. Nocturnal Music. 205 



In seven hours we arnvecl at Suno, a collection of half a 

 dozen palm booths, live feet high, the miserable owners of 

 which do a little fishing and gold-washing. They gave 

 ns possession of their largest hut, in which they had 

 been roasting a sea-cow, and the stench was intolerable. 

 Nevertheless, one of our number bravely threw down his 

 blanket within, and went to sleep ; two swung their ham- 

 mocks between the trees, and the rest slept in the canoe. 

 Here, for the first time since leaving Guayaquil, we were 

 tormented by musquitoes. Bats were also quite numerous, 

 but none of them were blood-thirsty ; and we may add that 

 nowhere in South America were we troubled by those dia- 

 bohcal imps of imaginative travelers, the leaf -nosed species. 

 So far as our experience goes, we can say, with Bates, that 

 the vampire, so common on the Amazon, is the most harm- 

 less of all bats. It has, however, a most hideous physiog- 

 nomy. A full-grown specimen will measure twenty-eight 

 inches in expanse of wing. Bates found two species on 

 the Amazon — one black, the other of a ruddy hue, and 

 both fruit-eaters. 



The nocturnal music of these forests is made by crickets 

 and tree-toads. The voice of the latter sounds like the 

 cracking of wood. Occasionally frogs, owls, and goat- 

 suckers croak, hoot, and wail. Between midnight and 

 3 A.M. almost perfect silence reigns. At early dawn 

 the animal creation awakes with a scream. Pre-eminent 

 are the discordant cries of monkeys and macaws. As the 

 sun rises higher, one musician after another seeks the for- 

 est shade, and the morning concert ends at noon. In the 

 heat of the day there is an all-pervading rustling sound, 

 caused by the fluttering of myriad insects and the gliding 

 of lizards and snakes. At sunset parrots and monkeys re- 

 sume their chatter for a season, and then give way to the 

 noiseless flio-ht of innumerable bats chasino: the hawk-moth 



