84 IN THE WILDS OF SOUTH AMERICA 



hour of hard work to start a small fire. However, the day 

 dawned bright and sunny, and we lingered to watch the 

 tribes of feathered folk that began feeding and chattering 

 in the tree-tops. The ripening fruits had attracted great 

 black guans, trogons with rose-colored breasts and metallic 

 green backs, and wonderful curve-billed hummers with long 

 white tails. Along a stretch of bamboo we saw scores of 

 large, pearly butterflies flapping about lazily, the irides- 

 cence of their wings flashing like bits of rainbow in the sun- 

 light; but not a glimpse did we have of the main object of 

 our long wanderings — the rare and elusive cock-of-the- 

 rock. 



In the afternoon the rain again fell in unrelenting tor- 

 rents, and we camped beneath a wall of rock hundreds of 

 feet high, which the Indians called the Pefia Seca, or dry 

 stone. Great vines with bunches of scarlet flowers drooped 

 a hundred feet below the top, like gigantic serpents, but 

 not a drop of all the downpour reached us. The base of 

 the cliff was blackened from the numerous camp-fires kin- 

 dled by Indians on their way to Tolima in quest of salt. 

 By way of divertisement our Indians gathered incense, 

 which is a kind of gum that collects on certain trees, and 

 which they intended to take home with them for use in the 

 santa iglesia. I watched the social bees that live in com- 

 pany with termites building tubular entrances that may 

 extend out eighteen inches or more like a coiled pipe-stem 

 to their apartment in the nest; apparently the two differ- 

 ent inmates of the common domicile never clash. 



The third night we reached the hut of an old Indian 

 who called himself Domingo, and who was as surly a crea- 

 ture as ever walked the earth. As he refused us the hospi- 

 tality of his hut, we camped outside his gate. 



We now occasionally passed through a cleared spot where 

 grain and vegetables grew; cattle grazed on the long, ten- 

 der grass, and dark-brown, wild-eyed children peered at us 

 from under the fringed, low grass roofs of shambling Indian 

 huts. On the top of every knoll was a row of tall wooden 



