As we sped down the river many of the naked, painted savages rushed out in their canoes, paddling and yelling like demons in attempts to overtake the launch. I do not know what object they had in mind as we always outdistanced them. We also saw others catching crabs in places where the high, sheer banks were honeycombed with holes made by these crustaceans. They had slender, sharpened sticks with a barb on the end, which they inserted in the burrows and then withdrew with the struggling victims impaled on them. We reached the mouth of the San Juan in two days’ time. The river is very wide at this point and dotted with low mangrove islands. A sand-bar almost completely blocks the estuary, and when we left the next morning we had great difficulty in finding a passage. Then followed a wild, careening dash of forty miles in the open ocean. The launch was but twenty-one feet long, and we were compelled to go out of sight of land to avoid rocks and reefs; but dusk found us well within the confines of Buenaventura Bay, ploughing through the placid water at great speed and frightening up innumerable flocks of brown pelicans that much preferred to float comfortably on the unruffled surface, and took wing only as a last resort to escape being run down. Buenaventura had never seemed attractive or inviting to us before, but after a month in the steaming coastal land, with its almost constant downpour, insect pests, and terrific heat, it appeared to be altogether delightful. We returned to Cali and spent weeks on our backs suffering from the fevers with which we had become inoculated. Allen’s attack was so severe that he was compelled to return to the United States two days after reaching San Agustin on our next expedition, and just before the discovery of some of our most valuable material. CHAPTER VI IN QUEST OF THE COCK-OF-THE-ROCK On my fourth visit to Popayán we had to remain in the city the greater part of a week, arranging for the continuation of our journey across the Central Andes to the headwaters of the Magdalena. Hereafter we were to travel on foot, partly due to the fact that some of the trails were impassable, both to riding and pack animals, and partly to enable us to be in a position better to study the wild life of the region we traversed. I was accompanied on this particular expedition by Doctor Allen and Mr. J. T. Lloyd, of Cornell University.