Untitled - The Alfred Russel Wallace Website

320 NOTES OF A BOTANIST CHAP.
plaiting of Panama hats and to gathering Orchilla
(Roccella tinctoria), which abounds here on the
trees especially the Cactuses as it does also in
the neighbouring islands of Galapagos. They fish
very little, and that merely for their own eating.
. . . The failure of the house of Gutierrez
and Co. at Guayaquil was a heavy blow to me.
When it suspended payment (October 11, 1861) I
had in their hands very nearly a thousand pounds
^"700 at interest and the rest in I deposit. have
received the balance of interest due to me at that
date, but the residue, viz. 5550 dollars (Peruvian
or Equatorian), remains to share the fate of the
other debts of the firm, and if I ultimately recover
a thousand dollars of it I shall think myself well off.
The blow was so sudden that I had no time to withdraw
my property, especially as I was at two days'
distance from Guayaquil (at Chonana with the
Illingworths). Even Gutierrez himself did not
but all has come
comprehend how it had happened ;
to light now, and it is proved to have been caused
entirely by the roguery of the cashier (Gavino Icaza)
and of the head book-keeper (Thomas Viner Clarke,
an Englishman, I am sorry to say), who, acting in
collusion, have robbed Gutierrez to the amount of
360,000 dollars, and possibly more. Not only had
they from time to time appropriated large sums of
ready money making the monthly balance (shown
to Gutierrez) always tally with the cash in the cash-
box, but they had shipped vast quantities of cacao
and other produce from the warehouses of Gutierrez
(unknown to him) under feigned names, and con-
signed to houses abroad which had no existence ;
and Clarke, in whom his patron reposed unbounded