It is at this laying season that the South American Indians capture great numbers of turtles. The turtles come out of the water at night, in crowds, for the purpose of depositing their eggs. They dig trenches in the sand; and, having placed their eggs in these, and covered them, they all make a grand rush back to the water. Then the Indians, who are on the watch, run after them, seize as many as they can get hold of by the tails, and throw them over on their backs. In this position a turtle is helpless, and the Indians can easily kill them. The flesh is excellent food; but what the Indians chiefly desire to possess is the fine yellow fat with which the turtles are well supplied. From this fat the Indians manufacture a superior kind of oil, for which they find a ready sale. If these turtles were as large as some of the West Indian turtles that have been brought to this country, the Indians would not have an easy task in turning them over. A FEW VOLCANOES. A mountain with its great cone smoking like a chimney, or sending up into the clouds a grand sheaf of flame, must be a splendid sight, and one never to be forgotten. But when it begins to pour forth rivers of hot lava it is time to get entirely out of sight of it, if you can. For these streams of lava are sometimes very long. [Illustration: RIVER OF RED-HOT LAVA FROM MOUNT ETNA.] A hundred years ago Etna poured forth such an immense river of fiery stones, and liquid lava, and threw it out with such violence that it rushed in cascades and whirling torrents for fifteen miles, burning up everything in its course, until it finally plunged into the sea. [Illustration: ERUPTION OF COTOPAXI IN 1741.] This volcano has an eruption once in a while, but does not often give the world such a terrible one as this. Sometimes the lava only destroys the fields and vineyards near the mountain. It is a small volcano, but it has done a good deal of damage. Two hundred years ago it entirely destroyed the town of Catania. At a short distance from it stands another small volcano, which is famous for the ruin it has caused. You have no doubt read of the destruction of the city of Pompeii; and how it was entirely buried under the ashes thrown from Vesuvius during an eruption. Nearly everybody in the place at that time perished, and now people have to dig many feet under the ground to find the houses of the buried city. A smaller city in the neighborhood, Herculaneum, was buried at the same time, by the shower of ashes. This happened eighteen hundred years ago. But Vesuvius has not been quiet ever since that time. There have been several eruptions. In 1794 it hurled out torrents of fire from its top which rolled over a town, a few miles distant, and burned it into ruins. Strange to say, the town was rebuilt; and, a few years ago, Vesuvius visited it again with a fiery flood, which, however, only destroyed part of the town.