Untitled - The Alfred Russel Wallace Website

XVI RESIDENCE AT TARAPOTO 81
speedily dispatched with bullets and lances. He
made indeed no sign of resistance, and seemed
stupefied by the savage shrieks and cries of his pursuers,
who must have been near upon a thousand.
They then carried him out to a piece of open
ground, skinned, roasted, and ate him. This unfortunate
tiger had been surprised while quietly
breakfasting on a fat turkey. Tiger-skins both of
the red puma and the spotted jaguar may be
here for the merest trifle a knife or a
bought
handkerchief. They
serve me for cushions and
mats, and my dog's bed is usually a tiger's skinstretched
across the doorway by night, for I
generally sleep with the door wide open on account
of the heat. The dog amuses himself by gnawing
at them, and in this way has eaten me up three
tigers' skins.
In a box of plants I am dispatching to Mr.
Bentham I have enclosed a small parcel for you
containing two " monteras," which are broadbrimmed
cloth hats of many colours, worn by all
the women of Tarapoto in out-of-door work. It
they reach you safely, will you keep one of them for
Mrs. Teasdale and keep the other for my sister
Lizzie. Although they may never be worn, they
will serve as memorials of the usages of a strange
land, and of a friend whom you may never
again. They will probably seem to you out-
rageously gaudy and harlequin-like,
but somehow
they harmonise excellently hen- with everything
around them. They arc worn by the
chiefly when spinning cotton yarn in the
or in the open grounds near the town,
of spinning is this. A little child
VOL. II