324 EXCURSIONS IN NEIGHBOURHOOD OF EGA. Cuap. XI. 
by the natives than jaguar or alligator. The individual seen by Lino 
lay coiled up at the foot of a tree, and was scarcely distinguishable, on 
account of the colours of its body being assimilated to those of the fallen 
leaves. Its hideous flat triangular head, connected with the body by a thin 
neck, was reared and turned towards us: Fraza6é killed it with a charge 
of shot, shattering it completely, and destroying, to my regret, its value as 
a specimen. In conversing on the subject of Jarardcas as we walked 
onwards, every one of the party was ready to swear that this snake 
attacks man without provocation, leaping towards him from a consider- 
able distance when he approaches. I met, in the course of my daily 
rambles in the woods, many Jararacas, and once or twice very narrowly 
escaped treading on them, but never saw them attempt to spring. On 
some subjects the testimony of the natives of a wild country is utterly 
worthless. ‘The bite of the Jarardcas is generally fatal. I knew of 
four or five instances of death from it, and only of one clear case of 
recovery after being bitten ; but in that case the person was lamed for 
life. 
We walked over moderately elevated and dry ground for about a 
mile, and then descended (three or four feet only) to the dry bed of 
another creek. This was pierced in the same way as the former 
watercourse, with round holes full of mud and water. They occurred 
at intervals of a few yards, and had the appearance of having 
been made by the hand of man. The smallest were about two feet, 
the largest seven or eight feet in diameter. As we approached 
the most considerable of the larger ones, I was startled at seeing 
a number of large serpent-like heads bobbing above the surface. They 
proved to be those of electric eels, and it now occurred to me that these 
round holes were made by these animals working constantly round and 
round in the moist muddy soil. Their depth (some of them were at 
least eight feet deep) was doubtless due also to the movements of the 
eels in the soft soil, and accounted for their not drying up, in the fine 
season, with the rest of the creek. Thus, whilst alligators and turtles. 
in this great inundated forest region retire to the larger pools during the 
dry season, the electric eels make for themselves little ponds in which 
to pass the season of drought. 
My companions now cut each a stout pole, and proceeded to eject the 
eels in order to get at the other fishes, with which they had discovered 
the ponds to abound. I amused them all very much by showing how 
the electric shock from the eels could pass from one person to another. 
We joined hands ina line whilst I touched the biggest and freshest of the 
animals on the head with the point of my hunting-knife. We found that 
this experiment did not succeed more than three times with the same 
eel when out of the water; for the fourth time the shock was scarcely 
perceptible. All the fishes found in the holes (besides the eels) belonged 
to one species, a small kind of Acari, or Loricaria, a group whose 
members have a complete bony integument. Lino and the boy strung 
them together through the gills with slender sipds, and hung them on the 
trees to await our return later in the day. 
Leaving the bed of the creek, we marched onwards, always ieee 
the centre of the land, guided by the sun, which now glimmered through 
