STEAMER AND LAUNCH TO HOORIE CREEK. 163 



of an enchanted country — all Nature quiet and resting — 

 with only the brown current ever slipping silently past, here 

 and there foam-flecked or bearing some tiny aquatic plant 

 with its rosette of downy leaves. 



Then, — the lush tropical nature rushing ever to extremes 

 — comes a deluge of virile life upon the scene. A great fish 

 leaps far upward, shattering tlie surface, pursued by a fierce, 

 brown-coated otter, almost as large as a man. A half dozen 

 green Parrots throb screaming past in pairs; two big Red- 

 breasted King-lishers "' spring from their perch and come 

 leaping toward us through the air, suddenly wheeling up 

 almost in a somersault and do\\n like two meteors into the 

 water. 



We leave our bushy moorings at last and keejj on up the 

 river with the tide, passing the English mission of Father 

 Carey-Elwis, which, like Farnum's, is built on a hill, iso- 

 lated amid the great expanse of flat marshy jungle. A dozen 

 little naked Indian lads slrriek in sheer excitement and rush 

 down to the water's edge to watch us pass, peering fearfully 

 out from behind trees like little gnomes. 



From here on butterflies became very abundant; many 

 large Yellows and Oranges and Morphos of two kinds, one 

 altogether iridescent blue, the other blue and black. As 

 the little vocal messages of the tree-frogs are carried far and 

 wide through the jungle at night, so in the sunshine the 

 morphos, like heliographs of azure, flash silently from bend 

 to bend of the river. Conspicuous among the great Mora 

 and Purpledieart trees were the white-barked Silk Cottons. 

 Large yellow tubular blossoms and masses of jjurple pea 

 blooms tint the trees here and there. 



The Indians along the river were catching two kinds of 

 fish; one a silvery mullet about six inches long called Bashew, 

 and a catfish of the same size. The latter was most for- 

 midable in appearance but actually harmless. Four slender 



