Untitled - The Alfred Russel Wallace Website

62 NOTES OF A BOTANIST CHAP.
valley, partly bare of wood but clad with natural
meadow, where Chumbi had placed a few young
cattle. The dwelling-house, being at a little more
than a thousand metres above the sea, was in a
very pleasant climate. The temperature at sunrise
was usually from 64 to 68 J
-- once down to 6i^-
and the maximum rarely exceeded 81, though it
once rose to 87. The weather was fine and dry
during the three weeks of our stay, except one day
of heavy rain with thunder. When we had been
there a few days, incessantly occupied from earliest
dawn till nightfall
in collecting and preserving
specimens of the beautiful plants that everywhere
tired of the salt beef
abounded, I began to grow
and fish which, with plantains and yucas, were our
only fare and as Chumbi told me there was ;
plenty
of game in the woods, I sent him out one morning
before daybreak to shoot paujiles (curassows or
wood-turkeys). At 5.30 A.M. Nelson and I had
our coffee, and then set off to herborize. Fortu-
nately
I indicated to Chumbi's wife the direction we
should take, and we had been gone but a little
while when her son came running after us to beg
that we would return instantly, as his father had
been stung by something in the wood and had
reached home in a dying state. We hurried back,
and on arriving at the house found Chumbi sitting
on a log, looking deadly pale, and moaning from
the pain of a snake-bite in the wrist of the right
arm. He told us in a few broken words that he
was creeping silently through the bush to get
within shot of a turkey, when, on pushing gently
aside an overhanging branch, he felt himself seized
by the wrist, and was immediately attacked with so