"When no more eggs are to be found, the mashing process begins. The egg, it may be mentioned, has a flexible or leathery shell: it is quite round, and somewhat larger than a hen's egg. The whole heap is thrown into an empty canoe, and mashed with wooden prongs; but sometimes naked Indians and children jump into the mass, and tread it down, besmearing themselves with the yolk, and making about as filthy a scene as can well be imagined. This being finished, water is poured into the canoe, and the fatty mass then left for a few hours to be heated by the sun, on which the oil separates, and rises to the surface. The floating oil is afterwards skimmed off with long spoons, made by tying large mussel-shells to the end of rods, and purified over the fire in copper-kettles. At least six thousand jars, holding each three gallons of the oil, are exported annually from the Upper Amazons and the Madeira to Pará, where it is used for lighting, frying fish, and other purposes." ELECTRIC EELS. "We walked over moderately elevated and dry ground for about a mile, and then descended three or four feet 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 hands of man. As we approached, I was startled at seeing a number of large serpent-like heads bobbing above 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 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 hardly perceptible." CHAPTER XVII. ANIMATED NATURE.