Page:The naturalist on the River Amazons 1863 v2.djvu/310

 strung them together through the gills with slender sipós, and hung them on the trees to await our return later in the day.

Leaving the bed of the creek, we marched onwards, always towards the centre of the land; guided by the sun, which now glimmered through the thick foliage overhead. About eleven o'clock we saw a break in the forest before us, and presently emerged on the banks of a considerable sheet of water. This was one of the interior pools of which there are so many in this district. The margins were elevated some few feet, and sloped down to the water, the ground being hard and dry to the water's edge, and covered with shrubby vegetation. We passed completely round this pool, finding the crowns of the trees on its borders tenanted by curassow birds, whose presence was betrayed as usual by the peculiar note which they emit. My companions shot two of them. At the farther end of the lake lay a deep watercourse, which we traced for about half a mile, and found to communicate with another and smaller pool. This second one evidently swarmed with turtles, as we saw the snouts of many peering above the surface of the water: the same had not been seen in the larger lake, probably because we had made too much noise in hailing our discovery, on approaching its banks. My friends made an arrangement on the spot for returning to this pool, after the termination of the egg harvest on Catuá.

In recrossing the space between the two pools, we heard the crash of monkeys in the crowns of trees overhead. The chace of these occupied us a considerable time. José fired at length at one of the laggards of the