IX 
AROUND SAO GABRIEL 
293 
advantages Sao Gabriel may have as a station, 
on account of its interesting vegetation, it has dis- 
advantages so great that if I had commenced my 
South American collections here I daresay I should 
have given them up in despair. The house I am 
in is very old ; the thatch is stocked with rats, 
vampires, scorpions, cockroaches, and other pests 
to society ; the floor (being simply mother earth) 
is undermined by saiiba ants, with whom I have 
had some terrible contests. In one night they 
carried off as much farinha as I could eat in a 
month ; then they found out my dried plants and 
began to cut them up and carry them off. I have 
burnt them, smoked them, drowned them, trod 
on them, and, in short, retaliated in every possible 
way, so that at this moment I believe not a saiiba 
dares show its face inside the house ; but they 
demand my constant vigilance. Then the termites, 
which are more insidious in their approaches, have 
covered ways along every post and beam. They 
have already eaten me up a towel and made their 
way into a deal packing-case, where fortunately they 
found nothing to eat. But the greatest nuisance 
at Sao Gabriel is one I had not foreseen. Almost 
the sole inhabitants are the soldiers of the garrison, 
and do you know how the armies of Brazil are 
recruited ? When a man commits a crime which 
entitles him to transportation, he is enlisted and 
marched off to one of the frontier posts. Thus, 
of the fourteen men composing the garrison of 
Sao Gabriel, there is not one who has not com- 
mitted some serious crime, and at least half of 
them are murderers. Judge with what security 
I can leave my house for a few days. It has already 
