The eggs are
about an inch and a half in diameter, having a thin, leathery shell, a
very oily yolk, and a white which does not coagulate. The Indians ate
them uncooked. We used them chiefly in making corn griddles.

Here, as throughout its whole course, the Napo runs between two walls of
evergreen verdure. On either hand are low clay banks (no rocks are
visible), and from these the forest rises to a uniform height of seventy
or eighty feet. It has a more cheerful aspect than the sombre, silent
wilderness of Baeza. Old aristocrats of the woods are overrun by a gay
democracy of creepers and climbers, which interlace the entire forest,
and, descending to take root again, appear like the shrouds and stays of
a line-of-battle ship. Monkeys gambol on this wild rigging, and mingle
their chatter with the screams of the parrot. Trees as lofty as our oaks
are covered with flowers as beautiful as our lilies. Here are orchids of
softest tints;[128] flowering ferns, fifty feet high; the graceful
bamboo and wild banana; while high over all countless species of palm
wave their nodding plumes. Art could not arrange these beautiful forms
so harmoniously as nature has done.

[Footnote 128: Some orchid is in flower all the year round. The finest
species is the _odontoglossum_, having long, chocolate-colored petals,
margined with yellow. "Such is their number and variety (wrote Humboldt)
that the entire life of a painter would be too short to delineate all
the magnificent Orchideae which adorn the recesses of the deep valleys of
the Peruvian Andes." For many curious facts respecting the structure of
these flowers, see Darwin's _Fertilization of Orchids_.]

[Illustration: Hunting Turtles' Eggs]

The tropics, moreover, are strangers to the uniformity of association
seen in temperate climes. We have so many social plants that we speak of
a forest of oaks, and pines, and birches; but there variety is the law.
Individuals of the same species are seldom seen growing together.
Every tree is surrounded by strangers that seemingly prefer its room
to its company; and, such is the struggle for possession of the soil, it
is difficult to tell to which stem the different leaves and flowers
belong. The peculiar charm of a tropical forest is increased by the
mystery of its impenetrable thicket. Within that dense, matted
shrubbery, and behind that phalanx of trees, the imagination of the
traveler sees all manner of four-footed beasts and creeping things