WCP6667

[1]^1,2

Santarem [Santarém]³, Rio Amazonas.

April, 1850.

My dear Sir /

I⁴ am sending a case of living plants for your gardens⁵, and I put a few Museum⁶ specimens and some seeds into two large boxes of dried plants that go at the same time to Mr. Bentham⁷, with the request that he will forward them to you as early as possible.

I have lately received a few letters from England and amongst them one from you, dated Jan^y 10, and from several allusions in it I am certain that you must have written a few days previously at much greater length, but that letter is unfortunately missing — detained, probably, either at Pará⁸ or at Liverpool, & I have sent to Pará to enquire about it. I am much grieved at this, for I have no doubt your former letter contained an account of the state in which my collections reached you and of how you were satisfied with them, with many suggestions to guide me in my future gatherings. A sentence in Singlehurst's⁹ letter "Sir W. Hooker¹⁰ tells us he is well pleased with your dried collections" is sufficient to assure me that they were not all spoiled when they reached you. — I am even ignorant what the £16~11~6 is for, and whether it includes the price of a set of Pyrenean mosses, which Mr. Mitten¹¹ had to dispose of for me. — Yet there is no safer way¹² of sending to me — Admiral Beaufort's¹³ maps have certainly never reached Pará, & I suspect them to be laid in the Custom house at Rio [de Janeiro].

The contents of your second letter and of Mr. Bentham's are however very encouraging as relates to the dried plants. I learn from them that my first sending is at least as good as you expected from me. [one illeg. word struck through] My acquaintance with tropical species being so very limited[,] I did not consider it wise to leave anything that I saw in good state, except a few weedy-looking things that grew everywhere. Since the setting in of the rainy season I have taken more time to examine my plants, & I am becoming pretty familiar with the aspect of most of the Natural Orders. — I hope Mr. Bentham will find several things new to him in my Santarem¹⁴ collection, especially as the district has been scarcely examined.

Any new species that you send me will be very useful. — I¹⁵ followed Mr. Bentham's directions in not packing the specimens one upon the other, but ferns, especially, would I think take no harm if packed [2] in 2 or 3 layers on each sheet. — I fear I shall be ill off ere long for drying paper — at Pará I c[oul]^d find none to suit either for quality or size; the nearest was a French paper, much too large but rough & porous. I am sending now for a little more of this, but if I c[oul]^d get out from England a couple of reams of Bentall's paper¹⁶ (20 inches by 12, folded) it would come in very useful. This put into a box, and marked outside "rough grey paper" would pay very little duty at Pará, but perhaps the cost of carriage from London to Pará might be so great as to make the French paper after all the better bargain. This you will be able to judge of from what Singlehurst has already charged you.

Mr Reeve¹⁷ has written to me about the shells, and I enclose a few lines for him which you will perhaps be kind enough to forward. In Mr Bentham's boxes are also a few shells which Mr. Reeve may dispose of for me if he can.

You¹⁸ will find a bottle containing Coleoptera in spirit; this I wish Mr. Saunders¹⁹ to take charge of for me. I have no stock of small needles ^pins with me, and if I had the ants would eat up any beetles stuck up into boxes, without greater precautions than I have time to take. — The contents of this bottle were collected at Santarem and Obidos²⁰, and there is also a small blue frog from the Falls of the Aripecurú²¹.

The²² few spec[imen]^s of rocks from the Falls of the Aripecurú you can offer to the British Museum — they would not be of any value (I suppose) anywhere else. Before I leave Santarem I intend to send a complete series of the rocks of Santarem and Monte Alégre [Monte Alegre]²³. — It is strange that I have as yet neither seen nor heard of any organic remains in this region — Mr Wallace has been equally unsuccessful in meeting with any.

