IN THE PRIMEVAL K)REST. 211 



canal, enclosed on either side by dense wood. The margin of the 

 forest presents at this part a singular appearance. In front of the 

 almost impenetrable wall of giant trunks of Csesalpinia, Cedrela, and 

 Desmanthus, there rises from the sandy river beach, with the greatest 

 regularity, a low hedge of Sauso, only four feet high, consisting of a 

 small shrub, Hermesia castaneifolia, which forms a new genus ( 4 ) of 

 the family of Euphorbiaceae. Some slender thorny palms, called 

 by the Spaniards Piritu and Coroso (perhaps/ species of Martinezia 

 and Bactris), stand next ; and the whole resembles a close, well- 

 pruned garden hedge, having only occasional openings at considerable 

 distances from each other, which have doubtless been made by the 

 larger four-footed beasts of the forest, to gain easy access to the river. 

 One sees, more especially in the early morning and at sunset, the 

 American tiger or jaguar, the tapir, and the peccary, lead their young 

 through these openings to the river to drink. When startled by 

 the passing canoe, they do not attempt to regain the forest by break- 

 ing forcibly through the hedge which has been described, but one has 

 the pleasure of seeing these wild animals stalk leisurely along be- 

 tween the river and the hedge for four or five hundred paces, until 

 they have reached the nearest opening, when they disappear through 

 it. In the course of an almost uninterrupted river navigation of 1520 

 geographical miles on the Orinoco to near its sources, on the Cassi- 

 quiare, and on the Rio Negro and during which we were confined 

 for seventy-four days to a small canoe we enjoyed the repetition of 

 the same spectacle at several different points, and I may add, always 

 with new delight. There came down together, to drink, to bathe, 

 or to fish, groups consisting of the most different classes of animals, 

 the larger mammalia being associated with many colored herons, 

 palamedeas, and proudly-stepping curassow and cashew birds (Crax 

 Alector and C. Pauxi). Es como en el Paraiso" it is here as in 

 Paradise said, with a pious air, our steersman, an old Indian, who 

 had been brought up in the house of an ecclesiastic. The peace of 

 the golden age was, however, far from prevailing among the animals 

 of this- American paradise, which carefully watched and avoided 

 each other. The Capybara, a Cavy three or four feet long (a mag- 

 nified repetition of the Brazilian Cavy, Cavia aguti), is devoured in 

 the river by the crocodiles, and on shore by the tiger. It runs so 



