Ill 



THE SCAVENGERS OF THE SHORE, AND THE 

 MANGROVE WOODS 



X HE sea is an eternal grave. At every moment dying creatures 

 are sinking on to the floor of the sea, where innumerable living 

 creatures set to work upon their corpses. What cannot be utilized 

 is covered by the gradual deposition of the fine ooze which the 

 rivers bring down to the sea. 



The bodies of other creatures, which perish near the coast, are 

 cast ashore by the sea. For a long while the ocean plays with them 

 as though reluctant to surrender its booty; it draws them back, 

 and again washes them forward with its breaking rollers, until at 

 last some greater wave casts them so high upon the beach that those 

 which follow are no longer able to reach them. 



And there the dead fishes lie, with here and there a drowned 

 mammal, and the high-water mark would soon be a line of putre- 

 fying corpses, had not this coastal cemetery its own living sextons. 

 Hovering high in the air, they spy, with their piercing eyes, the 

 smallest of these dead creatures, descend upon it with rustling wings, 

 and smite their beaks into its flesh. 



These sextons are the black vultures or Urubus, the characteristic 

 tokens of the Brazilian coast, and the voyager from Europe rejoices 

 to see the heavens alive with these great birds — for they are as 

 large as a turkey — cruising in majestic circles. I have seen them in 

 a coastal thicket, at work on the carcase of a horse ; I have seen 

 them on the beach at Santos, drying their outspread Vv'ings in the 

 morning sun; they came marching up from the water in long files, 

 turning their narrow heads, which seem too small for their corpu- 

 lent, black-plumaged bodies, to gaze at me as I drew near, though 

 they did not allow themselves to be perturbed. And often I saw 

 them floating like black shadows between the glittering fans of the 

 coconut-palms (Plate lo). 



Even in the interior of the country I saw them frequently, and 

 at Caruani, a little town eight hours' journey by rail from the 

 coast, I saw their nesting-places on the high rocks. In that country, 

 where people simply throw their refuse, and the carcases of animals, 

 into the nearest thicket, it is the vultures that prevent the air from 

 being poisoned and breeding pestilence. For this reason they are 



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