British exploits in South America; a history of British activities in exploration, military adventure, diplomacy, science, and trade, in Latin American . and his adven-tures here were even more diversified than those of passed many months in canoes which proved them-selves rotten and leaky, and sometimes in a strong windsquall it was a question of minutes as to whether the windwould die down or the frail vessel go to pieces. On oneoccasion in the midst of a stormy and pitch-dark night,Wallaces boat was laboring so much that all hope wasabandoned. All at once, just as those on board we
British exploits in South America; a history of British activities in exploration, military adventure, diplomacy, science, and trade, in Latin American . and his adven-tures here were even more diversified than those of passed many months in canoes which proved them-selves rotten and leaky, and sometimes in a strong windsquall it was a question of minutes as to whether the windwould die down or the frail vessel go to pieces. On oneoccasion in the midst of a stormy and pitch-dark night,Wallaces boat was laboring so much that all hope wasabandoned. All at once, just as those on board were ex-pecting to find themselves in the waves, their craft be-came perfectly still. As the gale was still howling asloudly as ever, the thing seemed perfectly inexplicable,until the morning showed them that their cranky littleship had, most fortunately for its occupants, run into oneof those enormous beds of floating grass which are fairlycommon on the Amazon, and which had sheltered thecanoe from an otherwise certain destruction. All this isto say nothing of the cataracts; for it was now and thenWallaces lot to have to undertake the passage of no. SOUTH AMERICAN INDIANS SOME BRITISH NATURALISTS 413 fewer than ten distinct dangerous rapids in the course ofa single day! His Indian assistants, moreover, were no more satis-factory than those of Bates. Sometimes the local au-thorities pressed them very unceremoniously into theservice, and once one of Wallaces Indians insisted onleaving him in order to return and kill a Brazilian whohad ill-treated him! Another of the naturalists assist-ants was a youthful but refractory character who wore alarge chain round his body and leg as a punishment. Thiswas concealed beneath his trousers, but it clanked with asinister and disagreeable sound at every step he took. Even the people of authority in those regions of thatday were by no means devoid of their own seemed no reason in the least, for instance, whythe commandant of
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Keywords: ., bookcentury1900, bookdecade1910, booksubjectsouthamericahistory
