VENUS 
moment. The men, therefore, went into the forest to 
cut big poles, which they afterwards planted with much 
exertion, in the sand near my camp-bed. 
Some amusing scenes happened during the night, when 
the poles gradually gave way with the weight of the men 
in the hammocks, and, tumbling down altogether, gave 
them severe blows on their heads and bodies. 
The stars were simply magnificent in brilliancy as I 
lay on my camp-bed. One particularly, to 290° bearings 
magnetic northwest, the planet Venus, was extraordi¬ 
narily brilliant, appearing six times as big as any other 
planet visible that night. It threw off radiations of won¬ 
derful luminosity, quite strong enough to illuminate with 
a whitish light a great circular surface of the sky 
around it. 
In the morning, before we left, Alcides, who loved 
to carve names and inscriptions on every tree and stone, 
duly incised the name of Antonio Prado, with which I 
baptized the island in honour of the greatest Brazilian 
living, upon a giant figueira tree on the southern edge of 
the extensive beach of sand and gravel. 
Ill 
