第159章

We found, in fact, the nest at the distance of a few yards from the place.It was a conical pile of dead leaves, in the middle of which twenty eggs were buried.These were of elliptical shape, considerably larger than those of a duck, and having a hard shell of the texture of porcelain, but very rough on the outside.They make a loud sound when rubbed together, and it is said that it is easy to find a mother alligator in the Ygapo forests by rubbing together two eggs in this way, she being never far off, and attracted by the sounds.

I put half-a-dozen of the alligator's eggs in my game-bag for specimens, and we then continued on our way.Lino, who was now first, presently made a start backwards, calling out "Jararaca!"This is the name of a poisonous snake (genus Craspedocephalus), which is far more dreaded by the natives than Jaguar or Alligator.The individual seen by Lino lay coiled up at the foot of a tree, and was scarcely distinguishable, on account of the colours of its body being assimilated to those of the fallen leaves.Its hideous, flat triangular head, connected with the body by a thin neck, was reared and turned towards us: Frazao killed it with a charge of shot, shattering it completely, and destroying, to my regret, its value as a specimen.In conversing on the subject of Jararacas as we walked onwards, every one of the party was ready to swear that this snake attacks man without provocation, leaping towards him from a considerable distance when he approaches.I met, in the course of my daily rambles in the woods, many Jararacas, and once or twice narrowly very escaped treading on them, but never saw them attempt to spring.

On some subjects the testimony of the natives of a wild country is utterly worthless.The bite of the Jararacas is generally fatal.I knew of four or five instances of death from it, and only of one clear case of recovery after being bitten; but in that case the person was lamed for life.

We walked over moderately elevated and dry ground for about a mile, and then descended (three or four feet only) to the dry bed of another creek.This was pierced in the same way as the former water-course, with round holes full of muddy water.They occurred at intervals of a few yards, and had the appearance of having been made by the hand of man.The smallest were about two feet, the largest seven or eight feet in diameter.As we approached the most extensive of the larger ones, I was startled at seeing a number of large serpent-like heads bobbing about the surface.

They proved to be those of electric eels, and it now occurred to me that the round holes were made by these animals working constantly round and round in the moist, muddy soil.Their depth (some of them were at least eight feet deep) was doubtless due also to the movements of the eels in the soft soil, and accounted for their not drying up, in the fine season, with the rest of the creek.Thus, while alligators and turtles in this great inundated forest region retire to the larger pools during the dry season, the electric eels make for themselves little ponds in which to pass the season of drought.

My companions now cut each a stout pole, and proceeded to eject the eels in order to get at the other fishes, with which they had discovered the ponds to abound.I amused them all very much by showing how the electric shock from the eels could pass from one person to another.We joined hands in a line while I touched the biggest and freshest of the animals on the head with the point of my hunting-knife.We found that this experiment did not succeed more than three times with the same eel when out of the water;for, the fourth time the shock was scarcely perceptible.All the fishes found in the holes (besides the eels) belonged to one species, a small kind of Acari, or Loricaria, a group whose members have a complete bony integument.Lino and the boy strung them together through the gills with slender sipos, and hung them on the trees to await our return later in the day.

Leaving the bed of the creek, we marched onwards, always towards the centre of the land, guided by the sun, which now glimmered through the thick foliage overhead.About eleven o'clock we saw a break in the forest before us, and presently emerged on the banks of a rather large sheet of water.This was one of the interior pools of which there are so many in this district.The margins were elevated some few feet, and sloped down to the water, the ground being hard and dry to the water's edge, and covered with shrubby vegetation.We passed completely round this pool, finding the crowns of the trees on its borders tenanted by curassow birds, whose presence was betrayed as usual by the peculiar note which they emit.My companions shot two of them.At the further end of the lake lay a deep watercourse, which we traced for about half a mile, and found to communicate with another and smaller pool.This second one evidently swarmed with turtles, as we saw the snouts of many peering above the surface of the water: the same had not been seen in the larger lake, probably because we had made too much noise in hailing our discovery on approaching its banks.My friends made an arrangement on the spot for returning to this pool, after the termination of the egg harvest on Catua.