skins. 
In a box of plants I am dispatching to Mr. 
Bentham I have enclosed a small parcel for you 
containing two " monteras," which are broad- 
brimmed cloth hats of many colours, worn by all 
the women of Tarapoto in out-of-door work. If 
they reach you safely, will you keep one of them for 
Mrs. Teasdale and keep the other for my sister 
Lizzie. Although they may never be worn, they 
will serve as memorials of the usages of a strange 
land, and of a friend whom you may never see 
again. They will probably seem to you out- 
rageously gaudy and harlequin-like, but somehow 
they harmonise excellently here with everything 
around them. They are worn by the women 
chiefly when spinning cotton yarn in the streets 
or in the open grounds near the town. The mode 
of spinning is this. A little child sits under the 
VOL. II G 
