612 BOTANICAL INFORMATION. 
negroes, whenever these should rise in arms againstthe colony. 
With the exception of one canoe, which I despatched to Anka, 
to give the chief notice of my approach, that he might send off 
the necessary barks for our transport, I here dismissed all the 
other canoes. And a whole month was I obliged to wait, ere the 
chief thought proper to send down the canoes, which he prob- 
ably might not, even then, have done, if I had not found means 
to let him know that if he did not fulfil this duty instanter, 
I should go back to Paramaribo. The hint was taken, and 
though I had asked but six canoes, he sent fifteen, each 
manned by three persons, and all under the command of his 
own chief captain, Arabi, a very intelligent negro, who strongly 
advised me not to risk my life by proceeding at that season, 
but rather to wait the dry weather, when the navigation of 
the river might be more safely performed. 1 think I should 
have hearkened. to this counsel, which was as respectfully 
tendered as it was founded on correct grounds, if it had been 
at all possible for me to collect plants in the neighbourhood 
of the Post; but the river was enormously swollen, and the 
whole surrounded land deluged with water, so that I must 
have remained perfectly idle and confined to the house—a 
prospect so intolerable to me, that, though suffering from 
low fever, I determined to embark. "There is nothing inte- 
resting to the naturalist at the Post Armina, unless it be the 
hundreds of thousands of Bats, which may be seen clinging 
under the roofs of the thatched dwellings, their whistling 
noise occasionally breaking the monotony of the day and in- 
creasing with the advance of evening. As soon as the de- 
clining sun has sent forth his last gleam, off they all start, 
and, like a dark cloud, take the direction of the east, when 
immediately a small Black Falcon, (le Chasseur des Chauve- 
souris, Buffon) pounces among them, and never fails to cap- 
ture a few. This Bat, a small animal, is that species which 
sucks the blood of all warm-blooded animals, and preferably 
that of the human race, and I must declare, having myself 
submitted to the experiment, that the way in which the 
creature sets to work is highly interesting. Guided by in- 
