and the young American, owed their safety to the same presence of mind, and the same combination of ideas.

The movements of the crocodile of the Apure are abrupt and rapid when it attacks any object; but it moves with the slowness of a salamander, when it is not excited by rage or hunger. The animal in running makes a rustling noise, that seems to proceed from the rubbing of the scales of its skin against one another. In this movement it bends its back, and appears higher on its legs than when at rest. We often heard this noise of the scales very near us on the shore; but it is not true, as the Indians pretend, that, like the pangolins, the old crocodiles" can erect their scales, and every part of their armour." The motion of these animals is no doubt generally in a straight line, or rather like that of an arrow which changes its direction at certain distances. However, notwithstanding the little apparatus of false ribs, that connects the vertebræ of the neck, and seems to impede the lateral movement, crocodiles can turn easily, when they please. I often saw young ones biting their tails; and other observers have seen the same action in crocodiles at their full growth. If their movements almost always appear to be straight forward, it is because, like our small lizards, they execute them by starts. Crocodiles are excellent swimmers; they go with facility against the most rapid current. It appeared to me, however, that in descending the river they had some difficulty in turning quickly about. A large dog that had accompanied us in our journey from Caraccas to the Rio Negro, was one day pursued in swimming by an enormous crocodile, which had nearly reached him, when the dog escaped its enemy by turning round suddenly and swimming against the current. The crocodile performed the same movement, but much more slowly than the dog, which happily gained the shore.

The crocodiles of the Apure find abundant nourishment in the chiguires, (the thick nosed tapir of the naturalists,) which live 50 or 60 together in troops on the banks of the river. These unfortunate animals, as large as our pigs, have no weapons of defence; they swim somewhat better than they run: yet they become the prey of the crocodiles in the water, as of the tigers on land. It is difficult to conceive, how, persecuted by two powerful enemies, they can become so numerous; but they breed with the same rapidity as the cobayas, or little guinea-pigs, which come to us from Brazil.

We stopped below the mouth of the Cano de la Tigrera, in a sinuosity called La Vuelta del Joval, to measure the velocity of the water at its surface. It was not more than 3.2 feet in a second; which gives 2.56 feet for the mean velocity. The barometrical heights, attending to the effects of the little horary variations, indicated scarcely a slope of seventeen inches in a mile of nine hundred and fifty toises. The velocity is the simultaneous effect of the slope of the ground, and the accumulation of the waters by the swelling of the upper parts of the river. We were again surrounded by chiguires, which swim like dogs, raising the head and neck above the water. We saw with surprise a large crocodile on the opposite shore, motionless, and sleeping in the midst of these nibbling animals. It awoke at the approach of our canoe, and went into the water slowly, without affrighting the chiguires. Our Indians accounted for this indifference by the stupidity of the animal; but it is more probable, that the chiguires know by long experience, that the crocodile of the Apure and the Oroonoko does not attack upon land, unless he finds the object he would seize immediately in his way, at the instant when he throws himself into the water.

Near the Joval nature assumes an awful and savage aspect.— We there saw the largest tiger we had ever met with. The natives themselves were astonished at its prodigious length, which surpassed that of all the tigers of India I had seen in the collections of Europe. The animal lay stretched beneath the shade of a large zamang.* It had just killed a chiguire, but had not yet touched its prey, on which it kept one of its paws. The zamuroes, a species of vulture which we have compared above to the percnopterus of Lower Egypt, were assembled in flocks to devour the remains of the jaguar's repast. They afforded the most curious spectacle, by a singular mixture of boldness and timidity. They advanced within the distance of two feet from the jaguar, but at the least movement the beast made, they drew back. In order to observe more nearly the manners of these animals, we went into the little boat, that accompanied our canoe. Tigers very rarely attack boats by swimming to them; and never but when their ferocity is heightened by a long privation of food. The noise of our oars ied the animal to rise slowly and hide itself behind the sauso bushes

that bordered the shore. The vultures tried to profit by this moment of absence to devour the chiguire: but the tiger, notwithstanding the proximity of our boat, leaped into the midst of them; and in a fit of rage, expressed by his gait and the movement of his tail, carried off his prey to the forest. The Indians regretted, that they were not provided with their lances, in order to go on shore, and attack the tiger. They are accustomed to this weapon, and were right in not trusting to our musquets, which, in an air so excessively humid, often miss fire.

