HUNTING ALONG THE UPPER PARAGUAY 221 



tne night by the carregador ants. In my several experi- 

 ences with these insects I have never known them to carry 

 away woollen clothing, but all articles of cotton to which 

 they had access were destroyed. 



The jabiru storks were nesting on the Sao Lourenco; we 

 saw several of their great platform nests of sticks perched 

 in the crotches of giant trees. The young storks, two in 

 number and fully feathered, were continually exercising 

 their limbs by running back and forth in the nest, flapping 

 their wings all the while, preparatory to launching forth 

 into the big world. If we tossed short sticks up to them 

 they caught them in their bills, held on for a few moments, 

 then dropped them. Caimans were particularly plentiful 

 on the upper Paraguay. Scores of the evil-looking reptiles 

 lay on the sand-banks, with wide-open mouths and staring, 

 glassy eyes. A fringe of trees flanked the water; through 

 them we could see the boundless wastes of pantanales be- 

 yond. Troops of black howler monkeys ambled leisurely 

 away as the boat drew near; the males only were black, the 

 females being of a straw-color. There were immense flocks 

 of a species of gray-throated, green parrakeets; some of 

 them were building enormous nests of sticks in the branches. 

 When a single tree contained three or four of the huge 

 structures, its strength was strained to the breaking-point, 

 for some of the nests were five or six feet across and con- 

 tained hundreds of pounds of material ; but not all of them 

 were of this size; some were composed of no more than an 

 armful of sticks and were occupied by a single pair of birds. 

 The larger ones harbor dozens of birds. The nesting cavi- 

 ties had been in the under-side of the structures; entrance 

 to them was gained through tubular openings underneath. 



The number of water-birds in the pantanales border- 

 ing the upper Paraguy is almost unbelievably large. 

 There were such countless thousands of cormorants and 

 anhingas that they confused the eye. Colonel Roosevelt 

 never permitted useless slaughter, and when one day, one 

 of the camaradas forgot himself and shot a bird, he was 



