to the depth of seven or eight hundred feet." But the mules were fully equal to the occasion whenever a dangerous spot occurred. They fully understood the nature of the ground they had to traverse; and when they felt there was danger, always stopped, turning their heads uneasily to right and left. They seem to be considering the course they shall pursue, and if left to themselves, and not hurried or forced forward by the traveller, will always bring him safely out of the

difficulty. They seem to exert a reasoning power beyond and above mere instinct; and this power is fully recognised and valued by their owners. "It is on the frightful roads of the Andes," says the Personal Narrative, "during journeys of six or seven months across mountains furrowed by torrents, that the intelligence of horses and beasts of burden displays itself in an astonishing manner. Thus the mountaineers are heard to say, 'I will not give you the mule whose step is easiest, but him who reasons best (la mas racional).' This popular saying, dictated by long experience, combats the system that makes animals animated machines, better, perhaps, than all the arguments of speculative philosophy."

A considerable stay was made at a convent of Arragonese Capuchins, at Caripe. The convent itself was built in front of an enormous wall of perpendicular rock, of resplendent whiteness, and the scenery reminded the travellers of a Derbyshire valley. The monks

received their visitors with great hospitality, and offered them every facility for carrying on their scientific labours. The fraternity possessed a tolerable library, in which their visitors noticed with surprise the Lettres Edifiantes, the Teatro Critico of Feijo, and Nollet's Traité d'Electricité. It is recorded as greatly to their credit, that though they knew Humboldt to be a Protestant, they never showed a symptom of intolerance or any disposition to meddle with him on religious matters. He tells us that "No mark of distrust, no indiscreet question, no attempt at controversy ever diminished the value of the hospitality they exercised with so much liberality and frankness.” The travellers were, indeed, in a kind of scientific paradise. The flora that surrounded them, the geological formations, the various animals that ranged the forests, the very stars in the sky above them, all were as books requiring to be read and studied; and not a day passed that did not bring an accession to their store of information, and to the splendid collection of plants, minerals, and insects they were diligently bringing together.

The chief object of attraction to scientific visitors in the valley of Caripe is undoubtedly the Great Cueva, or cavern of the Guacharo. The name means the cavern of noise or lamentations, and has its origin in the fact that this cavern is the haunt of thousands of nocturnal birds, who are very noisy, and fill their subterranean dwelling with their wailing cries. Humboldt and Bonpland, accompanied by the alcaids, or Indian magistrates, and by a number of monks from the mission, paid a visit to this remarkable cavern. The entrance of the cave is described as "majestic even to the eye of a traveller accustomed to the picturesque scenes of the higher Alps." Humboldt, who had already seen the caverns of the Derbyshire Peak, of the Carpathian and Hartz mountains, and the vast stone caverns of Franconia, with their petrified remains of tigers, hyenas, and bears, was singularly impressed with the magnitude and grandeur of this Caripe cavern. The entrance itself was eighty feet broad and seventy-two feet high, and formed an enormous archway in a vertical rock, festooned to its summit with magnificent flowering plants-bignonias of violet blue, the purple dolichos, and magnificent solandras of orange hue, with fleshy tubes more than four inches long. Not only the outside, but the inside also of the cavern was magnificent with luxurious tropical vegetation. Plantain-leaved heliconias eighteen feet high, the praga palm tree, and arborescent arums flourished in the semi-darkness of what may be

