Continuing on our way, we entered another body of hitherto unexplored water, a fairy spot, covered with floating islands of lotus, anchored with aquatic cables and surrounded by palm groves. On the shallow, pebbly shore might be seen, here and there, scarlet flamingoes. These beautiful birds stood on one leg, knee deep, dreaming of their enchanted home. Truly it is a perfect paradise, but it is almost as inaccessible as the Paradise which we all seek. What long-lost civilizations have ruled these now deserted solitudes? Penetrate into the dark, dank forest, as I have done, and ask the question. The only answer is the howling of the monkeys and the screaming of the cockatoos. You may start when you distinctly hear a bell tolling, but it is no call to worship in some stately old Inca temple with its golden sun and silver moon as deities. It is the wonderful bell-bird, which can make itself heard three miles away, but it is found only where man is not. Ruins of the old Incan and older pre-Incan civilizations are come across, covered now with dense jungle, but their builders have disappeared. To have left behind them until this day ruins which rank with the pyramids for extent, and Karnak for grandeur, proves their intelligence. The peculiar rasping noise you now hear in the undergrowth has nothing to do with busy civilization--'tis only the rattlesnake drawing his slimy length among the dead leaves or tangled reeds. No, all that is past, and this is an old new world indeed, and romance must not rob you of self possession, for the rattle means that in the encounter either he dies--or you. Meanwhile the work on shore progressed. Paths were cut in different directions and the wonders of nature laid bare. The ring of the axe and the sound of falling trees marked the commencement of civilization in those far-off regions. Ever and anon a loud report rang out from the woods, for it might almost be said that the men worked with the axe in one hand and a rifle in the other. Once they started a giant tapir taking his afternoon snooze. The beast lazily got up and made off, but not before he had turned his piercing eyes on the intruders, as though wondering what new animals they were. Surely this was his first sight of the "lords of creation," and probably his last, for a bullet quickly whizzed after him. Another day the men shot a puma searching for its prey, and numerous were the birds, beasts and reptiles that fell before our arms. The very venomous _jaracucú_, a snake eight to twelve feet long, having a double row of teeth in each jaw, is quite common here.