GCACHARO BIRDS. 
2.18 
The Indians enter the Cueva del Guacharo once a-year. 
near midsummer. They go armed with poles, with which 
they destroy the greater part of the nests. At that season 
several thousand birds are killed; and the dd ones, as if to 
defend their brood, hover over the heads of the Indians, ut- 
tering terrible cries. The young,* which fall to the ground, 
are opened on the spot. Their peritoneum is found ex- 
tremely loaded with fat, and a layer of fat reaches from the 
abdomen to the anus, forming a kind of cushion between the 
legs of the bird. This quantity^ of fat in frugivorous animals, 
not exposed to the light, and exerting very little muscular 
motion, reminds us of what has been observed in the fatten- 
ing of geese and oxen. It is well known how greatly dark- 
ness and repose favour this process. The nocturnal birds of 
Europe are lean, because, instead of feeding on fruits, like 
the guacharo, they live on the scanty produce of their prey. 
At the period commonly called, at Caripe, the oil harvest,! 
the Indians build huts with palm-leaves, near the entrance, 
and even in the porch of the cavern. There, with a fire of 
brushwood, they melt in pots of clay the fat of the young 
birds just killed. This fat is known by the name of butter 
or oil (manteca, or aceite) of the guacharo. It is half liquid, 
transparent, without smell, and so pure that it may be kept 
above a year without becoming rancid. At the convent ot 
Caripe no other oil is used in the kitchen of the monks but 
that of the cavern; and we never observed that it gave the 
aliments a disagreeable taste or smell. 
The race of the guacharos would have been long ago 
extinct, had not several circumstances contributed to its 
preservation. The natives, restrained by their superstitious 
ideas, seldom have courage to penetrate far into the grot- 
to. It appears also, that birds of the same species dwell 
in neighbouring caverns, which are too narrow to be acces- 
sible to man. Perhaps tlie great cavern is repeopled by 
colonies which forsake the small grottoes; for the mission- 
aries assured us, that hitherto no sensible diminution of the 
birds havo been observed. Young guacharos have been sent 
to the port of Cumana, and have lived there several days 
without taking any nourishment, the seeds offered to them 
* Called Los polios del Guacharo. 
f La cosecha de la manteca. 
