CHAP. IV] JABIRU STORKS 101 



the bandage ; but evidently it never occurred to him that 

 the animal was hardly a comfortable riding-horse for a 

 man going out hunting and encumbered with a spear, 

 a machete, and other belongings. 



The eight hours that we were out we spent chiefly in 

 splashing across the marshes, with excursions now and 

 then into vine-tangled belts and clumps of timber. Some 

 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 caetd rush. These caetd 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 

 cluster. 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 beautiful 

 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 

 hyacinth 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 