When I arrived at Santarem last October I hired the only house that was vacant (for houses are more scarce here than elsewhere in the province); but it suited me very well, for it has a spacious verandah at the back where we could work at our plants, and a paved yard where we could spread our paper &c. to dry. The adjoining house was tenanted by a single man, and we were very quiet; but when we returned from Obidos we found its tenanted by a family from several days up the Tapajoz²⁴ [Tapajos], including amongst them, besides children, several slaves, big & little, numbers of fowls, turkeys, guinea-fowls, goats, dogs, land-tortoises and other unclean [3] beasts. I should mention that this house claims half our yard and has a verandah continuous with ours, and then you will understand how on our return we found both yard and verandah befouled and worse than useless to us. A few live plants that we had left in the verandah, under charge of a slave of Mr. Hislop's²⁵, he had taken the precaution to place in an outhouse which we have, but there, for want of light and air, some of them had died. — Since then our live plants have stored in the same outhouse, as near as possible to the window (kept wide open) and w[oul]^d do very well were it not that the niggers and fowls contrive to enter & play sundry pranks with them, such as nipping off the leading shoot. — What I have for Kew are now all in the case, fastened down, & only half the glass roof remains to be put one. Yesterday morning when I went to look at them I found one of my Sucu-ubas broken off by the root — there were two; one from a cutting that I struck last November has grown beautifully, the other was a young plant — it is the latter that is destroyed. I procured another cutting, but I shall be obliged to fasten up the case before I can ascertain whether it has taken root. — The other plants are en bonne santé [French: in good health], but they will have a severe ordeal to go through between here and Pará, & it is not worth my while going the tedious journey to Pará & back to take care of them. — I am very desirous they should reach you alive — the two Melastomaceae are very pretty things, and I send also seeds of both — will not the "Jará" palm be Leopoldinia pulchra Mart? — I send its fruit and leaves, but the spadices (from which the fruit has fallen) though not very large are too large to be crammed into Mr. Bentham's boxes.

I send you 35 packets of seeds, many of them of species occurring in my dried collection. Some of these seeds & fruits are curious, and you may possibly like to put a portion of such into the Museum. — I could send many succulent fruits but I have nothing to put them in — it is impossible to get at once a sufficient number to²⁶ fill one of our big barrels. Mr. Wallace brought with him, for preserving reptiles

&c., a number of patent ^{cylindr[ica]l} earthen jars, with tops of the same material encircled by a metallic rim — a half turn fastens these effectually. If you can make out where these jars are to be had²⁷ I 89 N^. wish you would send me some — were it only half-a-dozen, I could fill a part or the whole of these, as materials offered, and then despatch the contents to England in a barrel, reserving the jars for future operations. Bottles here are [4] awfully dear and often not to be had at any price. — 6 of the jars, fitting pretty tightly into a box w[oul]^d be easily moved about from place to place.

I²⁸ enclose a small parcel of seeds for Mr. Law²⁹ of Castle-Howard and another for Mr. Pince³⁰ — will you be kind enough to send them? Along with some dried plants for your Museum I have put also a few specimens for Mr. Pince to illustrate the seeds I send him, but they will be awkward to convey to him — perhaps if you tell him their names that will do quite as well.

Lately I sent Mr. Pince a barrel of Orchises — I have some for Kew, but I wait until I shall have seen what Monte Alégre affords before despatching them. — This is a poor country for Arums, but I send 3 terrestrial species — the twiners consist almost entirely of two common species.

I am sorry to learn from Mr. Smith³¹ the fate of my Orchises, but I fancy they had been baked in Miller's³² warehouse, for I learnt afterwards that the vessel did not sail for nearly a month after I started up the river.

My contributions to your Museum are this time only insignificant — the only native manufacture at Santarem being baskets from the tender leaves in the young shoots of the Tucumá³³. I send a small work — basket, and I have two other baskets too large to be sent at present — these, as well as the spadix and the spathe of the Bacába palm ^{and some other large things,} I reserve to be sent after my return from Monte Alégre, whence I hope to bring you some interesting things. I have already commissioned a number of the beautiful painted cuyas [indigenous language: Calabash basins] made only at Monte Alégre, through Dr. Campos³⁴, whose wife is a native of that place — this is necessary, for they are only made as there is a demand for them. I shall send many more than you will require, but I have no doubt purchasers will be found for them, they are so exquisitely done, equalling some of the best Chinese painted articles — and when it is considered that they are made ^done by Indians girls, who make their own brushes & colors, they become still more interesting. I have learnt from Signora Campos what these colors are, & I shall be able to procure specimens of them.

The 2 or 3 fruits from the R[io]. Aripecurú will be hardly worth preserving. — Nos. 27 and 28 are fragments of woods, which may serve until I can procure better. — No. 29 is the fruit ^seeds of the Sapacáya — I have in vain tried to procure the fruit entire, with the lid, and the tree does not grow here.³⁵