A HUNT FOR HOATZINS 117! 



own and swirl ahead. Then followed a chorus 

 of yells at the mule-boy, and a nervous half- 

 rising in the boat, and a still more terrible 

 silence, broken at last by a crash — hollow and 

 echoing if we struck a cane-barge, splintering 

 if against a log or stump. The boat would tip, 

 several gallons of water pour in, and then there 

 became audible our minute and detailed opinions 

 of coolies and mules in general and ours in par- 

 ticular. 



Of course every one who came between our 

 mule and the bank had to flee, or else was 

 scraped into the trench by the rope; and we left 

 in our wake knots of discomfited coolie women 

 who had been washing themselves or their clothes 

 and who had to escape at the last moment. 

 Calves were a source of intense excitement, and 

 their gambols and intricate manipulations of our 

 rope would have been highly amusing if the re- 

 sult of each encounter had not been mixed up 

 so acutely with our own fate. I sat crouched 

 down, a water-soaked mound of misery. Miser- 

 able, for I was still partly dry, having on the 

 only raincoat, for the purpose of protecting our 

 precious camera. Water ran up hill that morn- 

 ing, seeking out crevices and buttonholes by 



