WILD ANIMALS. 209 
saw huts of the Yaruroes, who live by hunting and 
fishing, and are very skilful in killing jaguars, the 
skins of which they dispose of in the Spanish vil- 
lages. ‘The night was passed at Diamante, a small 
sugar-plantation. — 3 
On the 31st a contrary wind obliged them to re- 
main on shore till noon, when they embarked, and 
as they proceeded found the river gradually widen- 
ing; one of its banks being generally sandy and bar- 
ren, the other higher and covered with tall trees. 
Sometimes, however, it was bordered on both sides 
by forests, and resembled a straight canal 320 yards 
in breadth. Bushes of sauso (Hermesia castanetfo- 
lia) formed along the margins a kind of hedge about 
four feet high, in which the jaguars, tapirs, and pe- 
caris, had made openings for the purpose of drink- 
ing ; and as these animals manifest little fear at the 
approach of a boat, the travellers had the pleasure 
of viewing them as they walked slowly along the 
shore, until they disappeared in the forest. When 
the sauso-hedge was at a distance from the current, 
crocodiles were often seen in parties of eight or ten, 
stretched out on the sand motionless, and with their 
jaws opened at right angles. These monstrous rep- 
tiles were so numerous, that throughout the whole 
course of the river there were usually five or six in 
view, although the waters had scarcely begun to rise, 
and hundreds were still buried in the mud of the 
savannahs. A dead individual which they found 
was 17 feet 9 inches long, and another, a male, 
was more than 23. This species is not a cay- 
man or alligator, but a real crocodile, with feet 
dentated on the outer edge like that of the Nile. 
The Indians informed them, that scarcely a year 
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