Like every other traveller, I suppose, I feel
dreadfully the want of copious notes on common everyday objects, sights
and sounds and incidents, which I imagined I could never forget but
which I now find it impossible to recall with any accuracy.
I have just had a long and most interesting letter from my old companion
Spruce. He says he has had a letter from you about Melastoma, but has
not, he says, for three years seen a single melastomaceous plant! They
are totally absent from the Pacific plains of tropical America, though
so abundant on the Eastern plains. Poor fellow, he seems to be in a
worse state than you are. Life has been a burden to him for three years
owing to lung and heart disease, and rheumatism, brought on by exposure
in high, hot, and cold damp valleys of the Andes. He went down to the
dry climate of the Pacific coast to die more at ease, but the change
improved him, and he thinks to come home, though he is sure he will not
survive the first winter in England. He had never been able to get a
copy of your book, though I am sure no one would have enjoyed or
appreciated it more.
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