I04 NOTES OF A BOTANIST 
scribed in his first letter to Mr. Bentham from 
Banos, and is as follows : — ] 
I arrived here on the ist of July, after a voyage 
of exactly a hundred days from Tarapoto. Such 
a journey ! I can hardly bear to think of it, much 
less to write at length of what I saw and suffered. 
In a postscript to my last letter written at Yurim- 
aguas, I mentioned that my canoe had been nearly 
swallowed up in a whirlpool in the pongo of the 
Huallaga. That the peril had not been slight you 
may have some idea from the following circum- 
stance. I had with me a large handsome dog 
whom I had reared from a pup. There was not 
such another dog in all Maynas, and latterly he 
made my house respected by the drunken cholos, 
who, instead of pestering me as formerly, took care 
to give us a wide offing. In one of my last walks 
about Tarapoto, he pulled me down a fine deer. 
When my canoe was caught in the whirlpool, the 
horrid roar of the waters, which drowned our 
voices, and the waves, which splashed over us, 
so frightened the dog that he went mad ! From 
that hour he would drink no water, and after the 
first day would take no food. Six days I kept him 
by my side, at great personal risk, hoping to cure 
him. When we went on shore in the villages he 
ran straight off, uttering the most unearthly sounds, 
and putting to flight dogs, pigs, and cows, some- 
times biting them severely. At length he began 
to snap at the people in the canoe, and being worn 
almost to a skeleton, I saw all hope of saving him 
was vain, and was obliged to shoot him. 
Respecting the voyage, I may say in brief that 
from the first day to the last my progress has been 
