, without a flowering plant or
shrub below their branches, forming a canopy almost impervious to the
light of day.

One day we had gone farther than usual from home, when we reached a
narrow lagune, overspread by the boughs of the gigantic trees which grew
on either side of it. The air and earth were teeming with animal life.
Birds of beautiful plumage, and every variety of note, were perched on
the branches, or flying above our heads; butterflies of many hues were
flitting about in all directions; and reptiles and insects innumerable
were crawling along the ground. More beautiful than all were the
humming-birds, which, like flashes of coloured light, appeared and
disappeared as they flew by us; and surpassing his brethren in
gorgeousness of hues, was the golden-tailed humming or fly bird, numbers
of which haunted every glade we passed. From many of the shady branches
hung nests built by the pouched starlings, four or five feet long, and
swinging to and fro with every breath of wind. Flocks of green parrots
were chattering on the higher boughs, and preparing to seek their
night--quarters in the higher parts. Our guide called them _jornaleros_
(day-labourers), and told me that the name was given them because, on
the return of every day, they come back at the same hour from the
mountains, where they sleep, to gather their food in the lower forests.
I had shot several birds, and was aiming at one, when he seized my arm,
and implored me not to fire.

"Do you not hear its note, Senor?" he exclaimed. "If you were to kill
that bird, Heaven would afflict you with some dreadful disaster.
Listen: does it not say, _Dios te de_ (May God give it thee)?"

The bird, as he rested on a branch before me, threw back his head and
rocked his body, and certainly uttered a note which might easily be thus
translated.

I had got close to the lagune, and was watching a bird which, with
fluttering wings, was hovering in the air a short distance from me, when
our guide forcibly drew me back, whispering, with a look of terror, "Did
you not see the _Yacumaman_? Would you venture within the mighty coils
of the Mother of Waters?"

At first I did not know what he could mean, till, creeping back, I saw
what I had at first taken for the root of a tree, but which I now
perceived to be an enormous serpent. Its body was wound in several huge
coils round the stem of a decayed tree, while it bathed its tail in the
waters of the lagune. Its head