if a few drops of blood, be shed on the water, they arrive by thousands at the surface. When we reflect on the number of these fish, the most voracious and cruel of which are only four or five inches long; on the triangular form of their sharp and cutting teeth, and on the amplitude of their retractile mouth, we need not be surprised at the fear which the caribe excites in the inhabitants of the banks of the Apure and the Oroonoko. In places where the river was very limpid, and where not a fish appeared, we threw into the water little morsels of flesh covered with blood. In a few minutes a cloud of caribes came to dispute the prey. The belly of this fish has a cutting edge, indented like a saw; a character that may be traced in several kinds, the serra-salmes, the myletes, and the pristigastres. The presence of a second adipous dorsal fin; and the form of the teeth, covered by lips distant from each other, and largest in the lower jaw; place the caribe among the serra-salmes. Its mouth is much wider than that of the myletes of Mr. Cuvier. It's body toward the back is ashcoloured, with a tint of green; but the belly, the gill covers, and the pectoral, anal, and ventral fins, are of a fine orange. Three species (or varieties) are known in the Oroonoko, and are distinguished by their size. The mean, or intermediate, appears to be identical with the mean species of the piraya, or piranha of Marcgrav. (Salmo rhombeus, Lin.) I described and drew it on the spot. The caribito has a very agreeable taste. As no one dares to bathe where it is found, it may be considered as one of the greatest scourges of those climates, in which the sting of the moschettoes, and the irritation of the skin, render the use of baths so necessary.

We stopped at noon in a desert spot called Algodonal. I left my companions, while they drew the boat to land, and werejoccupied in preparing our dinner. I went along the beach to observe nearer a group of crocodiles sleeping in the sun, and placed in such a manner, as to have their tails, furnished with broad plates, resting on one another. Some little herons, white as snow, walked along their backs, and even upon their heads, as if they were passing over trunks of trees. The crocodiles were of a greenish grey, half covered with dried mud; from their colour and immobility they might have been taken for statues of bronze. This excursion had nearly proved fatal to me. I had kept my eyes constantly turned toward the river; but, on picking up some spangles of mica agglomerated together in the sand, I discovered the recent footsteps of a tiger, easily distinguishable from their form and size. The animal had gone toward the forest; and turning my eyes on that side, I found myself within eighty steps of a jaguar, lying under the thick foliage of a ceiba. No tiger had ever appeared to me so large.

There are accidents in life, against which we might seek in vain to fortify our reason. I was extremely frightened, and yet sufficiently master of myself, and of my motions, to enable me to follow the advice which the Indians had often given us, how to act in such cases. I continued to walk on, without running; avoided moving my arms; and thought I observed that the jaguar's attention was fixed on a herd of capybaras, which were crossing the river.-I then began to return, making a large circuit toward the edge of the water. As the distance increased, I thought I might accelerate my pace. How often was I tempted to look back in order to assure myself that I was not pursued! Happily I yielded very tardily to this desire. The jaguar had remained motionless. These enormous cats with spotted robes, are so well fed in countries abounding in capybaras, pecaris, and deer, that they rarely attack men. I arrived at the boat out of breath, and related my adventure to the Indians. They appeared very little moved by it; yet, after having loaded our firelocks, they accompained us to the ceiba, beneath which the jaguar had lain. He was there no longer, and it would have been imprudent to have pursued him into the forest where we must have dispersed, or marched in file, amid intertwining lianas.

In the evening we passed the mouth of the Cano del Manati, thus named on account of the immense quantity of manatees caught there every year. This herbivorous animal of the cetaceous family, called by the Indians apcia and avia, attains here generally ten or twelve feet in length. It weighs from five hundred to eight hundred pounds. We saw the water covered with it's excrements, which are very fetid, but perfectly resembling those of an ox. It abounds in the Oroonoko, below the cataracts, in the Rio Meta, and in the Apure, between the two islands of Carrizales and Conserva. We found no vestiges of nails on the external surface or the edge of the fins, which are quite smooth; but little rudiments of nails appear at the third phalanx, when the skin of the fins is taken off. We dissected one of these animals, which was

