ng upon the
ground, for in a few moments the guaco rose into the air, and carried
the struggling victim into the woods to devour it at his leisure.

Now Guapo was exceedingly pleased at what had occurred. Why? It was
not because such a scene was at all new to him. No; he had often
witnessed such, and was no longer curious upon that head. It was
something more than mere curiosity that moved Guapo. When the affair
was over, he rose from his seat, and stalking off to the place where the
bird had been seen to eat the leaves, he gathered a quantity of them,
and then returned to the fire. Don Pablo recognised them as the leaves
of a plant of the genus _Mikania_, and known popularly as the "vejuco de
guaco." Guapo knew nothing of the scientific designation of the plant,
but he had long ago been taught the valuable properties of its leaves as
an antidote against the bite of the most poisonous snakes. He had known
them to cure the bite of the cascabel (_rattle-snake_), and even of the
small spotted viper (_Echidna ocellata_), the most poisonous of all the
American snakes.

What, then, did Guapo with the leaves of the vejuco? First, he chopped
them up as fine as he could, and then, tying them tightly in a piece of
cotton cloth, he expressed from them a quantity of juice--enough for his
purpose. That done, with the point of a knife he made small incisions
between his toes, and also upon his breast and fingers. Into each of
these incisions, even while the blood was flowing from them, he dropped
the juice of the Mikania, and rubbed it in with fresh leaves of the
plant itself; and then, with some tufts of the soft floss of the
silk-cotton tree (_Bombax ceiba_), he covered the incisions, so as to
stop the bleeding. He wound up this strange performance, by chewing
some of the leaves, and swallowing about a spoonful of the juice. This
made the "inoculation" complete, and Guapo, as he himself declared, was
now invulnerable to the bite of the most venomous serpent!

He offered to "inoculate" the others in the same way. They at first
refused--Don Pablo among the rest--but after a day or two, when each of
the party had met with several narrow escapes from vipers, coral snakes,
and the much-dreaded "jararaca" (_craspedo-cephalus_), Don Pablo thought
it prudent that all should submit to the operation, and accordingly
Guapo "doctored" the party without more ado.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN.

THE PALM-WOODS.

It happened, that upo