io8 Through the Brazilian Wilderness 



of the bayous we had to cross were uncomfortably boggy. 

 We had to lead the horses through one, wading ahead 

 of them ; and even so two of them mired down, and their 

 saddles had to be taken off before they could be gotten 

 out. Among the marsh plants were fields and strips of 

 the great caete rush. These caete flags towered above 

 the other and lesser marsh plants. They were higher 

 than the heads of the horsemen. Their two or three 

 huge banana-like leaves stood straight up on end. The 

 large brilliant flowers — orange, red, and yellow — ^were 

 joined into a singularly shaped and solid string or clus- 

 ter. Humming-birds buzzed round these flowers; one 

 species, the sickle-billed hummer, has its bill especially 

 adapted for use in these queerly shaped blossoms and 

 gets its food only from them, never appearing around 

 any other plant. 



The birds were tame, even those striking and beau- 

 tiful birds which under man's persecution are so apt to 

 become scarce and shy. The huge jabiru storks, stalking 

 through the water with stately dignity, sometimes refused 

 to fly until we were only a hundred yards off; one of 

 them flew over our heads at a distance of thirty or forty 

 yards. The screamers, crying curu-curu, and the ibises, 

 wailing dolefully, came even closer. The wonderful hya- 

 cinth macaws, in twos and threes, accompanied us at 

 times for several hundred yards, hovering over our heads 

 and uttering their rasping screams. In one wood we 

 came on the black howler monkey. The place smelt 

 almost like a menagerie. Not watching with sufficient 

 care I brushed against a sapling on which the venomous 

 fire-ants swarmed. They burnt the skin like red-hot cin- 



