The Object Of This Practice Is, I Believe, To Tear Off
The Ragged Points Of Their Claws, And Not, As The Gauchos
Think, To Sharpen Them.
The jaguar is killed, without much
difficulty, by the aid of dogs baying and driving him up a
tree, where he is despatched with bullets.
Owing to bad weather we remained two days at our moorings.
Our only amusement was catching fish for our dinner:
there were several kinds, and all good eating. A fish called
the "armado" (a Silurus) is remarkable from a harsh grating
noise which it makes when caught by hook and line,
and which can be distinctly heard when the fish is beneath
the water. This same fish has the power of firmly catching
hold of any object, such as the blade of an oar or the fishing-
line, with the strong spine both of its pectoral and dorsal
fin. In the evening the weather was quite tropical, the
thermometer standing at 79 degs. Numbers of fireflies were
hovering about, and the musquitoes were very troublesome.
I exposed my hand for five minutes, and it was soon black
with them; I do not suppose there could have been less than
fifty, all busy sucking.
October 15th. - We got under way and passed Punta
Gorda, where there is a colony of tame Indians from the
province of Missiones. We sailed rapidly down the current,
but before sunset, from a silly fear of bad weather, we
brought-to in a narrow arm of the river. I took the boat
and rowed some distance up this creek. It was very narrow,
winding, and deep; on each side a wall thirty or forty feet
high, formed by trees intwined with creepers, gave to the
canal a singularly gloomy appearance. I here saw a very
extraordinary bird, called the Scissor-beak (Rhynchops
nigra). It has short legs, web feet, extremely long-pointed
wings, and is of about the size of a tern. The beak is flattened
laterally, that is, in a plane at right angles to that
of a spoonbill or duck. It is as flat and elastic as an ivory
paper-cutter, and the lower mandible, differing from every
other bird, is an inch and a half longer than the upper. In
a lake near Maldonado, from which the water had been
nearly drained, and which, in consequence, swarmed with
small fry, I saw several of these birds, generally in small
flocks, flying rapidly backwards and forwards close to the
surface of the lake. They kept their bills wide open, and
the lower mandible half buried in the water. Thus skimming
the surface, they ploughed it in their course: the water was
quite smooth, and it formed a most curious spectacle to behold
a flock, each bird leaving its narrow wake on the mirror-like
surface. In their flight they frequently twist about
with extreme quickness, and dexterously manage with their
projecting lower mandible to plough up small fish, which are
secured by the upper and shorter half of their scissor-like
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