The night was clear and the blacks worked for several hours in the moonlight, unloading cargo. Not a mosquito came to mar the beauty of the night. Indeed the natives said they were never troublesome here at Mount Everard. In our hammocks as we rocked to sleep we thought drowsily of the dear Venezuelan wilderness of last year. We were so glad to be sleeping again in the open under the canopy of the southern sky. At last we felt that we were on the threshold of another wilderness. At four o’clock in the morning we awoke and heard far off through the jungle, the old, familiar howling of the red “baboons.” About five a rooster crowed on board and was answered by several on shore, and this seemed to awaken a black who began singing from his hammock in a logie, when a score of others took up the wild refrain and kept it up until daylight. With the sudden rush of light came the distant bubbling of Twa-twas, those little thick-billed pygmy Grosbeaks,[130] and the cackling hubbub of the Cassique colony. Returning to Morawhanna we were made welcome at the home of Mr. Howie King the Government Agent, while waiting for our Hoorie launch. The government house is well built and belonged formerly to Sir Everard im Thurn. It is surrounded by a garden which must once have been magnificent and which Mr. King is attempting to restore, clearing away the undergrowth which has long overrun the beautiful shrubs and flowering plants. The house is built on the extreme southern end of a great island which extends in a northwest direction for about fifty miles far into Venezuela territory, Mora Passage lying between it and Morawhanna proper. Flowers were abundant, attracting many insects and these in turn birds of a score or more species. Kiskadees were nesting in low Bois Immortelle trees, Yellow-backed Cassiques or Bunyahs, in a great saman overhanging the house; while in the garden were Seed-eaters of several kinds, together with Blue and Palm Tanagers and the beautiful Moriche Orioles.[158] Guiana House Wrens[124] were nesting indoors on the ceiling rafters and under the deep eaves of the half veranda, half sitting-room was a beautiful pendent nest of the Feather-toed Swift[71] composed entirely of feathery seed plumes. It was a straight symmetrical column about three inches in diameter and fourteen inches long, suspended from the palm thatch, not half a foot from a hanging, open-comb wasps’ nest. The upper ten inches of the nest was built and occupied just six months ago in September, and a brood of two young were reared. Now the birds had returned and were preparing to nest again, having already added four inches of pure white seed-plumes, easily distinguished from the older, browner, weathered portion. They came to the nest every hour with a beakful of plumes and pressed them into position while fluttering in mid air, evidently utilizing their saliva as a cementing substance. In the interims between their visits, Hummingbirds,—sometimes two at once—came