180 



WILD ANIMALS, 



are the most useful to man. Passing the mouth of 

 the Apurito, they coasted the island of the same 

 name, formed by the Apure and Guarico, and which 

 is seventy-six miles in length. On the banks they 

 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. 



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 

 barren, 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 castaneifo- 

 lia) formed along the margins a kind of hedge about 

 four feet high, in whicli the jaguars, tapirs, and 

 pecaris 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 

 savannas. 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 cayman 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 passes at San Fernando 

 without two or three persons being drowned by them, 



