A WOMAN'S EXPERIENCES IN VENEZUELA. 



8l 



Hoatzins and great wandering tribes of Scarlet Ibises and 

 Plovers; Herons, much occupied with their unsocial and 

 taciturn calling as fishermen, stood silent and solitary in 

 secluded pools. With all this wild life the river teemed. It 

 was only with the rising and falling of the tide that man 

 entered upon the scene; and so quietly, so much a part of 



FIG. 44. THE SILENT SAVAGES. 



nature, that one hardly felt any difference between him and 

 the forest folk. In a silently, swiftly moving curinra he would 

 glide under the shadows of the overhanging mangroves. 

 Sometimes the cur'mra would be a merchant vessel, laden 

 with ollas, fruit, etc., with its destination Malurin, many 

 miles away in the interior. Again its only occupant was a 

 fisherman, as silent as the Herons themselves. Like a Heron 



