Everyday these visitors became bolder; at length they reached a pitch of impudence that was quite intolerable.Cardozo had a poodle dog named Carlito, which some grateful traveller whom he had befriended had sent him from Rio Janeiro.He took great pride in this dog, keeping it well sheared, and preserving his coat as white as soap and water could make it.We slept in our rancho in hammocks slung between the outer posts; a large wood fire (fed with a kind of wood abundant on the banks of the river, which keeps alight all night) being made in the middle, by the side of which slept Carlito on a little mat.Well, one night I was awoke by a great uproar.It was caused by Cardozo hurling burning firewood with loud curses at a huge cayman which had crawled up the bank and passed beneath my hammock (being nearest the water)towards the place where Carlito lay.The dog had raised the alarm in time; the reptile backed out and tumbled down the bank to the water, the sparks from the brands hurled at him flying from his bony hide.To our great surprise the animal (we supposed it to be the same individual) repeated his visit the very next night, this time passing round to the other side of our shed.Cardozo was awake, and threw a harpoon at him, but without doing him any harm.After this it was thought necessary to make an effort to check the alligators; a number of men were therefore persuaded to sally forth in their montarias and devote a day to killing them.
The young men made several hunting excursions during the fourteen days of our stay on Catua, and I, being associated with them in all their pleasures, made generally one of the party.These were, besides, the sole occasions on which I could add to my collections, while on these barren sands.Only two of these trips afforded incidents worth relating.
The first, which was made to the interior of the wooded island of Catua, was not a very successful one.We were twelve in number, all armed with guns and long hunting-knives.Long before sunrise, my friends woke me up from my hammock, where I lay, as usual, in the clothes worn during the day; and after taking each a cup-full of cashaca and ginger (a very general practice in early morning on the sand-banks), we commenced our walk.The waning moon still lingered in the clear sky, and a profound stillness pervaded sleeping camp, forest, and stream.Along the line of ranchos glimmered the fires made by each party to dry turtle-eggs for food, the eggs being spread on little wooden stages over the smoke.The distance to the forest from our place of starting was about two miles, being nearly the whole length of the sand-bank, which was also a very broad one-- the highest part, where it was covered with a thicket of dwarf willows, mimosas, and arrow grass, lying near the ranchos.We loitered much on the way, and the day dawned whilst we were yet on the road, the sand at this early hour feeling quite cold to the naked feet.As soon as we were able to distinguish things, the surface of the praia was seen to be dotted with small black objects.These were newly-hatched Aiyussa turtles, which were making their way in an undeviating line to the water, at least a mile distant.The young animal of this species is distinguishable from that of the large turtle and the Tracaja, by the edges of the breast-plate being raised on each side, so that in crawling it scores two parallel lines on the sand.The mouths of these little creatures were full of sand, a circumstance arising from their having to bite their way through many inches of superincumbent sand to reach the surface on emerging from the buried eggs.It was amusing to observe how constantly they turned again in the direction of the distant river, after being handled and set down on the sand with their heads facing the opposite quarter.We saw also several skeletons of the large cayman (some with the horny and bony hide of the animal nearly perfect) embedded in the sand; they reminded me of the remains of Ichthyosauri fossilised in beds of lias, with the difference of being buried in fine sand instead of in blue mud.I marked the place of one which had a well-preserved skull, and the next day returned to secure it.The specimen is now in the British Museum collection.There were also many footmarks of jaguars on the sand.
We entered the forest, as the sun peeped over the tree-tops far away down river.The party soon after divided, I keeping with a section which was led by Bento, the Ega carpenter, a capital woodsman.After a short walk we struck the banks of a beautiful little lake, having grassy margins and clear dark water, on the surface of which floated thick beds of water-lilies.We then crossed a muddy creek or watercourse that entered the lake, and then found ourselves on a restinga, or tongue of land between two waters.By keeping in sight of one or the other of these, there was no danger of our losing our way-- all other precautions were therefore unnecessary.The forest was tolerably clear of underwood, and consequently, easy to walk through.We had not gone far before a soft, long-drawn whistle was heard aloft in the trees, betraying the presence of Mutums (Curassow birds).The crowns of the trees, a hundred feet or more over our heads, were so closely interwoven that it was difficult to distinguish the birds-- the practised eye of Bento, however, made them out, and a fine male was shot from the flock, the rest flying away and alighting at no great distance.The species was the one of which the male has a round red ball on its beak (Crax globicera).The pursuit of the others led us a great distance, straight towards the interior of the island, in which direction we marched for three hours, having the lake always on our right.
