172 THE HIGHLAND WILDERNESS [chap, vi 



to repair the old and spin new webs. Each spun its 

 own circular web, and sat in the middle ; and each web 

 was connected on several sides with other webs, while 

 those nearest the trees were hung to them by spun 

 ropes, so to speak. The result was a kind of sheet of 

 web consisting of scores of wheels, in each of which 

 the owner and proprietor sat ; and there were half a 

 dozen such sheets, each extending between two trees. 

 The webs could hardly be seen, and the eiFect was of 

 scores of big, formidable-looking spiders poised in mid- 

 air, equidistant from one another, between each pair of 

 trees. When darkness and rain fell they were still out, 

 fixing their webs, and pouncing on the occasional insects 

 that blundered into the webs. I have no question that 

 they are nocturnal ; they certainly hide in the daytime, 

 and it seems impossible that they can come out only 

 for a few minutes at dusk. 



In the evenings, after supper or dinner — it is hard to 

 teU by what title the exceedingly movable evening meal 

 should be called — the members of the party sometimes 

 told stories of incidents in their past lives. Most of 

 them were men of varied experiences. Rondon and 

 Lyra told of the hardship and suiFering of the first trips 

 through the wilderness across which we were going with 

 such comfort. On this very plateau they had once lived 

 for weeks on the fruits of the various fruit-bearing trees. 

 Naturally they became emaciated and feeble. In the 

 forests of the Amazonian basin they did better, because 

 they often shot birds and plundered the hives of the 

 wild honey-bees. In cutting the trail for the telegraph- 

 line through the Juruena basin they lost every single 

 one of the hundred and sixty mules with which they 

 had started. Those men pay dear who build the first 

 foundations of empire ! Fiala told of the long polar 



