In the afternoon we inspected the champa our men had been building. The building process was certainly a novel one. On receiving our orders, the Caribs held a brief consultation, chattering in their very unattractive language; while we knew no more of their talk than we knew of the intelligent ants, who are equally black, and hold their consultations unbeknown to us. The result was, however, that they separated and disappeared in the forest. Soon we heard the blows of the machetes; and then they came straggling back, two with the _aucones_ or main posts of the house, others with side-posts, rafters, coils of vejucos, and bundles of manàca-leaves. In an incredibly short time the frame was tied together. The thatching with the palm-leaves took longer, as it was necessary to split each of the immense leaves, which were quite thirty feet long. These were tied on to the rafters closely, like clapboards, and formed an excellent roof, only surpassed by that made of another palm, called _confra_, found nearer the sea, which is so durable as to last eight or ten years. Butts of the manàca formed the sides of the champa; and then we had a house large enough for twenty men, with the labor of five men a day and a half, at a cost of $3.75. For our purpose it was better than the Palace of the Cæsars. One morning I explored the tree to which we were moored. A fine balloon-vine (_Cardiospermum_) hung in festoons of fragrant flowers from the branches; among them was a humming-bird’s nest fashioned as daintily as usual of the golden down of tree-ferns, and shingled with bits of lichens. It was not the season for eggs; but I have at other times found many nests, with never more than two white eggs of the size of a small bean. The young birds, I may add, are, when first hatched, most amusing little things, all heads and eyes, and without the long bill of maturer days. I found also a green grasshopper (_Tropideres_), five inches long, and very handsome of his kind. I wondered if he ate sugar-cane, and other things one might want to grow if living in the champa.