32 



A FLYING TRIP TO THE TROPICS. 



ill every direction, some even encroaching on the houses ; a few 

 pigs wander hstlessly about, and everything looks indescribably 

 filthy. There is an iron screw-pile pier in process of construction, 

 alongside of which, when completed, it is intended for steamers to 

 lie, but it looked very weak to me. 



We went ahead about one hundred yards to the railroad station, 

 where I got our tickets, and we boarded the train which w^as wait- 

 ing. The road is a narrow gauge ; the cars of two classes and some- 

 what of the appearance of our street cars. The freight cars are like 

 the little closed trucks used in transferring baggage across the New 

 York ferries. Our train left for Barranquilla at half past nine, and 

 arrived there shortly after eleven. The distance is 18.5 miles. We 

 first followed the seashore for several miles, then turned to the right 

 and struck across country. The country that we passed through 

 was covered with a jungle of scrubby, thorny trees ; no very large 

 ones, with now and then a small grove of cocoanut palms. In a 

 number of places rose large post-like cacti. The soil was sandy, 

 with a limestone outcropping at a few places. The Magdalena was 

 at its highest at this time ; consequently the whole country was 

 flooded, and lakes and lagoons extended on both sides of the track. 



As soon as the train moved off, I began to keep a sharp lookout 

 of the windows for birds. We saw large flocks of brown pelicans 

 {Pelecanus fuseus), numbers of white egrets {A7'dea egretta), and 

 snowy herons {A, candidissima), small grayish herons similar to our 

 green heron but smaller {Butorides cyanurus), black vultures {Ca- 

 tharista atrata)^ flocks of large black ducks with a white spot in 

 each wing {Cairina moschata), pairs of large black and white stilts 

 with red legs {ITimantojms mexicanus), great numbers of a species 

 of jagana, dark, with a bright red frontal crest, and apparently all 

 the feathers in the last joint of their wings whitish {Jagana nigra), 

 large crow-blackbirds, the females chocolate-colored (Quiscalus as- 

 similis), long-tailed anis [Crotopliaga sidcirostris), kingfishers, 

 larger than ours but with the same discordant rattle {Ceryle tor- 

 qiiata), pigeons, ground doves, and quantities of flycatchers of dif- 



