Ch. IX.] REMARKABLE SINGING-BIRD. 161 



so the healthy and strong amongst the poorer classes lead 

 an easy and pleasant life ; but the sick and incapacitated 

 amongst them are hadly eff. There is a great indifference 

 amongst the natives to the wants of their comrades struck 

 down by sickness or accident ; and hospitals and asylums 

 are unknown. 



I was told that the cripple, lame as he was, often took 

 long journeys, and had even gone as far as Granada. He 

 had been a soldier in one of the revolutions, when John 

 Chamovro was president, and ascribed the commencement 

 of the disease to getting a chill by bathing when he was 

 heated. 



After he had hobbled off, I had a bathe in the cool 

 river, and then rambled about on the other side, where I 

 found some large mango trees, full of delicious ripe fruit. 

 It was getting on towards noon : the sun was high and 

 hot, and the birds had mostly retired into the deepest 

 shades for their mid-day siesta ; I could have lingered all 

 day, but it was time for me to return, as I had arranged 

 with Yelasquez to accompany him in search of some 

 Indian graves he had heard of about three miles away. 



As I left the river to return, I heard the whistle of the 

 beautiful " toledo," so called because its note resembles 

 these syllables, clearly and slowly whistled, with the 

 emphasis on the last two. Following the sound, it led 

 me to a deep, thickly-timbered gully, at the bottom of 

 which was the bed of a brook, consisting now only of 

 detached pools, over one of which, on the limb of a tree, 

 sat a large dark-coloured hawk, with white-banded tail, 

 watching for fresh-water and land crabs, on which it 

 feeds. I had a long chase after the toledo. As soon as 

 I got within sight of it, sometimes before, it would dart 



M 



