R. H, Masure—The Birds of a Carribean Cruise 159


port. All along through this small and very poor town we saw many

signs reading’ “ Bentista 53 and “ Barbera


The journey from Honduras to Puerto Barrios, Guatemala, the

land of the Quezal, was very short. We arrived at this second port

of call about 2 a.m. -Sunday morning, having left Honduras Saturday

evening, about 9 p.m. The officials of the Guatemalan Government

boarded the boat soon after it landed and awakened everyone to pass

their tourist cards that are necessary for landing in any port. Several

of the party thought that a visit to the port itself might be exciting

at that hour of the night so we walked the long steel pier, which is

about half a mile in length, to reach the town itself. We saw the rail¬

road station, and as the town seemed entirely deserted we hurriedly

returned to the boat. That morning at 7 a.m. we left the boat and

found the small launch and a guide that was furnished to me for my

trip into the jungle. Peter, our guide was a negro from Belize, British

Honduras, and spoke Spanish as well as English with an Oxford accent.

Barrios is a large and beautiful bay surrounded by mountains just as

Cortez was. The water supply for the port is piped from a reservoir

that lies 3 miles in the jungle on the opposite side of the bay. This

jungle is one of the wildest in the world, although it is not tenanted

by many large animals. If it were not for the small path that runs

along the pipe-line it would be necessary to cut your way through the

dense vegetation. As we approached the shore of the bay in our small

boat we could see a luxuriant palm grove, and when we landed we

came into a short space of swamp full of Fiddler Crabs and large white

Amaryllis that were in bloom. We left our boat and proceeded into

the thick vegetation that was made up of many types of palms, bread¬

fruits, papayas, bananas, sensitive plants, and large elephant ear-like

plants, lantana with small red blossoms, a plant with large white

calla-like flowers, many thick vines, and other tropical trees and plants

that I was unable to identify. We soon heard the gurgling noise that

told me we were near some Toucans. After searching around for a

few minutes we saw five or six of these large birds in a very tall tree,

the exact species being impossible to determine. Later on we heard

and finally saw a small tan and white bird that seemed to be some

sort of a Honey Creeper, which I was unable to identify. At the



