Vampire Bats, 
225 
journey : for instance, while busy discharging, we suddenly heard a great 
splash in the water and immediately afterwards the poor Swabian crying 
for help : though more dead than alive he was fortunately soon got on 
deck again. He could hardly describe in sufficiently ghastly terms the 
horror he experienced when, for the first time in his life, he had felt the 
ground give way under his feet. 
693. Desirous of completing our crews, my brother, who did not feel 
too safe at Ampa, hurried oft' at daybreak to Bartika Grove, quite as 
much for recruiting the coloured people there as for ensuring the safety 
of his own person from the persecution of the law. If any suspicious 
person was to be seen at Ampa two cannon shots would let him know at 
Bartika Grove that danger threatened and that he must hide in the 
forest. Ampa Station lies in 6° 28' 47" lat. N. and 58° 36' 25" long. W. 
upon a small hill close to the bank from which a very pretty vista opens 
over the Essequibo which receives specially increased charm from Bartika 
Grove, the neck of land lying immediately opposite, with its pretty 
cheery-coloured houses conspicuous among the shadows of the palms and 
plantains. The rock that cropped up on the hill was identical with what 
we had found at Itaka, six miles below Ampa, and at the mouths of the 
Cuyuni and Mazaruni. It commonly consists of gneiss and granite in 
different modifications amongst which a granite with two different sorts 
of felspar and white mica is particularly noticeable: great quartz-veins 
lead through it. The gneiss met with is coloured dark with plenty of 
black mica and shows in isolated spots copious intervening layers of red 
felspar. 
694. On waking in the morning I was not a little surprised to see 
that both the goats and several of Mr. Baird’s fowls were bleeding in 
many places, and enquiring for the reason he told me that it was due 
to the numerous vampires (Phyllo stoma spectrum ) which had nested in 
the old station quarters : “They have done more damage,” said he, “to mv 
domestic animals than the jaguars and tiger-cats from which at least 
those not attacked can escape. That, however, is not the case here, 
because these harpies, while sucking the blood, gently wave their wings 
and so do not rouse the victims from their slumbers.” The better to 
know these cunning creatures which still their thirst for blood with so 
much sense, Mr. Baird hurried me off to the old building where, clinging 
on with their feet, three or four such beasties were hanging from almost 
every beam of the rotten roof. Not far from their sleeping quarters 
and at the same time under the rafters and cross-beams I found whole 
supplies of green fruits and long half-ripe pods of a Biynonia which, as 
Mr. Baird assured me, they had dragged there; this would seem to 
indicate that the animals lived not only on blood and animal food but 
also upon a vegetable diet. A flowering sawari tree ( Pekea tuberculosa 
Auhl., Caryocar tomentosum Willd.) must also have had a good deal of 
attraction for them, because as soon as they came out of their lurking 
places of an evening they swarmed around it in huge crowds and broke 
off many of the blossoms. Although my host protested that they have 
a predilection for bananas I nevertheless believe that they only break the 
blossoms off the former accidentally while hunting after insects, which 
