Page:The National Geographic Magazine Vol 16 1905.djvu/118

Rh his explorations dispels any illusions of the luxury of travel in tropical forests and makes the hardships undergone by Wallace in the Aru Islands or by Schweinfurt among the Naim Naim people of Central Africa seem insignificant.

The book describes two expeditions, in 1897-1898 and 1900-1901, from Trinidad up the Orinoco toward the headwaters of the Caura, with side trips up the Nichare and cross-country expeditions cut through the forest to Mounts Turagua and Ameha, two of those remarkable mesa-like mountains which are characteristic of southern Venezuela. It is a narrative of daily experiences and observations and sparkles with that humor which is a necessary quality of a good explorer. The observations on animals and plants are unusually vivid and interesting and written with care, yet nowhere prosaic. His ability to take the reader into his confidence and to picture the trials of a naturalist in the tropics may be illustrated by the following:

"If the hornets pay attention to the person of the collector the ants devote themselves to looking after his collections, so that what with having to dodge a being with wings and a sting who means business when he has made his mind up, and trying to devise ways for keeping his property out of the way of an insect that can find a grain of sugar in a stack of hay, the amateur naturalist acquires his first real knowledge of the powers of those so-called lower forms of life."

It were beyond the province of a review to enter in any detail, but as I run over the pages of my friend's book, to collect the materials for which has twice almost cost him his life, certain of his observations seem most worthy of attention. His observations on the healthfulness of Ciudad- Bolivar, situated on the edge of a swamp into which all the village refuse is dumped, those regarding the Indians' confirmative belief in the mosquito as a carrier of the malarial fevers, and the presence of malignant ulcers in certain localities, reminding one of the Bagdad boil, have a bearing upon recent medical researches. His descriptions of the parasol ants, Oecodoma, and the manufacture of their fungus gardens remind one of Belt's historic descriptions. His remarks regarding the power of insects to locate at a distance the objects of their desires and make straight for them is as interesting as anything Maeterlinck has written about the bee.

The ichthyologist will find valuable observations in the book on the strange cannibal fishes of the Caura, and laugh at the antics of the alligator disturbed by the explosion of a dynamite cartridge in its particular pool. The rubber experts will read with interest of the forests of a new rubber tree discovered on the Nichare, a branch of the Caura, and of the Indian method of tapping the rubber tree in this region. Those who know the cumarin perfume of the Tonka bean will be interested to learn that these forests furnish the world with the sweet-smeiling bean, and that their collection is a lucrative business. The geologist will find enough of interest in Andre's descriptions of the formations of the rocky canyons and river bottoms of the Caura and mesa-like mountains to hold his attention. The ornithologist will find described and pictured in cromolithographs at least two rare gorgeous tropical birds and mention of the habits of many other new species, while those ladies who wear egrets without a thought of where they come from will get from these pages the scolding of an ornithologist for assisting in the extinction of the beautiful tropical birds from which at their death the graceful egrets are plucked. The exciting part of the book to the average reader, however, begins in chapter with a description of the wrecking in the rapids of the boat containing all the provisions, clothes, tools, and note books of the party. From this point on, the center