Then we discussed the psychology of rain and of getting wet, and I arrived at the following conclusions, which are true ones. Once drenched to the skin in the tropics, all discomfort is gone. One simply squidges around in the blissful knowledge that all the mud and water in the world can now arouse no feeling of discomfort. One has simply been translated to a new world of elements, a new cosmos of sensation. And as with most such transmigrations, it is only the shifting which is disagreeable. As long as a shred of clothing is dry, we think of it and worry about it, and endeavor to keep it dry, and shrink from the clammy touch of partly sodden foot-wear. Once we slip into a trench, the rain becomes only a pleasant tapping on one's shoulders, a rhythmical, liquid vibration. With all fear eliminated, water and mud become no more unpleasant than air and earth. So our plantation expedition, like Gaul, may be divided into three parts: first, a thrilling, dangerous, expectant phase; a brief second period of thoroughly disappointing revelation; third, a jolly, unscientific, and wholly hilarious finale. These are the trips which no explorer or traveler mentions, because there are no tangible returns. But it is seldom that any expedition, however barren of direct results, cannot be made to yield some viewpoint of interest. * * * * * The sun had just risen when the little ferryboat left the stelling on its way to the railway station on the opposite bank of the river. Half of the jungle across the Berbice was dark, dark green, almost black, with a fragment of rainbow hung obliquely above it, tangled in blue-black clouds. A little way up-river the level sun's rays struck fairly, and the rounded, cloud-like billows of foliage were of palest sage-green. Our shore was all one blatant glare, flooded already with the violent light of a tropical day. Against the black Berbice cloud a hundred fork-tailed flycatchers flashed and vanished alternately as they swerved and careened. Steadily across its threatening face was drawn a single line of scarlet--a score of ibises glowing like the essence of rubies. VI HOATZINS AT HOME The flight of the hoatzin resembles that of an over-fed hen. The hoatzin's voice is no more melodious than the cry of a peacock, and less sonorous than an alligator's roar. The bird's grace is batrachian rather than avian, while the odor of its body resembles that of no bird untouched by dissolution. Still, zoölogically considered, the hoatzin is probably the most remarkable and interesting bird living on the earth today. It has successfully defied time and space. For it, the dial of the ages has moved more slowly than for the rest of organic life, and although living and breathing with us today, yet its world is an affair of two dimensions--a line of thorny saplings threaded along the muddy banks of a few tropical waters.