h the
cool, competent officer who was doing a difficult job with such
workman-like efficiency. He had no poncho, and was wet through, but
was much too busy in getting his laden oxen forward to think of
personal discomfort. He had had a good deal of trouble with his mules,
but his oxen were still in fair shape.

After leaving the Juruena the ground became somewhat more hilly, and
the scrubby forest was less open, but otherwise there was no change in
the monotonous, and yet to me rather attractive, landscape. The ant-
hills, and the ant-houses in the trees--arboreal ant-hills, so to
speak were as conspicuous as ever. The architects of some were red
ants, of others black ants; and others, which were on the whole the
largest, had been built by the white ants, the termites. The latter
were not infrequently taller than a horseman's head.

That evening round the camp-fire Colonel Rondon happened to mention
how the brother of one of the soldiers with us--a Parecis Indian--had
been killed by a jararaca snake. Cherrie told of a narrow escape he
had from one while collecting in Guiana. At night he used to set traps
in camp for small mammals. One night he heard one of these traps go
off under his hammock. He reached down for it, and as he fumbled for
the chain he felt a snake strike at him, just missing him in the
darkness, but actually brushing his hand. He lit a light and saw that
a big jararaca had been caught in the trap; and he preserved it as a
specimen. Snakes frequently came into his camp after nightfall. He
killed one rattlesnake which had swallowed the skinned bodies of four
mice he had prepared as specimens; which shows that rattlesnakes do
not always feed only on living prey. Another rattlesnake which he
killed in Central America had just swallowed an opossum which proved
to be of a species new to science. Miller told how once on the Orinoco
he saw on the bank a small anaconda, some ten feet long, killing one
of the iguanas, big, active, truculent, carnivorous lizards, equally
at home on the land and in the water. Evidently the iguanas were
digging out holes in the bank in which to lay their eggs; for there
were several such holes, and iguanas working at them. The snake had
crushed its prey to a pulp; and not more than a couple of feet away
another iguana was still busily, and with entire unconcern, engaged in
making its burrow. At Miller's approach the anaconda left the dead
iguana and rushed into the water, and the