260 A NATURALIST IN THE GUIANAS 



May 5. — We start without having eaten, as we can- 

 not afford to use the few beans and the rice we have 

 remaining except once a day. No tapirs have been seen 

 since the one killed on the day we left Ameha. I suppose 

 that, as there is water everywhere in the forest now, the 

 animals do not require to come to the river. Curassows 

 and penelopes, seen in such numbers a month ago, are also 

 getting scarce, and as the mating season has come to a 

 close the birds do not call frequently, so that the procuring 

 of game has become difficult. It rained all the morning, 

 wetting us to the skin. Shot a small set of rapids, 

 and passed an island I had named the Isle of Palms, on 

 account of its vegetation consisting almost entirely of 

 clumps of very graceful palm-trees. We waited for the 

 men at the mouth of a small stream, Pancho cooking our 

 midday allowance of beans. Maite blew the horn, as he 

 was in the habit of doing whenever we stopped to wait for 

 the others. The men had not obtained any game, but 

 they brought a lot of kosoihos, and to me this was more 

 welcome than the tasteless diet of meat and beans we 

 were reduced to. The men always carried an axe with 

 them in their tramp through the forest, so that they might 

 cut down any large fruit-bearing trees they came across. 

 It was still raining when we stopped for the night close 

 to Suraima. The men were more fortunate in the after- 

 noon than they had been in the morning. One of them 

 had killed a curassow. 



May 6. — Shot the rapids of Suraima, and stopped on 

 an island to wait for the others. They did not come up to 

 us until three o'clock in the afternoon, but they brought 

 two curassows, and this made matters a little better. The 

 spot we had hit upon was the only open one in the locality, 

 but the ground and the scrub around were infested with 



