336 NOTES OF A BOTANIST 
Uaupes, with a general account of the results of 
his expedition which will be of much interest to 
botanists, and also, I believe, to all who are 
interested in natural history and in the difficulties 
of the collector in such remote and savage regions.] 
To Sir William Hooker 
San Carlos del Rio Negro, 
Jime 27, 1853. 
I had a very interesting excursion on the Uaupes, lasting from 
the end of August (if I include the voyage from Sao Gabriel) to 
early in March of the present year. My collection contains a 
greater number than any preceding one of the tallest forest trees, 
among which are several undescribed Vochysiacese and Caesal- 
pinieae. There are also a great many new things among the 
minutest tribes of flowering plants, such as Podostemese, Triu- 
ridese, Burmanniaceae, and the leafless Gentianeae (Voyrieae). I 
suppose that of the whole collection, numbering some 500 species, 
about four-fifths are entirely undescribed. I unfortunately made 
myself ill by working too hard both in and out of doors in the 
heat of the day, and was visited by some distressing attacks of 
vertigo from which I am yet scarcely free. 
The mechanical labour of drying plants is so great here that 
I have little time for making geographical and other observations, 
and as Mr. Wallace had preceded me on the Uaupes, and his 
occupations leave him much more spare time than mine do, I 
scarcely attended to anything but botany there. I determined 
the latitude of Panure, or Sao Jeronymo, an Indian village at the 
foot of the first falls, which I made my principal station, to be 
0° 13' N. My watch has proved almost useless in determining 
longitudes, and I much regret I did not bring with me a telescope. 
I purchased indeed a telescope in the Barra of a Franciscan friar, 
who had bought it at Rio Janeiro ; and it has proved of the 
greatest use to me in my herborisations, enabling me to distin- 
guish green flowers on a tree at the distance of a mile, and when 
sailing near the bank of a river to ascertain the form of the leaves 
of the adjacent trees ; but it barely shows the satellites of Jupiter, 
and is not suflEiciently powerful to take an observation of them 
with accuracy. 
