. A flying trip to the tropics. A record of an ornithological visit to the United States of Colombia, South America and to the island of Curaçao, West Indies, in the year 1892 . r and being surmounted by a smallfortification. Fort Nassau. Owing to the elevation of this fort, itcommands a view of the sea for along distance around, and from itare displayed signals announcingthe approach of vessels. From it,also, a time-gun is fired daily. After passing- the forts withgroups of Dutch soldiers in curiousill-fitting uniforms, ridiculously tallforage caps, and short heavy swordsat their sides, we we
. A flying trip to the tropics. A record of an ornithological visit to the United States of Colombia, South America and to the island of Curaçao, West Indies, in the year 1892 . r and being surmounted by a smallfortification. Fort Nassau. Owing to the elevation of this fort, itcommands a view of the sea for along distance around, and from itare displayed signals announcingthe approach of vessels. From it,also, a time-gun is fired daily. After passing- the forts withgroups of Dutch soldiers in curiousill-fitting uniforms, ridiculously tallforage caps, and short heavy swordsat their sides, we went through adrawbridge of rather novel con-struction, proceeded a quarter ofa mile inland, and finally our vesselturned around (though there hard-ly seemed room for it to do so),and we tied up along the westernshore, sparred off to a distance offifteen feet. The water is wonder-fully clear, and we saw numbers offish of different kinds and sizes swimming about. There were sev-eral other steamers in the harbor, the Caracas of the Red D Linebound north, the branch steamer Maracaibo, a German steamer,and beyond, in the Lagoon, a couple of small men-of-war, Sj^anishand DUTCH SOLDIER AT CURACAO. 16 A FLYING TRIP TO THE TROPICS. Our vessel was soon surrounded by small boats, flat-bottomed,square at each end, sculled by very large and very black negroeswho stood on the back seat. (See illustration on page 13.) Theybrought out the port officer and runners from the hotels acrossthe harbor from us. Tired of being cooped up on shipboard, we thought of goingover to spend the night at one of the hotels, although Captain Hop-kins was kind enough to ask us to remain on the Venezuela. How-ever, as I had some misgivings, I concluded to leave our baggageon board until we had made an inspection, so we took one of thesmall boats and went across, first to the Hotel Commercio, wherewe were shown up a flight of steep and rickety stairs to some white-washed, bare, and unattractive rooms over a
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