CHAPTER XV 7 ! 



WILD LIFE NEAR KALACOON 

 I 



The laboratory room at Kalacoon possessed sixteen 

 windows and, standing as it did, on an isolated eminence, two 

 hundred feet above the Mazaruni river, and the intervening 

 jungle, it is no exaggeration to say that a zoologist could 

 spend many weeks in worthwhile observation without de- 

 scending to the ground outside, and years of study would 

 be well repaid in the compound itself. 



I attempt in this chapter only the presentation of des- 

 ultory notes, but they each possess some rcdson d'etre and 

 as a whole, suggest the wide field for research offered by 

 even this limited area. 



I arose usually before daybreak and divided many of 

 the early morning hours between writing and watching from 

 the windows the gradual awakening of the day's life. 



Perhaps the most noticeable thing was meteorologic 

 the calms of early morning. They were unvarying. No 

 matter how tempestuous the evening before or the night, 

 the dark just before sunrise and the hours of early morning 

 were always calm and quiet. Not a breath of air stirred. 

 The tide flowed silently up or down, or for a short time held 

 itself motionless. Rarely, at the high tide, the river surface 

 was broken by porpoises, or manatees or a leaping lukananni. 

 While the calm was unvarying, the atmosphere might be 

 clear to the horizon, so that the distant range of the Blue, and 

 the Pull-and-be-damned Mountains were sharply defined, 

 or on the other hand, the air might be so drenched in mist 

 that the nearest shrubs were quite invisible. 



Sound seemed to carry farther at these times of quiet. 

 If it were dark the trill of the pileated tinamou, the loud cry 



