. Three voyages of a naturalist : being an account of many little-known islands in three oceans visited by the "Valhalla" . were numbers of jacanas,*a bird resembling a water-hen in shape, butprovided with toes of such great length, that itcan walk with ease over the floating leaves of thewater-plants. In the lagoon caimans or alligators were plentiful,and during the day several were always to be foundeither basking on the trunks of trees, which hadfallen near the water, or lying in the water itself,with only their eyes and nostrils above thesurface. The near proximity of water to our c
. Three voyages of a naturalist : being an account of many little-known islands in three oceans visited by the "Valhalla" . were numbers of jacanas,*a bird resembling a water-hen in shape, butprovided with toes of such great length, that itcan walk with ease over the floating leaves of thewater-plants. In the lagoon caimans or alligators were plentiful,and during the day several were always to be foundeither basking on the trunks of trees, which hadfallen near the water, or lying in the water itself,with only their eyes and nostrils above thesurface. The near proximity of water to our camp wasconvenient, but at nightfall we realized that wehad made a great mistake, for the mosquitoesswarmed in such numbers that sleep was im-possible. A fire had been lighted previously,and arranged in such a way that the smoke blewthrough the tent, but the mosquitoes swarmed innotwithstanding, and after spending two nights ofdiscomfort, we obtained mosquito nets and movedthe tent to a greater distance from the this we most of us were able to get a coupleof nights immunity from these pests. Two of * Parra OS Q< CO I—I «iO I—I s ANIMALS OF THE FOREST 29 my companions, however, went out moth-catchingat night and omitted to fold up their nets beforethey started, the consequence being that on theirreturn the nets were full of mosquitoes, and a fewweeks later they both suffered from a bad attackof malarial fever. In spite of mosquitoes by night and grass-ticksby day, we all agreed that a short stay in thesolitude of a Brazilian forest was a most delightfulexperience. The first two nights there was sufficient moonlightto make shooting possible, and I spent a greatpart of the night in walking about round the foxes were seen, and one of these I island abounds with foxes, and there are alsoa fair number of wild cats, but although severalof the latter were seen, we did not succeed inshooting any. Every night I set a number oftraps for sm
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