It was with the keenest delight of the pioneer and discoverer that we watched these rare creatures. Although they do not nest until July and August, yet we found them in the very trees and bushes which held the remains of last year’s nests, thus revealing their sedentary life during the rest of the year. And day after day and week after week we learned to know that they would be found in this or that tree and nowhere else; they were veritable feathered sloths. They fed chiefly upon leaves, but fish also entered into the bill of fare of at least one individual. We shot two, one for the skin and the other for the skeleton, and we found the plumage in a very worn and ragged condition, the wing feathers especially so, where the branches and leaves had rubbed and worn away the barbs. Throughout the noonday heat these birds were always to be found in the foliage overhanging the water, ready when disturbed to flop and thrash a few yards through the mangroves and bamboos. After many days of pure delight, our note-books filled and our photographic plates more than half gone, we decided to see something of the Venezuelan dry land. We would go on and on until we had left the mangroves with all their unpeopled mystery behind us, and see what new surprises the villages of the Guarauno (_War-ah-oo’no_) Indians and the jungles of the foot-hills would afford. At nine o’clock one night, when the stars alone cast a faint weird light over everything, we sent two of the crew ahead in the rowboat to keep our bow straight, and then began a long night of noiseless drifting with the tide. It was a night to remain forever in our memory. The men relieved their monotonous towing with strange wailing chants; on each side the mangroves slipped past, black and menacing; invisible creatures snorted and splashed in sudden terror as we rounded each turn; great fireflies burned on the trees and were reflected in the water, and to our ears came the roars of the four-handed folk, the calls and screams of night birds, the metallic clinks of insects, and ever the gasps and chokings of the serpents’ burrows—hardly less sinister now that we had solved their mystery. Throughout all the night we passed up one caño, down another, past miles and miles of black foliage, all alike to us, almost indistinguishable in the starlight, yet early next morning as we rose to rout the cloud of mosquitoes about our head nets, the captain said in his soft Spanish tongue, “The mountains of my country should be in sight ahead.” And, indeed, an hour later, as the day dawned, we could discern the blue haze in the north which marked the high land out. Toucans, big Muscovy Ducks[43] and Snakebirds[48] flew past us; great brown Woodpeckers and flights of Parrakeets swung across the caño; dolphins played around us, but we heeded them little, all eager to press on and see the new land.