Our second day’s canoe voyage brought us into a part of the river, with many windings among park-like glades of trees. Then the lovely fan-palms became very numerous; at times we passed closer to the banks, a tangled mass of _bàraràta_ bending down into the river, and the tall grey columns of the palms standing up sometimes from the very edge of the water, with their graceful crown of green fans sharply defined against the blue of the sky. Everything seemed to be steeped in light and heat. Surely of all the millions of beautiful things in this beautiful world, palms are among the most lovely, and the fan-palm not least among this glorious family of trees. It was a perpetual delight to the eye to watch them as we swept rapidly by the banks with the strong current, as one by one they passed by as in a panorama. But for mosquitoes, certainly parts of the tropics are earthly Edens. These palms are called _Sàtranabé_, and are much used by the western peoples in building their huts. A smaller species, called _Sàtramira_, is also employed in manufacturing mats and baskets. Both are species of _Hyphæne_. But beautiful objects were not the only ones prominent in this journey, and the presence of the scaly reptiles we saw every few minutes was not altogether in harmony with the graceful palms. They seemed, indeed, to be somewhat out of place, “survivals,” as indeed they are, of an earlier age of the world when gigantic saurians—creeping, walking, swimming and flying—were the ruling existences, in a world of slime and mud and ooze, and not in accord with these beautiful trees, which seem as if they should rather be associated with bright-coloured birds and insects than with these crawling saw-backed monsters. Beautiful birds were not wanting, however, in the scene, for we came across a flight of lovely little sun-birds, with bright metallic plumage, which glittered in the sunshine. [Sidenote: FRUIT-BATS] Birds are not the only flying creatures to be seen in this western region; although I was not so fortunate as to see them, Mr Grainge, in travelling down this river in the preceding year speaks of seeing great numbers of fruit-bats (_Pteropus edwardsii_). Their flight is slow, and broken at each moment by strokes of the wings; and those he saw flew so straight and steadily that he took them at first, in the doubtful evening light, for benighted crows. He also remarks that they were always flying in a direct line _from_ the setting sun. One that he shot measured more than four feet across the wings. M. Pollen says that they may be seen sometimes in broad daylight, flying from one forest to another, when one might take them for crows. He also remarks: “I have observed these animals fly like swallows over a lake, just skimming the surface of the water with their wings. They choose isolated places, especially the little wooded islands at some distance from the coast.”