Nearly all we know about it is briefly this. Heavy bodies, of every variety of size, from an ounce to 300 pound’s weight, have at different times fallen from the atmosphere. These heavy bodies are really composed of earth and metals. They all contain the same substances, though sometimes varying a little in the proportions; viz. iron, nickel, manganese, silica or silex, sulphur, magnesia and lime. Perhaps I ought to add that though I _know_ nothing more about these wonderful phenomena, it is more generally believed that these substances are _formed_ in the vast regions of the _atmosphere_, by causes unknown except to Him who _created_ the atmosphere, “in whom we live, and move, and have our being.” Soon after my last adventure I arrived at the Mission villages on the banks of the river Orinoco. Here I met with a Spanish gentleman of distinction, by the name of Don Calao. He was a merchant, and sold monkeys, mackaws, turtles’ eggs, &c., very odd things for a man to trade with, as I then thought. I have something to say about turtles’ eggs in my next letter. [Illustration: Turtle] THE HARVEST OF TURTLE’S EGGS. You would wonder how there could be any turtles remaining in South America, if you were to see the thousands and thousands that are destroyed by the Indians every year, at the _Harvest of Eggs_, as they call it. I attended one of these hunts or harvests, one day, with Don Calao the merchant, and saw the whole process. We all went in a boat, early one morning, to an Island in the river, where the sand was smooth, and which the tide had left bare. A person then took a long pole, and walked about, thrusting it into the sand, in every direction, and wherever it penetrated easily, he knew there was a nest of turtle’s eggs. So then they dug down, and when they found any, they put them in a basket which they brought for the purpose. Numbers of Indians were there, from all the neighboring shores, and immense numbers of eggs were collected. They make a kind of oil of the yolk, which is used in cooking, as well as for burning in their houses. It is supposed that not fewer than a million of turtles lay their eggs at the mouth of the great river Orinoco. More than three millions of eggs were taken the year I was there. Each turtle lays, on an average, seventy eggs. You may be surprised that out of seventy millions of eggs laid, only three millions were taken. But so many are broken, so many hunted out and devoured by the jaguars and other animals that feed upon them, that the wonder is, rather, that we find the vast number that we do. Many escape and are hatched however, for I saw in one instance, the whole shore of the Orinoco, swarming with little turtles, just hatched, and scrambling towards the water to escape from the Indian children who were catching them.