6404 



Na I u ral- History Collectors. 



means of a paper-knife : they are horrid-looking wretches, and worse 

 than they look, by all accounts ; their sting is said to be fever to a 

 certainty : this fellow is nearly six inches long. The natives say 

 scorpions are always in pairs, and as soon as one is found look about 

 for his companion, but we could not find the second this time. 



July 22. — On board the "General Mosquera" steamer on the Mag- 

 dalena: getting up at 5 a.m. saw the magnificent range of the Sierra 

 Nevada of Santa Marta under the eastern sky : this range is from sixty 

 to seventy miles distant, and yet looked quite near; but the clouds of 

 the horizon ran along between us and their base, showing their enor- 

 mous altitude, — 17,000 to 18,000 feet is about the highest ; during the 

 day they are quite invisible from Barranquilla. The Magdalena here 

 is perhaps three-quarters of a mile wide, and the current runs three 

 miles an hour; the waters are as yellow and muddy as those of Father 

 Tiber, and so continue upwards. Enormous quantities of a weed 

 called "batate" encumber the waters; in appearance it is like the 

 Lotus, and the lagoons are almost choked with it: it floats down 

 chiefly from the Cauca river. This evening, the ship being heated by 

 the sun, and kept hot by the great boilers, felt like a baker's oven : I 

 went aft to a cooler corner, though it was very damp, and watched the 

 brilliant sparkle of the myriads of fireflies in the forest; they are most 

 charming in their brightness. I know not how to describe the beauty 

 and novelty of the scene ihrough which I have been passing: trailing 

 plants, in long festoons, hang in all directions; sometimes a score of 

 trees are grown into one tangled mass of creepers, with hollows under- 

 neath, like wilfully contrived pleached alleys and secret arbours; birds 

 in orange and blue, gold and crimson, green and purple, and every 

 other possible combination, flit in and out as we go by, hugging the 

 bank ; now and then a great alligator, stimulated by a rifle-bullet, 

 splashes from the bank into the muddy water, and disappears below ; 

 here a brace of white herons are watching for fish ; gaudy kingfishers 

 dash into the water and out again ; huge macaws, in blue and yellow, 

 sail clumsily and scream as they go ; over the tree-tops great hawks 

 wheel round and round ; everywhere the hum of insects and the flut- 

 tering of butterflies, — all speak of the universality of life, and say to 

 man that he is not the sole object of the world's existence and its 

 Maker's care. The scenery is more like Windermere or the lower Lake 

 of Killarney than anything else I can think of ; islands without number, 

 but so large as only to look like corners where another river comes in ; 

 wo don't see them as islands, but are constantly branching off right or 

 left to go past them, At 9 a. m. arrived at Pinto, a wood station, 



