26 



TRAVELS ON THE AMAZON. 



[July, 



penny or twopence is enough to give foi? such things, which 

 are of no value to the natives ; and though they will not search 

 much after them for such a price, yet they will bring you all 

 that come in their way when they know you will purchase 

 them. Snakes were unpleasantly abundant at this time. I 

 nearly trod on one about ten feet long, which rather startled 

 me, and it, too, to judge by the rapid manner in which it 

 glided away. I caught also a small Amphisbena under the 

 coffee-trees in our garden. Though it is known to have no 

 poison-fangs, the Negroes declared it was very dangerous, and 

 that its bite could not be cured. It is commonly known as 

 the two-headed snake, from the tail being blunt and the head 

 scarcely visible ; and they believe that if it is cut in two, and 

 the two parts thrown some yards apart, they will come together 

 again, and join into an entire animal. 



Among the curious things we meet with in the woods are 

 large heaps of earth and sand, sometimes by the roadside, and 

 sometimes extending quite across the path, m^aking the pedes- 

 trian ascend and descend (a pleasing variety in this flat 

 country), and looking just as if some " Para and Peru direct 

 Railway Company " had commenced operations. These 

 mounds are often thirty or forty feet long, by ten or fifteen 

 wide, and about three or four feet high ; but instead of being 

 the work of a lot of railway labourers, we find it is all due to 

 the industry of a native insect, the much-dreaded Saiiba ant. 

 This insect is of a light-red colour, about the size of our largest 

 English species, the wood-ant, but with much more powerful 

 jaws. It does great injury to young trees, and will sometimes 

 strip them of their leaves in a single night. We often see, 

 hurrying across the pathways, rows of small green leaves ; these 

 are the Saiibas, each with a piece of leaf cut as smoothly as 

 with scissors, and completely hiding the body from sight. The 

 orange-tree is very subject to their attacks, and in our garden 

 the young trees were each planted in the centre of a ring-shaped 

 earthen vessel, which being filled with water completely sur- 

 rounded the stem, preventing the ants from reaching it. Some 

 places are so infested by them that it is useless planting any- 

 thing. No means of destroying them are known, their numbers 

 being so immense, as may readily be seen from the great 

 quantities of earth they remove. 



Many different kinds of wasps' and bees' nests are constantly 



