like claws, that were hooked into every crevice, and round every projection.  In the stage beyond this the palm had been killed, and its dead carcass appeared between the big, winding vine-trunks; and later the palm had disappeared and the vines had united into a great fig-tree.  Water stood in black pools at the foot of the murdered trees, and of the trees that had murdered them.  There was something sinister and evil in the dark stillness of the grove; it seemed as if sentient beings had writhed themselves round and were strangling other sentient beings.

We passed through wonderfully beautiful woods of tall palms, the ouaouaca palm—­wawasa palm, as it should be spelled in English.  The trunks rose tall and strong and slender, and the fronds were branches twenty or thirty feet long, with the many long, narrow green blades starting from the midrib at right angles in pairs.  Round the ponds stood stately burity palms, rising like huge columns, with great branches that looked like fans, as the long, stiff blades radiated from the end of the midrib.  One tree was gorgeous with the brilliant hues of a flock of party-colored macaws.  Green parrots flew shrieking overhead.

Now and then we were bitten and stung by the venomous fire-ants, and ticks crawled upon us.  Once we were assailed by more serious foes, in the shape of a nest of maribundi wasps, not the biggest kind, but about the size of our hornets.  We were at the time passing through dense jungle, under tall trees, in a spot where the down timber, holes, tangled creepers, and thorns made the going difficult.  The leading men were not assailed, although they were now and then cutting the trail.  Colonel Rondon and I were in the middle of the column, and the swarm attacked us; both of us were badly stung on the face, neck, and hands, the colonel even more severely than I was.  He wheeled and rode to the rear and I to the front; our horses were stung too; and we went at a rate that a moment previously I would have deemed impossible over such ground.

At the close of the day, when we were almost back at the river, the dogs killed a jaguar kitten.  There was no trace of the mother.  Some accident must have befallen her, and the kitten was trying to shift for herself.  She was very emaciated.  In her stomach were the remains of a pigeon and some tendons from the skeleton or dried carcass of some big animal.  The loathsome berni flies, which deposit eggs in living beings—­cattle, dogs, monkeys, rodents, men—­had been at it.  There were seven huge, white grubs making big abscess-like swellings over its eyes.  These flies deposit their grubs in men.  In 1909, on Colonel Rondon’s hardest trip, every man of the party had from one to five grubs deposited in him, the fly acting with great speed, and driving its ovipositor through clothing.  The grubs cause torture; but a couple of cross cuts with a lancet permit the loathsome creatures to be squeezed out.