Page:A narrative of travels on the Amazon and Rio Negro.djvu/77

 ander once had a chance at them, but his gun missed fire, and they immediately flew off. Lower down the river they are scarcely ever seen, and never below Baião, while from this place up they are very abundant. What can be the causes which so exactly limit the range of such a strongly-flying bird? It appears with the rock, and with this there is no doubt a corresponding change in the fruits on which the birds feed.

Our Indians seeing a likely place on the beach for turtles eggs, went on shore in the montaria, and were fortunate enough to find a hundred and twenty-three buried in the sand. They are oily and very savoury, and we had an immense omelet for dinner. The shell is leathery, and the white never coagulates, but is thrown away, and the yolk only eaten. The Indians eat them also raw, mixed with farinha. We dined on the beach, where there was abundance of a plant much resembling chamomile. The sands were very hot, so that it was almost impossible to walk over them barefooted. The Indians, in crossing extensive beaches, stop and dig holes in the sand to cool their feet in. We now got on very slowly, having to tack across and across the river, the wind blowing up it, as it always does at this season.

Where we stopped for breakfast on the 21st, I shot a very prettily-marked small hawk. Insects were also rather abundant, and we captured some fine Papilios, and two or three new species of clear-winged. Heliconia. Alexander found a bees'- nest in a hole in a tree, and got about two quarts of honey, which when strained was very sweet, but with a hot waxy taste. The comb consists of oval cells of black wax, very irregular in shape and size, and displaying little of the skill of our bees at home. The next night, rather late, we arrived at Jambouassu, the sitio of Senhor Seixus, where we were kindly received, and, about nine o'clock, turned into our rédés in his verandah.

The next morning I walked out to examine the premises. The whole of the forest, for some miles round the house, is a cacao plantation, there being about sixty thousand trees, which have all been planted; the small trees and brush having been cleared from the forest, but all the seringa and other large forest-trees left for shade, which the cacao requires. The milk from the seringa-trees is collected every morning in large univalve shells, which are stuck with clay to the tree, and a small incision made in the bark above. It is formed into