"Marriage, as is usual among savage races, takes place at a very early age, the husband being often only fourteen, the wife ten or twelve years of age. Polygamy is common, but not universal; where a chief or rich man has several wives, the first, or the earliest to become a mother, takes charge of the establishment during the absence of the owner on his hunting or fishing expeditions. The girls are sometimes betrothed at the age of five or six years, living in the house of the future husband from that time on. "At birth the mother is left in a separate house alone, where all food that she may need is placed for her, though she remains unvisited by any of her companions throughout the day; meanwhile the father remains in his hammock for several days, apparently owing to a belief that some evil may befall the child; there he receives the congratulations of the villagers, who bring him presents of the best game caught on their expeditions. This male child-bed, or _couvade_, is common to many of the Indian tribes. "The dead are mourned with elaborate ceremony--shouting, weeping and slow, monotonous music; the nearest relatives of the defunct cut their hair. The body is placed in leaves and tied up in the hammock used by the owner during life, and then placed in a hollow tree-trunk or in his canoe. This rude coffin is then generally placed on a small support, consisting of bamboo trestles, and so left in the deserted house of the dead man."[11] The wild animal life of this part of South America has always been of interest, whether to the scientist or the general reader. It is varied, as it is in Mexico and elsewhere in Spanish America, by the natural topographical and climatic divisions of _tierra caliente_, _tierra templada_ and _tierra fria_, or hot, temperate and cold lands respectively. The various kinds of monkeys include the spider-monkeys, the squirrel-monkeys, the marmosets, the vampires, the jaguar and puma--the former of which has been credited with living in the high branches of the trees in flood-times, to the perturbation of the monkeys, upon whose home it intrudes, chasing them to the tree-tops. In the Andes the peculiar "Speckled bear" has its abode. The manati is a native of the Orinoco, and the sloth of its forests, as also the "Ant-bear" and armadillo. These creatures may not always be readily seen by the passing traveller, but the birds are more present, although, as elsewhere in the Tropics, their plumage is more noteworthy than their song.