A Fairy Garden Guarded dy Ogres. 
299 
first tiling Mr. Fryer had to do was to bring them back, and then straight- 
way start one of them off on horseback to Fort !5ao Joaquim on the Bio 
Branco with the despatches for the Commandant. 
8-14. All preparations were now made so as to leave for Pirara next 
morning, the people who had been sent to the Awaricuru also having 
returned already with the news that they had cleared the river as much 
as they possibly could. Together with this information they had 
brought in a iSudis gigas, the largest that 1 had hitherto seen. I was 
kept busy all night preparing it for the Museum and got it finished by 
the time we left. 
845. From hearing the sound of plenty of gun-fire that was borne 
over to us by the strong easterly breeze as we were taking our departure, 
we knew that the military expedition was at hand, a fact that put fresh 
courage into those who were despondent. Hamlet and Stöckle again 
breathed freely; the former behaved like a child and the latter found his 
peculiar unaffected simplicity which for the past three days had been 
entirely lacking. We left Sororeng to show the new-comers the way via the 
Awaricuru, and hurried ahead of those marching behind. 
840. The banks of the river, which the maps wrongly specify as 
Tawarikua, were bordered mainly with 11 clico iliac , Bromeliae, , Rapateae, 
and now and again sharp-leaved arboreal grasses behind which rose trees 
to a height of 100 feet foi ruing with their leaves majestically arched 
roofs. The dainty Ibis imdifrous Spix., continually flying ahead of us 
kept our company at short intervals and a huge coiled up 12-ft. long- 
snake (Boa marina ) fell a target to our guns. The land ever continued 
to get more swampy and the river soon widened out into a lake-like 
enlargement at least two miles wide. Wherever the eye turned, whether 
on the banks or on the water, it struck upon the horrible heads and 
repulsive figures of kaimans, amongst which we noticed many that 
measured quite 18 to 20 feet. A number of Plot us, Carbo, Anas, Ardea, 
and other water-birds circled about its tranquil surface, strutted up and 
down along its edges or else with retracted neck perched indolently 
upon its trees. Still more numerous, however, must be its scaly 
denizens. jTlie trunks and branches of the dark riverside vegetation 
were embellished with inconceivably numerous blossoms of the Cattleya 
superba Schomb. with which, here and there, the Schomburgkia crispa. 
and a quantity of Epidendruni, Aspasia, Bifrmaria, and Catasetum were 
intimately associated. The leafless trees killed by the wet, for instance, 
were regularly overgrown with this most beautiful of all the orchids, and 
covered with hundreds of its large flowers. T have never again foumZ. 
the Cattleya in so great a 'quantity on so small an area as this which they 
had transformed into a fairy garden guarded by the most repulsive ogres. 
