THE ROOSEVELT EXPEDITION 207 



(Tayra); opossums and various species of small rodents 

 held sway on the ground. 



While there was no scarcity of birds, they were largely 

 species already known to us, and one day one of the men 

 brought in an anaconda ten feet long, that he found bask- 

 ing on the river-bank. 



After spending a week on the Rio Negro we returned to 

 Asuncion, where we were joined by the commissaries who 

 had just arrived with the equipment. Two days later we 

 boarded the comfortable little steamer Asuncion and started 

 for Corumbd. 



The four and a half days' trip up the Paraguay was most 

 interesting, although the heat and insects at times were 

 troublesome. We had entered the great pantanal country, 

 and the vast marshes teemed with bird-life. As the Asun- 

 cion fought the strong current and moved slowly onward 

 countless thousands of cormorants and anhingas took wing; 

 lining the pools and dotting the marshes were hordes of 

 wood and scarlet ibises, together with a sprinkling of herons 

 and spoonbills; egrets covered the small clumps of trees as 

 with a mantle of snowy white, and long rows of jabiru storks 

 patrolled both shores. Scarcely a moment passed in which 

 we did not see hundreds of birds. Some of the passengers 

 were armed with rifles and revolvers, with which they kept 

 up more or less of a fusillade on the feathered folk; but for- 

 tunately their aim was poor so that Uttle injury was in- 

 flicted. 



The day before reaching Corumbd we passed an interest- 

 ing old landmark. It is the fort of Coimbra, built on a 

 rocky hillside with a cluster of thatch-roofed huts nestling 

 against the base. As Coimbra is near the Bolivian border, 

 the fort figured prominently in several of the bloody con- 

 troversies of bygone years between the neighboring re- 

 pubhcs. 



