evening feeding-places. Great masses of a floating plant, shaped
like a cabbage, were abundant on the lake, and on these the white
egrets and other wading birds often alighted. The boatmen told
me--and the story is likely enough to be true--that the alligators,
floating about like logs, with their eyes above the water, watch
these birds, and, moving quietly up until within a few yards of
them, sink down below the surface, come up underneath them, catch
them by the legs and drag them under water. Besides the alligators,
large freshwater sharks appear to be common in the lake. Sometimes,
when in shallow water, we saw a pointed billow rapidly moving away
from the boat, produced by some large fish below, and I was told it
was a shark.

After dark the wind failed us again, and we got slowly along, but
finally reached our port, San Ubaldo, about ten o'clock, and found
an officer of the mining company, living in a small thatched hut,
stationed there to send on the machinery and other goods that
arrived for the mines. A large tiled store had also just been built
by the owner of the estate there, Don Gregorio Quadra, under the
verandah of which I hung my hammock for the night. Mules were
waiting at San Ubaldo for us, and early next morning we set off,
with our luggage on pack mules. We crossed some rocky low hills,
with scanty vegetation, and, after passing the cattle hacienda of
San Jose, reached the plains of the same name, about two leagues in
width, now dry and dusty, but in the wet season forming a great
slough of water and tenacious mud, through which the mules have to
wade and plunge.

In the midst of these plains there are some rocky knolls, like
islands, on which grow spiny cactuses, low leathery-leaved trees,