on account of color. All alike were courteous and friendly.

The hounds were at first carried in two of the dugouts, and then let
loose on the banks. We went up-stream for a couple of hours against
the swift current, the paddlers making good headway with their pointed
paddles--the broad blade of each paddle was tipped with a long point,
so that it could be thrust into the mud to keep the low dugout against
the bank. The tropical forest came down almost like a wall, the tall
trees laced together with vines, and the spaces between their trunks
filled with a low, dense jungle. In most places it could only be
penetrated by a man with a machete. With few exceptions the trees were
unknown to me, and their native names told me nothing. On most of them
the foliage was thick; among the exceptions were the cecropias,
growing by preference on new-formed alluvial soil bare of other trees,
whose rather scanty leaf bunches were, as I was informed, the favorite
food of sloths. We saw one or two squirrels among the trees, and a
family of monkeys. There were few sand-banks in the river, and no
water-fowl save an occasional cormorant. But as we pushed along near
the shore, where the branches overhung and dipped in the swirling
water, we continually roused little flocks of bats. They were hanging
from the boughs right over the river, and when our approach roused
them they zigzagged rapidly in front of us for a few rods, and then
again dove in among the branches.

At last we landed at a point of ground where there was little jungle,
and where the forest was composed of palms and was fairly open. It was
a lovely bit of forest. The colonel strolled off in one direction,
returning an hour later with a squirrel for the naturalists. Meanwhile
Fiala and I went through the palm wood to a papyrus-swamp. Many trails
led through the woods, and especially along the borders of the swamp;