Untitled - The Alfred Russel Wallace Website

252 NOTES OF A BOTANIST CHAP.
imaginary,
afterwards (it
for Riobamba was sacked some time
is only a week ago to-day) by the
troops stationed there. Not a shop or a warehouse
was spared, and eight or nine private houses shared
the same fate.
. . . Your sanitary and social reformers seem
much occupied with devising suitable habitationsfor
the poor and industrious classes. They would
be much shocked could they see the promiscuous
way in which people sleep here, even in the
wealthiest houses. The other day I remonstrated
with my landlord one of the best men in the place
-for allowing a number of people of both sexes to
sleep together in the same room some in beds,
" some on the floor.
I assure you," replied he,
" we throw open both doors and windows at day-
'
break ! He had no idea, poor man, of any
possible vitiation of the moral atmosphere. I
thought of the fair (but frail) Pauline Buonaparte,
" How
who, when an English lady asked her,
could you sit so naked to that sculptor ? '
answer, " My dear madam, you forget
in the room !
'
made
I had a fire
In January last I spent three weeks with the
Cura of Puela a small village at the western foot
of Tunguragua. The parsonage -house consisted
of but two rooms, the one a small dormitory occupied
by the Padre, and where he had barely room
to turn himself; the other a much larger room,
where the rest of his family worked and ate during
the day, and slept at night. I append a diagram of
this main apartment, wherein i, 2, 3 represents
a raised stage made of wild canes (called a