Nóvita is essentially a mining town. A good deal of gold and platinum are washed out of the small streams that form a network in the surrounding country. The negroes and Indians bring in the precious metals in small quantities--wrapped in leaves--and trade them for tinned food and cloth. However, the town seemed to be on the decline in favor of Condoto, Pueblo Rico, and Quibdó, where richer mineral deposits had been located. The forest contained comparatively little wild life, and that was typical of the Pacific tropical faunal zone. We daily took long tramps and discovered numerous things of more than passing interest. Among them was a colony of nesting black-and-yellow orioles (_Icterus_). The birds had selected a solitary ceiba-tree standing in the centre of a banana-field. It was seventy feet to the lowest limbs and the trunk was so thick and smooth that no predatory animal could climb it, which insured the safety of the colony from such a source of danger. The nests, like huge pears, dangled from the tips of the branches; I counted one hundred and four, and there must have been many others concealed by the foliage. The adult birds were busy and excited, and were coming and going in steady streams, keeping up their noisy chattering all the while. We found numerous bits of egg-shells, white with black dots, on the ground, indicating that the young were just hatching. One evening as we were returning from a long hunt, we noticed lines of bats emerging from the little church standing on the edge of the village. Next day (Christmas) I visited this rendezvous accompanied by several negro assistants. The bats were all concealed within the board walls, so that it was impossible to get at them, but the negroes unhesitatingly tore away the slabs of flattened bamboo and soon had the room filled with a squeaking, fluttering swarm which they attacked with sticks. This method of attack proving too slow, they grabbed guns and fired into the masses amid wild shouts of merriment. When the pandemonium was over and the heap of slain had been collected, they respectfully removed their hats and in passing out of the church reverently bowed the knee before the altar. We had been cautioned to be on the alert for snakes. The deadly bushmaster or _verrugosa_ was said to be particularly abundant. While hunting one day, Allen shot a hawk and placed it in the back pocket of his hunting-coat. To all appearances the bird was dead; while crawling through a thicket a short time later he felt a sudden sharp sting in his back and, throwing up his hands in terror, yelled, “Oh, Lord! one got me at last,” thinking, of course, that he had been struck by a snake. Hurriedly removing his coat, the discovery was made that the supposedly dead hawk had been stunned only and, reviving, had promptly dug its talons in the first thing that offered a firm hold. One may well imagine the unpleasantness of such an experience.