called the vestibule of the cavern of Caripe, to between thirty and forty feet from the entrance. As the travellers penetrated into the darkness, the shrill voices of the nocturnal birds were heard, growing louder and more menacing as the intruders advanced into the gloom. Four hundred and thirty feet from the entrance, it became necessary to light the torches. The guacharo is about the size of a hen; it has a plumage of dark bluish grey, tinged with small streaks or specks of black, and with white heart-shaped spots on the head, wings, and tail. Its cry is something like the croak of the crow. These strange nocturnal birds are hunted once a year, at midsummer, by the Indians, who enter the cavern armed with long poles, with which they destroy many nests, and kill some thousands of the birds. The guacharo would have become as extinct as the dodo but for the superstition of the natives, who are exceedingly averse from entering the cavern, except in large companies on the occasion of their annual hunt. The birds are exceedingly fat; the inert nature of their lives, and the darkness in which they sit cowering month after month, give them the appearance of having been fattened by some artificial process, instead of being lean and skinny like the nocturnal birds of Europe, who live on the scanty prey they hunt with much muscular exertion and toil; while the frugivorous guacharo finds his meal upon every shrub and tree. The abundant fat, called guacharo oil or butter, is melted out of the dead birds. It has the property of keeping fresh and pure for more than a year. Thus this "oil harvest" is a very important time for the Indians. The monks also make extensive use of the guacharo oil; and a family of Indians, who dwell near the cavern and assume to be the original proprietors of this singular preserve, are compelled to furnish a certain quantity of oil for the use of the convent lamps and the convent kitchen. The good monks asserted, indeed, that only for the church lamps was the oil supplied gratis, and that they paid for all the rest; but Humboldt seems to have shrewdly doubted this statement, and there is an under-current of polished irony in the sentences in which he describes the relations between the Morocoymas Indians and their monkish neighbours. "We shall not decide,” he says, "either on the legitimacy of the rights of the Morocoymas, or on the origin of the obligation imposed on the natives by the monks. It would seem natural that the produce of the chase should belong to those who hunt; but in the forests of the New World, as in the centre of European cultivation, public right is

modified according to the relations which are established between the strong and the weak, the victors and the vanquished." Was there ever a more polite and euphuistic method of proclaiming the hard truth that "might is right, all the world over?"

For the space of 1,458 feet the grotto of Caripe preserves its original form, dimensions, and direction. A small river flows through it, and about fifteen hundred feet from the entrance forms a cascade. The natives were superstitiously reluctant to advance far into the cavern, whose darkness and solitude had for them the terrors with which these attributes are associated in the minds of all uneducated nations. Man should avoid places, they declared, where neither the sun nor the moon gives light. To go and join the guacharos would be to go and seek their fathers—namely, to die. Magicians and poisoners performed their incantations at the entrance of the cavern, to conjure the chief of the evil spirits. After penetrating for some distance farther into the cavern the Indians definitively "struck;" and all the persuasions and authority of the monks could not overcome their superstitious terrors, or induce them to advance one step farther into what was to them the Cavern of Cocytus, peopled with the spirits of the dead. Strangely universal is the tendency in man to associate darkness with ideas of death, while light everywhere typifies life and joy. The travellers were accordingly obliged to retrace their steps, and grope their way out of the cavern; and even Humboldt confesses he was glad to emerge from a region whose darkness was not even accompanied by the peace associated with solitude and silence. From the report of the monks, it appeared that a certain bishop of St. Thomas in Guyana had penetrated farther than our travellers had proceeded into the gloomy cavern. Provided with good waxen torches, which give much light without the suffocating smoke inseparable from those made of bark and resin, he had worked his way for a distance of 2,500 feet into the cave without finding any indication of its ending. At the entrance the monks had prepared a little feast for our travellers in honour of the occasion, and Humboldt and Bonpland sat down on the bank of the river, at the entrance of the cavern, to a repast spread on leaves of banana and heliconia large enough to serve as tablecloths.

On their return to Cumana, the travellers noticed large flocks of a species of vulture perched on the cocoa trees, and roosting in rows like fowls. They appeared of a very lazy disposition, going to roost long before sunset, and slumbering on until long after the sun had risen.

The same tendency to close before sundown and not to unfold their leaves until some time after sunrise was noticed in many of the plants of these regions.

Adventure with a Zambo"-Narrow Escape of Bonpland-Eclipse of the Sun -Earthquake Shocks from the Volcano of Pichincha-Phosphorescence of the Sea-The Hangman of Cumana-La Guayra-A Zealous PhysicianAscent of the Saddle Mountain-The Difference between Promise and Performance-Harmless Bees.

THE THE next stage of the adventurous journey was a canoe expedition on the great rivers Orinoko and Rio Negro, and naturally required much preparation of instruments, and many and complicated arrangements. Humboldt was, moreover, very anxious to observe an eclipse of the sun; and the bright, clear climate of Cumana was particularly favourable for astronomical observations. Accordingly the departure from Cumana was deferred till the end of October. A very few days before that appointed for the start, an adventure happened to our travellers which might easily have had fatal results. The two friends had gone out as usual to the margin of the gulf, in the evening, to observe the exact time of high-water. They were walking along the beach, when suddenly Baron Humboldt became