Untitled - The Alfred Russel Wallace Website

104 NOTES OF A BOTANIST CHAP.
scribed in his first letter to Mr. Bentham from
Bafios, and is as follows :
I arrived here on the ist of July, after a voyage
of exactly a hundred days from
I can hardly bear to
Tarapoto.
think of it,
Such
much
a journey !
less to write at length of what I saw and suffered.
In a postscript
to my last letter written at Yurimaguas,
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 circumstance.
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
from the first clay
to the last my progress
]
in brief that
has been