351 



an innumerable quantity of ducks (patos care- 

 teros) remove from eight and three degrees 

 of north latitude., to one and four degrees of 

 south latitude, toward the south-south-east. 

 These animals then abandon the valley of the 

 Oroonoko, no doubt because the increasing depth 

 of the waters, and the inundations of the shores, 

 prevent them from catching fish, insects, and 

 aquatic worms. They are killed by thousands 

 in their passage across the Rio Negro. When 

 they go toward the equator, they are very fat 

 and savoury ; but in the month of September, 

 when the Oroonoko decreases, and returns into 

 it's bed, the ducks, warned either by the voice 

 of the most experienced birds of passage, or by 

 that internal feeling, which, not knowing how to 

 define, we call instinct, return from the Ama- 

 zon and the Rio Branco toward the north. At 

 this period they are too lean to tempt the appe- 

 tite of the Indians of the Rio Negro, and escape 

 pursuit more easily from being accompanied by 

 a species of herons (gavanes), which are excel- 

 lent eating. Thus the Indians eat ducks in 

 March, and herons in September. We could 

 not learn what becomes of the gavanes during 

 the swellings of the Oroonoko, and why they do 



those of the Oroonoko ; after the summer solstice, below 

 Syene ; and at Cairo in the beginning of July. The Nile 

 begins to sink near that city generally about the 15th of 

 October, and continues sinking till the 20th of May. 



