beside the ranch buildings. In the trees near the tents grew wonderful
violet orchids.

Many birds were around us; I saw some of them, and Cherrie and Miller
many, many more. They ranged from party-colored macaws, green parrots,
and big gregarious cuckoos down to a brilliant green-and-chestnut
kingfisher, five and a quarter inches long, and a tiny orange-and-
green manakin, smaller than any bird I have ever seen except a hummer.
We also saw a bird that really was protectively colored; a kind of
whippoorwill which even the sharp-eyed naturalists could only make out
because it moved its head. We saw orange-bellied squirrels with showy
orange tails. Lizards were common. We killed our first poisonous snake
(the second we had seen), an evil lance-headed jararaca that was
swimming the river. We also saw a black-and-orange harmless snake,
nearly eight feet long, which we were told was akin to the mussurama;
and various other snakes. One day while paddling in a canoe on the
river, hoping that the dogs might drive a tapir to us, they drove into
the water a couple of small bush deer instead. There was no point in
shooting them; we caught them with ropes thrown over their heads; for
the naturalists needed them as specimens, and all of us needed the
meat. One of the men was stung by a single big red maribundi wasp. For
twenty-four hours he was in great pain and incapacitated for work. In
a lagoon two of the dogs had the tips of their tails bitten off by
piranhas as they swam, and the ranch hands told us that in this lagoon
one of their hounds had been torn to pieces and completely devoured by
the ravenous fish. It was a further illustration of the uncertainty of
temper and behavior of these ferocious little monsters. In other
lagoons they had again and again left us and our dogs unmolested. They
vary locally in aggressiveness just as sharks and crocodiles in
different seas and rivers vary.