Untitled - The Alfred Russel Wallace Website

52 NOTES OF A BOTANIST CHAP.
have brought away more specimens had not my
host, a few days after my arrival, been severely
bitten by a snake, the cure of whom prevented my
lea'ving the house for several days.
[An exceedingly interesting account of this
whole excursion, and of the special incident above
referred to, forms part of a lengthy article in
the short-lived and long-extinct periodical, the
Geographical Magazine. It is unfortunately almost
the only portion of his Tarapoto journal that he
wrote out in full, and I therefore insert it here.]
After exploring the most accessible hills and
gorges within a day's journey of Tarapoto, I
decided to devote a month to a mountain called
La Campana or the Bell, three days' journey away
to westward. It was just visible from Tarapoto,
and was described to me as abounding in ferns and
flowers, and having on its flanks large pajonales
or natural pastures, embosomed in virgin forest.
As all loads must be carried on men's backs in
that region, I had first to get together a sufficient
number of cargueros, as they are called, for the
transport of my baggage, which included salt beef
and fish, as I did not calculate on finding much
beside vegetable food on the mountain, and I
intended to give up my whole time to plants, and
not to waste any of it in hunting game for my
dinner, as I had often had to do on the Rio Negro.
I started therefore on the 2Oth November (1855),
accompanied by my assistant a young Englishman
named Charles Nelson 1
and by six Indian
1 ["Nelson" is here mentioned for the first time, and I can find nothing
L O
more about him except that he \vas English, and stayed with Spruce till he
left Tarapoto. ED.]