That night we made camp in the jungle. A skeleton shelter roof of poles was thrown up, over which was stretched a tarpaulin, coming to within six or seven feet of the ground all around. Then a double row of stout stakes was driven into the leaf mould along each side and the hammocks slung from them. They were springy, and one swung not only sideways but with a slight end for end motion that made every movement easy. While we were making camp we were hailed by a passing ballyhoo, the occupant of which proved to be Mr. Fowler, the head of the Colony Department of Lands and Mines, who had been at the mine on a tour of inspection and was now on his way back to Georgetown. Hospitable Mrs. Wilshire at once invited him to come over from his camping place farther downstream and dine with us. A dinner party in the “bush!” We all shared the feeling of festivity. The men hastily constructed a table of the trunks of young saplings, while the rest of the party hung lighted lanterns from the overhanging branches. Directly in front of the camp was a tall, straight Copa tree draped with long hanging bush ropes dangling from the lowest branches, seventy or eighty feet up the trunk. The base sent out thin, far-reaching buttresses, the intervals between which formed natural seats and closets for our guns and bags. Mr. Fowler’s Indian hunter brought in several Curassows which we added to the Cormorant for dinner. Mr. Fowler had seen a Bush-master (_Lachesis mutus_) a few hundred yards upstream, the first poisonous snake of which we had heard on this trip. We had a merry dinner, Mr. Fowler telling us many an interesting story of his early days in the colony. [Illustration: FIG. 119. POLING UNDER TACUBAS ON THE LITTLE AREMU.] The jungle around our camp was alive with sound all night—frogs chiefly; the wing-beating fellows, the heavily loaded freight engines, the bleating calves and a new kind which raised its loud and continuous voice in choking roars. One’s imagination pictured death struggles between man-like monkeys and other creatures, the qualities of human and bestial voices were so blended in this utterance. Vampires flew about back and forth under our shelter but none bit us. So strange and wonderful was this night in the “bush” that for many hours sleep was impossible. Early next morning a light rain fell for an hour and through it we photographed our night’s camp. As the sun shone dimly through the mist a chorus arose—Woodhewers, Parrots, Macaws and in the distance the ever thrilling moan of the red “baboons.”