228 Through the Brazilian Wilderness 



had swallowed the skinned bodies of four mice he had 

 prepared as specimens ; which shows that rattlesnakes do 

 not always feed only on living prey. Another rattlesnake 

 which he killed in Central America had just swallowed 

 an opossum which proved to be of a species new to 

 science. Miller told how once on the Orinoco he saw on 

 the bank a small anaconda, some ten feet long, killing one 

 of the iguanas, big, active, truculent, carnivorous lizards, 

 equally at home on the land and in the water. Evidently 

 the iguanas were digging out holes in the bank in which to 

 lay their eggs ; for there were several such holes, and 

 iguanas working at them. The snake had crushed its 

 prey to a pulp ; and not more than a couple of feet away 

 another iguana was still busily, and with entire unconcern, 

 engaged in making its burrow. At Miller's approach the 

 anaconda left the dead iguana and rushed into the water, 

 and the live iguana promptly followed it. Miller also told 

 of the stone gods and altars and temples he had seen in the 

 great Colombian forests, monuments of strange civiliza- 

 tions which flourished and died out ages ago, and of 

 which all memory has vanished. He and Cherrie told of 

 giant rivers and waterfalls, and of forests never pene- 

 trated, and mountains never ascended by civilized man; 

 and of bloody revolutions that devastated the settled re- 

 gions. Listening to them I felt that they could write 

 "Tales of Two Naturalists" that would be worth reading. 

 They were short of literature, by the way — a. party 

 such as ours always needs books — and as Kermit's read- 

 ing-matter consisted chiefly of Camoens and other Portu- 

 guese, or else Brazilian, writers, I strove to supply the 

 deficiency with spare volumes of Gibbon. At the end of 