Continuing to descend the river, we met with the great herd of chiguires, which the tiger had put to flight, and from which he had selected his prey. These animals saw us land with great tranquility; some of them were seated, and gazed upon us, moving the upper lip like rabbits. They seemed not to be afraid of men, but the sight of our great dog put them to flight. Their hind legs being longer than their fore legs, their pace is a slight gallop, but with so little swiftness, that we succeeded in catching two of them. The chiguire, which swims with the greatest agility, utters a short moan in running, as if its respiration were impeded. It is the largest of the family of gnawing animals. It defends itself only at the last extremity, when it is surrounded and wounded. Having great strength in its grinding teeth, particularly the hinder ones, which are pretty long, it can tear the paw of a tiger, or the leg of a horse, with its bite. Its flesh has a smell of musk somewhat disagreeable; yet hams are made of it in this country, which almost justifies the name of water hog given to the chiguire by some of the older naturalists. The missionary monks do not hesitate to eat these hams during lent. According to their Zoological classifications, they place the armadillo, the thick nosed tapir, and the manatee near the tortoises; the first, because it is covered with a hard armour, like a sort of shell, and the others because they are amphibious. The chiguires are found in such numbers on the banks of the river Santo Domingo, Apure and Arauca, in the marshes and the inundated savannahs, of the Llanos, that the pasturages suffer from them. They browze the grass which fattens the horses best, and which bears the name of chiguirero, "chiguire grass." They feed also upon fish; and we saw with surprize, that, affrighted by the approach of a boat, the animal in diving remains eight or ten minutes under water.

We passed the night as usual, in the open air, though in a

plantation, the proprie or of which employed himself in hunting tigers. He was almost naked, and of a dark brown complexion like a Zambo. This did not prevent his thinking himself of the cast of Whites. He called his wife and his daughter, who were as naked as himself, Donna Isabella, and Donna Manuela. Without having ever quitted the banks of the Apure, he took a lively interest" in the news of Madrid, in those wars which never ended and in every thing down yonder; todas las cosas de alla." He knew, that the king was soon to come and visit "the grandees of the country of Caraccas," but, added he with some pleasantry, "as the people of the court can eat only wheaten bread, they will never pass beyond the town of Victoria, and we shall not see them here." I had brought with me a chiguire, which I had intended to have roasted; but our host assured us, that such " Indian game" was not food fit for nos otros cavalleros blancos,“ white gentlemen like him and me." Accordingly he offered us some venison, which he had killed the day before with an arrow, for he had neither powder nor fire arms.

We supposed that a small wood of plantain trees concealed from us the hut of the farm : but this man, so proud of his nobility and the colour of his skin, had not taken the trouble of constructing an ajoupa of palm leaves. He invited us to have our hammocks hung near his own, between two trees; and he assured us with an air of complacency, that, if we came up the river in the rainy season, we should find him beneath a roof, (baxo lecho.) We soon had reason to complain of a philosophy, which, indulgent to indolence, renders a man indifferent to the conveniences of life. A furious wind arose after midnight, lightnings ploughed the horizon, the thunder rolled, and we were wet to the skin. During this storm a whimsical incident served to amuse us for a moment. Donna Isabella's cat had perched upon the tamarind-tree, at the foot of which we lay. It fell into the hammock of one of our companions, who, wounded by the claws of the cat, and awakened from a profound sleep, thought he was attacked by some wild beast of the forest. We ran to him on hearing his cries, and had some trouble to convince him of his error. While it rained in torrents on our hammocks, and the instruments we had landed, don Ignacio congratulated us on our good fortune in not sleeping on the strand, but finding ourselves in his domain, among whites and persons of rank; entre gente blanca y de trato.

Wet as we were, we could not easily persuade ourselves of the advantages of our situation, and listened with some impatience to the long narrative our host gave us of his pretended expedition to Rio Meta, of the valour he had displayed in a bloody combat with the Guahibo Indians, and "the services that he had rendered God and his King, in carrying away children (los Indiecitos) from their parents, to distribute them in the missions." How singular a spectacle, to find in that vast solitude a man, who believes himself of European race, and knows no other shelter than the shade ofa tree, with all the vain pretensions, all the hereditary prejudices, all the errors, of long civilization!

April the 1st. At sun rise we quitted signior don Ignacio, and Signora donna Isabella his wife. The weather was cooler, for the thermometer, which generally kept up in the day to 30 or 350 had sunk to 24°. The temperature of the river was little changed, it' continued constantly at 26° or 27o. The current carried with it an enormous quantity of trunks of trees. We might imagine, that on ground entirely smooth, and where the eye cannot distinguish the least hill, the river would have formed by the force of its current a channel in a straight line. A glance at the map, which I traced by the compass, will prove the contrary. The two banks, worn by the waters, do not furnish an equal resistance; and almost imperceptible inequalities of the level suffice to produce great sinuosities, yet below the Joval, where the bed of the river enlarges a little, it forms a channel that appears perfectly straight, and is shaded on each side by very tall trees. This part of the river is called Cano Ricco. I found it to be one hundred and thirty six toises broad. We passed a low island, inhabited by thousands of flamingoes rose-coloured spoonbills herons, and moorhens, which displayed a mixture of the most various colours. These birds were so close together, that they seemed to be unable to stir. The island they inhabit is called Isla de Aves. Lower down we passed the point, where the Rio Arichuna, an arm of the Apure, branches off to the Cabulare, carrying off a considerable body of its waters. We stopped on the right bank, at a little Indian mission, inhabited by the tribe of the Guamoes. There were yet only sixteen or eighteen huts constructed with the leaves of the palm tree; yet, in the statistical tables presented annually by the missionaries to the court, this assemblage of huts is marked with the name of the village de Santa Barbara de Arichuna.