26 OUR SEARCH FOR A WILDERNESS. 



bushy tangle, folding l^ack his legs and swimming with long 

 graceful sweeps of his tail. As we watch him he leaps at 

 several little crabs and catches them before they can escape 

 into their holes. 



We eat our luncheon in the shade of a clay bank, the first 

 hint of dry land we have seen along the cano, and here we 

 watch the little crocodiles basking in the sun and the crabs 

 scutding over the mud. A bird of iridescent green and 

 orange swoops down to our very faces, and hangs swinging 

 in a loop of a tiny liana on the face of the bank. The next 

 instant it vanishes into the earth, darting into a hole hardly 

 larger than the crab-holes around it. We have found the 

 home of a Jacamar.**" At the end of the short tunnel are 

 four round white eggs laid on the bare clay. 



While examining the nest we hear at our very feet the 

 terrible night noise — the muffled choking sigh which has 

 come to us every night since we entered the mangrove wilder- 

 ness. We are standing in our narrow dug-out, which the 

 least movement will overturn, and for an instant it is indeed 

 a question whether wc can control ourselves enough to keep 

 it from filling. Now the mystery solves itself as a large 

 anaconda {Euncctcs murinus) nine or ten feet long, slowly 

 winds out from a hole in the banlc beneath the surface of 

 the water and slips into the depths of the muddv current. 

 Then the tide laps a little lower, and a big bubble of air, 

 caught in the entrance of the serpent's lair, frees itself with 

 a sudden gasping sob. When the tide is rising or falling 

 over these large openings in the mud, the air escapes from 

 time to time with the terrifying sound which has so long 

 puzzled us. Our mysterious nocturnal creature is thus 

 explained away in the prosaic light of day. 



An hour later as our dug-out rounds a sharp bend in the 

 cano, there comes to our ears a series of rasping cries — ■ 

 hoarse and creaking as of unoiled wheels. The glasses show 



