352 NOTES OF A BOTANIST 
being that in the morning the drinking, etc., were 
resumed and kept up for several days afterwards. 
When night closed in we remarked that two men 
were walking up and down the street in front of 
the house ; these were a sort of scouts or sen- 
tinels, and were changed at short intervals through- 
out the night. The Indians, however, never 
screwed up their courage so far as to venture to 
attack us. They knew of our warlike preparations, 
and, as it would seem, calculated that a good many 
of the foremost in the assault must necessarily 
forfeit their lives. Of their ultimate success against 
us there can be little doubt, for they were 150 
against three. My firm resolve, in case of being 
attacked, was not to allow myself to be taken alive, 
and so suffer a hundred deaths in one. 
On the following day the Indians removed with 
their bureche to the other side of the river, where 
they remained revelling until their stock of the 
precious liquor was exhausted. We knew too that 
their powder was exhausted in the firing of salvos, 
so that we were relieved from further apprehension 
for the present. ... 
[While the events just recorded were in pro- 
gress. Spruce wrote a very long letter to Sir William 
Hooker, in which, among much other matter, he 
gave a full account of the results of numerous in- 
quiries he had been making through traders and 
Indians as to the sources of the Orinoco and the 
mountains in which it rises, with the object, if 
possible, of reaching these mountains, which had 
hitherto been unvisited and even unapproached 
by any European. These inquiries may be of 
value to any future traveller who attempts this 
