Untitled - The Alfred Russel Wallace Website

i 4 4 NOTES OF A BOTANIST CHAP.
bundles, and then hanging them up through the
night to smoke along with our soaked garments.
Monday was also happily a sunny day. The
way was mostly along level ground, often through
beds of tall prickly bamboos, and lodales (muddy
places), the mud being, as might be supposed, con-
genial to the bamboos, and often hiding fallen
prickly branches of the latter which wounded our
feet. I wore throughout the journey a pair of
india-rubber shoes which I had fortunately bought
off the feet of a wandering German I met in La
Laguna. They were slippery in the descents,
where I required to step cautiously in them, and
they were easily pierced by thorns and stumps, but
they were uninjured by mud and wet, and so long
as I kept in movement my feet were never cold in
them, even when they filled with water. In fording
the streams I kept them on my feet ; on reaching
the opposite bank I slipped them off and poured
the water out, then in an instant slipped them on
again and resumed my march without experiencing
the least inconvenience. We had got off about
seven, and it was near ten o'clock when we reached
another Jibaro hut, and the last of the pueblo of
Pindo. Here we rested awhile, and my Indians
partook
of chicha which was offered them. I con-
sidered myself fortunate in buying a couple of
fowls and the leg of a tapir. Shortly after we
crossed the Pindo, a considerable stream with a
broad white beach strewn with blocks and much
resembling the Cumbasa below Tarapoto. This
stream receives the Piiyu (which also we crossed
this day, quite near the Jibaria), and the two
united are navigable for small canoes to the