A HUNT FOR HOATZINS 93 



Guiana betwixt muddy salt water and cane- 

 fields in his car. But an inspector of police is 

 not necessarily a weather prophet, and now the 

 close-drawn curtains forbade any view, so it was 

 decided that I tranship to the single daily train. 



Three times I had to pass the ticket-collector 

 at the station to see after my luggage, and three 

 times a large clover-leaf was punched out of 

 my exceedingly small bit of pasteboard. A can 

 of formaline still eluded me, but I looked dubi- 

 ously at my limp trey of clubs. Like a soggy 

 gingersnap, it drooped with its own weight, and 

 the chances seemed about even whether another 

 trip past the hopelessly conscientious coolie gate- 

 man would find me with a totally dismembered 

 ticket or an asymmetrical four of clubs of lace- 

 like consistency. I forebore, and walking to 

 the end of the platform, looked out at a long 

 line of feathery cocoanut palms, pasteled by the 

 intervening rain. They were silhouetted in a 

 station aperture of corrugated iron, of all build- 

 ing materials the most hideous; but the aper- 

 ture was of that most graceful of all shapes, a 

 Moorish arch. 



Neither my color nor my caste, in this ultra- 

 democratic country, forced me to travel first- 



