Cuap. XI. A CEBUS MONKEY. 325 
the thick foliage overhead. About eleven o’clock we saw a break in the 
forest before us, and presently emerged on the banks of a considerable 
sheet of water. This was one of the interior pools of which there are 
so many in this district. The margins were elevated some few feet, and 
sloped down to the water, the ground being hard and dry to the water’s 
edge, and covered with shrubbery vegetation. We passed completely 
round this pool, finding the crowns of the trees on its borders tenanted 
by curassow birds, whose presence was betrayed as usual by the peculiar 
note which they emit. My companions shot two of them. At the 
farther end of the lake lay a deep watercourse, which we traced for about 
half a mile, and found to communicate with another and smaller pool. 
This second one evidently swarmed with turtles, as we saw the snouts 
of many peering above the surface of the water: the same had not been 
seen in the larger lake, probably because we had made too much noise 
in hailing our discovery, on approaching its banks. My friends made 
an arrangement on the spot for returning to this pool, after the termina- 
tion of the egg harvest on Catua. 
In recrossing the space between the two pools we heard the crash of 
monkeys in the crowns of trees overhead. The chase of these occupied 
us a considerable time. José fired at length at one of the laggards of 
the troop, and wounded him. He climbed pretty nimbly towards a 
denser part of the tree, and a second and a third discharge failed to bring 
him down. The poor maimed creature then trailed his limbs to one 
of the topmost branches, where we descried him soon after, seated and 
picking the entrails from a wound in his abdomen ; a most heartrending 
sight. The height from the ground to the bough on which he was 
perched could not have been less than 150 feet, and we could get a 
glimpse of him only by standing directly underneath, and straining our 
eyes upwards. We killed him at last by loading our best gun witha 
careful charge, and resting the barrel against the tree trunk to steady the 
aim. A few shots entered his chin, and he then fell heels over head 
screaming to the ground. Although it was I who gave the final shut, 
this animal did not fall to my lot in dividing the spoils at the end of the 
day. I regret now not having preserved the skin, as it belonyed to 
a very large species of Cebus, and one which I never met with after- 
wards. 
it was about one o’clock in the afternoon when we again reached the 
spot where we had first struck the banks of the larger pool. We had 
hitherto had but poor sport, so after dining on the remains of our fried 
fish and farinha, and smoking our cigarettes, the apparatus for making 
which, including bamboo tinder-box and steel and flint for striking a 
light, being carried by every one always on these expeditions, we made 
off in another (westerly) direction through the forest to try to find better 
hunting-ground. We quenched our thirst with water from the pool, 
which I was rather surprised to find quite pure. These pools are, of 
course, sometimes fouled for a time by the movements of alligators and 
other tenants in the fine mud which settles at the bottom, but I never 
observed a scum of conferve or traces of oil revealing animal decom- 
position on the surface of these waters, nor was there ever any foul 
smell perceptible. The whole of this level land, instead of being covered 
