THE CHOCO" COUNTRY 71 



Late in the afternoon we landed at Novita. I was some- 

 what suiprised at the size of the town, which consists of 

 about fifty hovels. The white population, which was very 

 small, consists mainly of traders, and is more or less tran- 

 sient. I was told that they remain in the region a year or 

 two to buy gold and to sell their stock of provisions and 

 merchandise at exorbitant prices, and then return to a 

 more healthful climate — to suffer many years afterward 

 from the effects of their sojourn in the Choco. 



Novita is essentially a mining town. A good deal of 

 gold and platinum are washed out of the small streams 

 that form a network in the surrounding country. The ne- 

 groes and Indians bring in the precious metals in small 

 quantities — wrapped in leaves — and trade them for tinned 

 food and cloth. However, the town seemed to be on the 

 decline in favor of Condoto, Pueblo Rico, and Quibdo, 

 where richer mineral deposits had been located. 



The forest contained comparatively little wild life, and 

 that was typical of the Pacific tropical faunal zone. We 

 daily took long tramps and discovered numerous things of 

 more than passing interest. Among them was a colony of 

 nesting black-and-yellow orioles (Icterus). The birds had 

 selected a solitary ceiba-tree standing in the centre of a 

 banana-field. It was seventy feet to the lowest limbs and 

 the trunk was so thick and smooth that no predatory ani- 

 mal could climb it, which insured the safety of the colony 

 from such a source of danger. The nests, like huge pears, 

 dangled from the tips of the branches; I counted one hun- 

 dred and four, and there must have been many others con- 

 cealed by the foliage. The adult birds were busy and 

 excited, and were coming and going in steady streams, 

 keeping up their noisy chattering all the while. We found 

 numerous bits of egg-shells, white with black dots, on the 

 ground, indicating that the young were just hatching. 



One evening as we were returning from a long hunt, we 

 noticed lines of bats emerging from the little church stand- 

 ing on the edge of the village. Next day (Christmas) I 



