. Our search for a wilderness; an account of two ornithological expeditions to Venezuela and to British Guiana . oes about ourhead nets, the captain sai I in his soft Spanish tongue, Themountains of my country should be in sight ahead. And,indeed, an hour later, as the day dawned, we could discernthe blue haze in the north which marked the high land out. Toucans, big Muscovy Ducks and Snakcbirds48 (lew pastus; great brown Woodpeckers and flights of ParrakeetS swungacross the cano; dolphins played around us, but we heededthem little, all eager to press on and see the new land. So we sat far up
. Our search for a wilderness; an account of two ornithological expeditions to Venezuela and to British Guiana . oes about ourhead nets, the captain sai I in his soft Spanish tongue, Themountains of my country should be in sight ahead. And,indeed, an hour later, as the day dawned, we could discernthe blue haze in the north which marked the high land out. Toucans, big Muscovy Ducks and Snakcbirds48 (lew pastus; great brown Woodpeckers and flights of ParrakeetS swungacross the cano; dolphins played around us, but we heededthem little, all eager to press on and see the new land. So we sat far up in the bow and watched the mountains takeform and the palms upon them become ever more aland of mystery untrodden by man, we were soon tocome upon a bit of land so prized by man that nations hadalmost gone to war over it — La Brea (Bra/ah), the strangelake of pitch hidden in the heart of the forest, with its strangebirds and fish and animals; lying on the borderland betweenthe foot-hills of the northern Andes and the world of man-groves which for many days had held us so safely in its CHAPTER II. THE LAKE OF PITCH. HERETOFORE we had sailed and paddled through aland of mangroves and water, where, with the excep-tion of one or two tiny muddy islets in the forest, there wasno solid ground. One day the last of innumerable turns ofa narrow cano brought our sloop in sight of real earth — thefirst dry land of eastern Venezuela. A rough wooden wharfsupporting a narrow-gauge line of rails appeared, and beyondrose a steep hill, dotted here and there with little thatchedhuts, each clinging to a niche scooped out of the clay. Wewere at the village of Guanoco {Wah-noco), the shippingpoint of the pitch lake. A few steps beyond the last hut andone was in the primeval forest — so limited is mans influ-ence in this region of rapidly growing plants. For five miles the little toy rails zigzagged their uneven waythrough the jungle. On one side was swamp, into which onec
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