Untitled - The Alfred Russel Wallace Website

RESIDENCE AT TARAPOTO / O
ammonia or rather to my abuse of it --and to
the subsequent chill from exposure to wet for
;
had I not ibeen impatient of the pain of the sting,
I have little doubt it might soon have subsided of
itself.
[A few more passages from the letter to Mr.
Bentham, illustrating the difficulties a collector has
to encounter, are now given. It is probable that
the same condition of things still exists there.]
TARAPOTO, Dec. 1855.
I have been most put about here for materials
of which to make boxes, as such things as boards
are not to be had. The only use the inhabitants
have for a board is to make a door, and this is
either cut out of some old canoe or they cut down
a tree in the forest, roughly carve out a door from
it on the spot, and bring it home on their backs.
For other purposes, such as benches, shelves,
bedsteads, etc., the never- failing Cana brava (Gyncnuiu
is all
saccharoides] they require. After trying
on the
in vain to buy boards, I went to two ports
Huallaga and in each of them bought
an old canoe.
I had then to go again with a carpenter to cut
them up into pieces of convenient size, which had
to be conveyed to Tarapoto on Indians' backs, and
afterwards laboriously adxed down into something
like boards. All this, with the trouble of looking
up Indians, the making of two boxes and prepar-
ing
boards for other two, left me little leisure for
anything else for the space
of near a month.
I propose extending my stay at Tarapoto
little over the twelvemonth say to some in