nine feet long, at Carichana, a mission of the Oroonoko. The upper lip was four inches longer than the lower. It is covered with a very fine skin, and serves as a proboscis or probe to distinguish surrounding objects. The inside of the mouth, which has a sensible warmth in an animal newly killed, presents a very singular conformation. The tongue is almost motionless; but before the tongue there is a fleshy excrescence in each jaw, and a concavity, lined with a very hard skin, into which the excrescence fits. The manatee eats such quantities of grass, that we have found it's stomach, which is divided into several cavities, and it's intestines, which are a hundred and eight feet long, alike filled with it. On opening the animal at the back, we were struck with the magnitude, form, and situation of it's lungs. They have very large cells, and resemble immense swimming bladders. They are three feet long. Filled with air, they have a bulk of more than a thousand cubic inches. I was surprised to see, that, possessing such considerable receptacles for air, the manatee comes so often to the surface of the water to breathe. It's flesh, which, from what prejudice I know not, is considered unwholesome and calenturiosa, is very savoury. It appeared to me to resemble pork rather than beef. It is most esteemed by the Guanoes and the Ottomacks; and these two nations addict themselves particularly to the catching of the manatce. It's flesh, salted and dried in the Sun, can be preserved a whole year; and, as the clergy regard this mammiferous animal as a fish, it is much sought for during Lent. The vital principal is singularly strong in the manatee; it is tied after being harpooned, but is not killed till it has been taken into the canoe. This is effected, when the animal is very large, in the middle of the river, by filling the canoe two-thirds with water, sliding it under the animal, and then bailing out the water by means of a calebash. This fishery is the easiest after great inundations, when the manatee has passed from the great rivers into the lakes and surrounding marshes, and the waters diminish rapidly. At the period when the Jesuits governed the missions of the lower Oroonoke, they assembled every year at Cabruta, below the mouth of the Apure, to have a grand fishing for manatees, with the Indians of their missions, at the foot of the mountain now called El Capuchino. The fat of the animal, known by the name of manteca de manati, is used for lamps in the churches; and is also employed in preparing food. It has not the fetid smell of whale oil, or that of other cetaceous animals that spout water. The hide of the manatee, which is more than an inch and a half thick, is cut into slips, and serves, like thongs of ox leather, to supply the place of cordage in the Llanos. When immersed in water, it has the defect of undergoing an incipient degree of putrefaction. Whips are made of it in the Spanish colonies. Hence the words latigo and manati are synonimous. These whips of manatee leather are a cruel instrument of punishment for the unhappy slaves, and even for the Indians of the missions, who, according to the laws, ought to be treated like free men.

We passed the night opposite the island of Conserva. In skirting the forest, we were struck at the view of an enormous trunk of a tree seventy feet high, and thickly set with branching thorns. It is called by the natives barba de tigre. It was perhaps a tree of the berberideous family. The Indians had kindled fires at the edge of the water. We again perceived, that their light attracted the crocodiles, and even the porpoises (toninas,) the noise of which interrupted our sleep, till the fire was extinguished. We had two persons on the watch this night; which I mention only because it serves to paint the savage character of these places. A female jaguar approached our station in taking her young one to drink at the river. The Indians succeeded in chasing her away, but we heard for a long time the cries of the little jaguar, which mewed like a young cat. Soon after our great dog was bitten, or, as the Indians say, pricked at the point of the nose by some enormous bats, that hovered around our hammocks. They were furnished with a long tail, like the molosses: I believe however, that they were phyllostomes, the tongue of which, furnished with papillæ, is an organ of suction, and is capable of being considerably elongated. The wound was very small and round. Though the dog uttered a plaintive cry, when he felt himself bitten, it was not from pain, but because he was affrighted at the sight of the bats, that came out from beneath our hammocks. These accidents are much more rare than is believed even in the country itself. In the course of several years, notwithstanding we slept so often in the open air, in climates where vampires* and other analogous species are so common, we were never wounded. Besides, the puncture is no way dangerous, and in general causes so little pain,

Verspertilio spectrum.

that it often does not awaken the person, till after the bat has withdrawn.

April the 4th. This was the last day we passed on the Rio Apure. The vegetation of it's banks become more and more uniform We had begun for some days past, particularly since we had left the mission of Arichuna, to suffer cruelly from the stings of insects, that covered our faces and hands. They were not moschettoes, which have the appearance of little flies, or of the genus simulium but zancudoes, which are real gnats, very different from our culex pipiens.* These tipulariæ appear only after sunset. Their proboscis is so long, that, when they fix on the lower surface of a hammock, they pierce the hammock and the thickest garments with their sting.

We had intended to pass the night at the Vuelta del Palmito; but the number of jaguars at this part of the Apure is so great, that our Indians found two hidden behind the trunk of a locusttree, at the moment when they were going to sling our hammocks. We were advised to re-embark, and take our station in the island of Apurito, near its junction with the Oroonoko. That portion of the island belongs to the province of Caraccas, while the right banks of the Apure and the Oroonoko make a part, one of the province of Varinas, the other of Spanish Guayana. We found no trees to which we could suspend our hammocks, and were obliged to sleep on ox hides spread on the ground. The boats are too narrow, and too full of zancudoes, to pass the night in them.

In the place where we had landed our instruments, the banks being steep, we saw new proofs of what I have elsewhere called the indolence of the gallinaceous birds of the tropics. The curassoas and cashew birdst have the habit of going down several times a day to the river to allay their thirst. They drink a great deal, and at short intervals. A great number of these birds had joined themselves near our station to a flock of parraka pheasants. They had great difficulty in climbing up the steep banks; they attempted it several times without using their wings. We drove them before us, as you would drive sheep. The zamuro vultures also raise themselves from the ground with great reluctance.

I had a good observation after midnight of the meridian height

* Mr. Latreille has discovered, that the moschettoes of South Carolina are of the genus simulium (attractocera meigen.)

† The latter (crax pauxi) is less common than the former.