"I once had an opportunity, in one of my excursions, of watching the movements of a sloth. Some travellers in South America have described the sloth as very nimble in its native woods, and have disputed the justness of the name which has been bestowed upon it. The inhabitants of the Amazons region, however, both Indians and descendants of the Portuguese, hold to the common opinion, and consider the sloth as the type of laziness. It is very common for one native to call to another, in reproaching him for idleness, 'Bicho do Embaüba' (beast of the cecropia-tree); the leaves of the cecropia being the food of the sloth. It is a strange sight to see the uncouth creature, fit production of these silent woods, lazily moving from branch to branch. Every movement betrays, not indolence exactly, but extreme caution. He never looses his hold from one branch without first securing himself to the next; and, when he does not immediately find a bough to grasp with the rigid hooks into which his paws are so curiously transformed, he raises his body, supported on his hind legs, and claws around in search of a fresh foothold. After watching the animal for about half an hour, I gave him a charge of shot: he fell with a terrific crash, but caught a bough in his descent with his powerful claws, and remained suspended. Two days afterward, I found the body of the sloth on the ground; the animal having dropped, on the relaxation of the muscles, a few hours after death. In one of our voyages, I saw a sloth swimming across a river at a place where it was probably three hundred yards broad. Our men caught the beast, and cooked and ate him." THE ANACONDA. "We had an unwelcome visitor while at anchor in the port. I was awakened a little after midnight, as I lay in my little cabin, by a heavy blow struck at the sides of the canoe close to my head, succeeded by the sound of a weighty body plunging in the water. I got up; but all was quiet again, except the cackle of fowls in our hen-coop, which hung over the side of the vessel, about three feet from the cabin-door. Next morning I found my poultry loose about the canoe, and a large rent in the bottom of the hen-coop, which was about two feet from the surface of the water. A couple of fowls were missing.