76 TRAVELS ON THE AMAZON. \8eptemhc]\ 
but his gun missed fire, and they immediately flew off. 
Lower down the river they are scarcely ever seen, and 
never below Baiao, while from this place up they are 
very abundant. What can be the causes which so ex- 
actly limit the range of, such a strong-flying bird ? It 
appears with the rock, and with this there is no doubt a 
corresponding change in the fruits on which the birds 
feed. 
Our Indians seeing a likely place on the beach for 
turtles’ eggs, went on shore in the montaria, and were 
fortunate enough to find a hundred and twenty-three 
buried in the sand. They are oily and very savoury, 
and we had an immense omelet for dinner. The shell is 
leathery, and the white never coagulates, but is thrown 
away, and the yolk only eaten. The Indians eat them 
also raw, mixed with farinha. We dined on the beach, 
where there was abundance of a plant much resembling 
chamomile. The sands were very hot, so that it was 
almost impossible to walk over them barefooted. The 
Indians, in crossing extensive beaches, stop and dig holes 
in the sand to cool their feet in. We now got on very 
slowly, having to tack across and across the river, the 
wind blowing up it, as it always does at this season. 
Where we stopped for breakfast on the 2 1st, I shot a 
very prettily-marked small hawk. Insects were also 
rather abundant, and we captured some fine Papilios, 
and two or three new species of clear- winged Heliconia. 
Alexander found a bees’-nest in a hole in a tree, and 
got about two quarts of honey, which when strained 
was very sweet, but with a hot waxy taste. The comb 
consists of oval cells of black wax, very irregular in shape 
