We met an American at the landing, who had experienced several unpleasant encounters with the negroes. He was engaged in searching for diamonds and had many of the colored folk in his employ. So far all the stones discovered had been of small size, but one day two of his men found a gem of good proportions. They immediately entered into an argument as to whether or not it was a real diamond, and to settle the dispute placed it on an anvil and hit it repeatedly with a sledge-hammer. “If it a diamond, it can’t broke,” was the gist of their theory. However, it was a real diamond, and it also broke; their outraged boss found the worthless particles a short time later. On another occasion this same man was confined in a hospital at Georgetown with a severe attack of fever. One night the colored head nurse swept in majestically, gave him a short, condescending look, and then directed his private nurse as follows: “Look through Mr. M.’s drawer to see if he’s got a white shirt to bury him in!” At frequent intervals throughout the day we heard a deep, powerful note coming from the forest. It was a long-drawn _Wow_ that lasted eight or ten seconds, and exactly resembled the sound made by a circular saw cutting its way through a log. This we found was made by the bald-headed cotinga (_Gymnocephalus_), a bird the size of a crow, and of a dark-brown color; the head is entirely devoid of feathers, like a vulture’s. Invariably several of these curious creatures were together, fluttering about among the lower branches and making the woods ring with their queer, outlandish cries. Another species of cotinga (_Xipholena_) was very rare; it was of smaller size and of the deepest wine color, with long, graceful wing-coverts and white primaries. When several were together in some tall tree-top they kept up a continuous quacking like a flock of ducks. If a skin of this bird is exposed to heat the color rapidly fades to a sickly bluish-gray. One day an Indian hunter brought in a very small red howler monkey, and as I was aware that the species had not been known to live in captivity more than a few weeks, I was very eager to see if I could rear it. On account of its small size it had, of course, to be fed on milk (condensed), which it soon learned to take from the point of a fountain-pen filler. While it thrived and grew rapidly, it was always a sad little fellow and made no attempt to play or show signs of great friendliness. The only advance it ever made was to come up to me occasionally when I spoke to it, and feel of my face with its little black hands. After a time it was given full liberty about the camp, when it would spend hours sitting quietly beside a basin of water gazing at its reflection. After two months, and just as I was congratulating myself on having raised it past the danger-point of its existence, it climbed to a high shelf and ate a quantity of the arsenic compound used in preparing specimens.