368 NOTES OF A BOTANIST 
The juice of lemons rubbed over the wound and 
taken internally has a great reputation against 
snake-bites at San Carlos. Most people, however, 
die who are bitten. Not long ago a neighbour of 
mine lost a daughter, a fine young woman, from 
the bite of a jararaca, and the woman who cooks 
for me lost her father a few years ago from the bite 
of the same snake. When I was at Sao Gabriel, 
a little before I arrived, a young woman, daughter 
of the pilot of Camanaos, died from the bite of a 
jararaca. 
March 1854. — When I returned from my expedi- 
tion up the Casiquiari and Orinoco, I found recently 
established at San Carlos a mulatto trader who had 
married the daughter of a wealthy man of colour at 
the Barra, and with her fortune had embarked in the 
trade in the products of the Rio Negro. Both he 
and his young wife were fond of shooting, and one 
day were in the forest together in quest of game 
when he was bitten in the foot by a jararaca. The 
reptile reared itself for a second stroke when it was 
shot by his wife. They hastened to their home, 
which was near, and washed the wound freely with 
vinegar ; but finding no relief from that, and feeling 
assured he should die, he determined to drown the 
pain and the fear of death, as far as possible, by 
copious draughts of strong rum. With such a will 
had he applied the opiate that when his wife fetched 
the Comisario and myself half an hour afterwards, 
we found him completely stupefied, I observed that 
the wound had bled copiously, and with the blood 
some portion of the venom had doubtless escaped, so 
that the danger of a fatal result was all the less. 
He dozed a good while, and although his frame was 
