Cuap. Xl. § A MORNING RAMBLE. 303 
animals where unconscious habit has the same result as conscious pre- 
vision. ‘The hours between midnight and dawn are the busiest. The 
turtles excavate with their broad webbed paws deep holes in the fine 
sand : the first comer, in each case, making a pit about three feet deep, 
laying its eggs (about 120 in number) and covering them with sand ; 
the next making its deposit at the top of that of its predecessor, and so on 
until every pit is full. The whole body of turtles frequenting a praia does 
not finish laying in less than fourteen or fifteen days, even when there is 
no interruption. When all have done, the area (called by the Brazilians 
taboleiro), over which they have excavated, is distinguishable from the 
rest of the praia only by signs of the sand having been alittle disturbed. 
On rising I went to join my friends. Few recollections of my 
Amazonian rambles are more vivid and agreeable than that of my walk 
over the white sea of sand on this cool morning. The sky was cloud- 
less ; the just-risen sun was hidden behind the dark mass of woods on 
Shimuni, but the long line of forest to the west, on Barid, with its plumy 
decorations of palms, was lighted up with his yellow, horizontal rays. A 
faint chorus of singing birds reached the ears from across the water, and 
flocks of gulls and plovers were crying plaintively over the swelling 
banks of the praia, where their eggs lay in nests made in little hollows 
of the sand. ‘Tracks of stray turtles were visible on the smooth white 
surface of the praia. The animals which thus wander from the main 
body are lawful prizes of the sentinels ; they had caught in this way two 
before sunrise, one of which we had for dinner. In my walk I disturbed 
several pairs of the chocolate and drab-coloured wild-goose (Anser 
jubatus), which set off to run along the edge of the water. The enjoy 
ment one feels in rambling over these free, open spaces, is no doubt 
enhanced by the novelty of the scene, the change being very great from the 
monotonous landscape of forest which everywhere else presents itself. 
On arriving at the edge of the forest I mounted the sentinel’s stage, 
just in time to see the turtles retreating to the water on the opposite 
side of the sand-bank, after having laid their eggs. The sight was well 
worth the trouble of ascending the shaky ladder. They were about a 
mile off, but the surface of the sands was blackened with the multitudes 
which were waddling towards the river; the margin of the praia was 
rather steep, and they all seemed to tumble head first down the declivity 
into the water. 
I spent the morning of the 27th collecting insects in the woods of 
Shimuni ; assisting my friend in the afternoon to beat a large pool for 
Tracajds, Cardozo wishing to obtain a supply for his table at home. 
The pool was nearly a mile long, and lay on one side of the island be- 
tween the forests and the sand-bank. The sands are heaped up very 
curiously around the margins of these isolated sheets of water ; in the 
present case they formed a steeply-inclined bank, from five to eight feet 
in height. What may be the cause of this formation I cannot imagine. 
The pools always contain a quantity of imprisoned fish, turtles, tracajas, 
and Aiyussds.* The turtles and Aiyussds crawl out voluntarily in the 
* Specimens of this species of turtle are named, in the British Museum collection, 
Podocnemis expansa. 
