Untitled - The Alfred Russel Wallace Website

FROM MANAOS TO TARAPOTO 31
pretty nearly done up, and on the very day
I arrived
I was seized with diarrhoea caused
probably by
drinking the saline waters of the I Huallaga. had
shaken off this when I was taken with
scarcely
influenza, which still holds me. To these inopportune
bodily ailments have been added no small
mental trouble. You will perhaps have heard in
England
of the number of adventurers of all
nations, but principally English and Americans,
who, misled by a false report of gold on the Upper
of these
Maranon, went thither it. seeking Many
had passed the Barra before I arrived there, but I
still met several, and amongst them an English
sailor who seemed a very quiet fellow, and whom I
engaged to accompany me to Peru, thinking that a
stout companion like him would be invaluable to
me in a country where, as report truly said, there
was no law but that of the strongest, and acts of
atrocity were of frequent occurrence. I might, with
a little more forethought, have considered that a
man who had once become imbued with the idea of
acquiring riches by some sudden fortune knew he had been a "digger" in
I
(for
Australia) was
never likely to take steadily to any work which
brought him in but small, though certain, gains ;
but I could not tell beforehand what I know now,
that my companion had marked by violence
course through Peru, and had been in prison at
Lima for murder. When we readied Peru, and
had consequently passed the limit of any efficient
police, his nature began to show itself, and I had
proof that he sought occasion to murder me and
decamp with the I money carried with me. On tinway
here from Nauta he ill-treated tin- Indians, and