g sun, I was glad to find myself
at the hamlet of Errere, near the foot of the serra, where I rejoined my
companions. It was already noon, and they had arrived some time before.
They had, however, waited breakfast for me, to which we all brought a
good appetite. Breakfast over, we slung our hammocks under the trees,
and during the heat of the day enjoyed the rest which we had so richly
earned.

FOOTNOTES:

[C] The name consecrated by De Saussure to designate certain rocks in
Switzerland, which have had their surfaces rounded under the action of
the glaciers. Their gently swelling outlines are thought to resemble
sheep resting on the ground, and for this reason the people in the Alps
call them _roches moutonnees_.

[D] The atlas in Martins's "Journey to Brazil," or the sketch
accompanying Bates's description of these hills in his "Naturalist on
the Amazons," will give an idea of their aspect.

A BUNDLE OF BONES.

And a very large bundle it was, as it lay, in _disjecta membra_, before
the astonished eyes of the first learned palaeontologist who gazed, in
wondering delight, on its strange proportions. As it rears its ungainly
form some eighteen feet above us, Madam, you may gather some idea of
what it was in its native forests, I don't know how many hundreds of
thousands of years ago. You need not snuggle up to me so, Tommy. The
creature is not alive, unless it is enjoying Sydney Smith's idea of
comfort, and, having taken off its flesh, is airing itself in its bones.
Megatherium was a very proper name for it, if not a very common one; for
_large animal_ it was, beyond any dispute, and could scarcely have been
much of a pet with the human beings of old, unless "there were giants in
those days," and enormous ones at that. How Owen must have gloated over
that treasure-trove! Captain Kyd's buried booty would have been worse
trash to him than Iago's stolen purse, beside this unearthed deposit of
an antediluvian age. Its missing caudal vertebrae would outweigh now, in
his anatomical scales, all the hidden gains of the whole race of
pirates, past, present, and to come. Think of those bones with all the
original muscle upon them! Why, they would outweigh all the worthy
members of the Boston Society of Natural History together, unless they
are uncommonly obese. Where could Noah have stowed a pair of such
enormous beasts, supposing that they existed as late as when the ark was
launched? Sloth, indeed! I am inclined to