78 OVEE THE MOUNTAINS TO THE LLANOS. 



continiTG our journey and keep us right side up. On one 

 of these occasions, wlien the mixture was a little denser 

 than usual, Viviano, bracing his palanca against a tree, 

 bent all his might to cleave the flood, but unfortunately 

 his pole slipped, and, his very form aiding the catastrophe, 

 by holding his feet firmly in the boat, he disappeared head- 

 long into the chocolate-colored paste. Both El Patron 

 and Angel screamed out simultaneously, " Look out for 

 the caiman ! " but Viviano needed no warning to hasten his 

 return to the boat, and so great was his nervous hurry 

 that, had it not been for a friendly tree to steady us, we 

 should have upset. The Avrath in the face of our mucha- 

 cho warned us not to laugh, but his mud-lorn features 

 were too much for us ; and we were forced to grin audibly. 

 As a consequence, Viviano was grandly silent the rest of 

 the day. Providentially for us, the forest along the river- 

 banks never extends very far back from the stream, and 

 late in the afternoon we emerged from our toiling labyrinth 

 into the wide Llanos. But Llanos no longer — rather a 

 great sea, illimitable in extent, but very limitable in depth ; 

 lacking the ceaseless motion of the ocean, it was ten times 

 more lonely and waste. Silence does not necessarily en- 

 hance loneliness. The forest through which we passed 

 was at mid-day as silent as the grave ; the few birds flitted 

 abo\tt noiselessly without a note of song, yet the forest 

 even then w^as as a company of friends, compared to the 

 loneliness of the Llanos, which, however, were flooded 

 with a multitude of noises. Numberless f/uacharacas, 

 wdiose name itself means ever-moaning, myriads of ducks, 

 geese, and Avater-birds of every kind, filled the air with 

 strange cries, till finally, as the sun went down, they disap- 

 peared and left lis still. For a short distance out from the 

 forest stood isolated trunks of trees, which, covered deep 

 under luxuriant masses of vines, were shaped into many 

 graceful and often grotesque forms. Sometimes in the 



