On the 2nd of October the same party left Ega on a second excursion, the object of Cardoza being this time to search certain pools in the forest for young Turtles. The exact situation of these hidden sheets of water are known to few. The morning was cloudy and cool, and a fresh wind blew down the river; they had to struggle, therefore, against wind and current. The boat was tossed about and shipped a good deal of water. Their destination was a point of land twenty miles below Shimuni. The coast-line was nearly straight for many miles, and the bank averaged about thirty feet above the then level of the river; at the top rose an unbroken hedge of forest. No one could have divined that pools of water existed on that elevated land. A path was cut through the forest by our party with their hunting-knives to the pool, half a mile distant; short poles were cut and laid across the path, over which three light canoes were rolled, after being dragged up the bank. A large net, seventy yards in length, was then disembarked and carried to the place. Netting, however, the older Indians considered unsportsmanlike; and, on reaching the pool, they commenced shooting the Turtles with bows and arrows from light stages erected on the shores. "The pool covered an area of about four acres, and was closely hemmed in by the forest, which, in picturesque variety and grouping, often exceeded almost anything I had seen. The margins for some distance were swampy, and covered with large tufts of fine grass called _matupá_. These tufts were in many places overrun with ferns, and exterior to them was a crowded row of arborescent shrubs growing to a height of fifteen or twenty feet, forming a green palisade. Around the whole stood the taller forest trees--palmate-leaved _Cecropiæ_; slender Assai palms thirty feet high, with their thin feathery heads crowning their gently-curving, smooth stems; and, as a background to these airy forms, lay the voluminous masses of ordinary forest trees, with garlands, festoons, and streamers of leafy parasites hanging from their branches."