第75章

In the dry forests of Villa Nova I saw a rattlesnake for the first time.I was returning home one day through a narrow alley, when I heard a pattering noise close to me.Hard by was a tall palm tree, whose head was heavily weighted with parasitic plants, and I thought the noise was a warning that it was about to fall.

The wind lulled for a few moments, and then there was no doubt that the noise proceeded from the ground.On turning my head in that direction, a sudden plunge startled me, and a heavy gliding motion betrayed a large serpent making off almost from beneath my feet.The ground is always so encumbered with rotting leaves and branches that one only discovers snakes when they are in the act of moving away.The residents of Villa Nova would not believe that I had seen a rattlesnake in their neighbourhood; in fact, it is not known to occur in the forests at all, its place being the open campos, where, near Santarem, I killed several.On my second visit to Villa Nova I saw another.I had then a favourite little dog, named Diamante, who used to accompany me in my rambles.One day he rushed into the thicket, and made a dead set at a large snake, whose head I saw raised above the herbage.The foolish little brute approached quite close, and then the serpent reared its tail slightly in a horizontal position and shook its terrible rattle.It was many minutes before I could get the dog away; and this incident, as well as the one already related, shows how slow the reptile is to make the fatal spring.

I was much annoyed, and at the same time amused, with the Urubu vultures.The Portuguese call them corvos or crows; in colour and general appearance they somewhat resemble rooks, but they are much larger, and have naked, black, wrinkled skin about their face and throat.They assemble in great numbers in the villages about the end of the wet season, and are then ravenous with hunger.My cook could not leave the kitchen open at the back of the house for a moment while the dinner was cooking, on account of their thievish propensities.Some of them were always loitering about, watching their opportunity, and the instant the kitchen was left unguarded, the bold marauders marched in and lifted the lids off the saucepans with their beaks to rob them of their contents.The boys of the village lie in wait, and shoot them with bow and arrow; and vultures have consequently acquired such a dread of these weapons, that they may be often kept off by hanging a bow from the rafters of the kitchen.As the dry season advances, the hosts of Urubus follow the fishermen to the lakes, where they gorge themselves with the offal of the fisheries.

Towards February, they return to the villages, and are then not nearly so ravenous as before their summer trips.

The insects of Villa Nova are, to a great extent, the same as those of Santarem and the Tapajos.A few species of all orders, however, are found here, which occurred nowhere else on the Amazons, besides several others which are properly considered local varieties or races of others found at Para, on the Northern shore of the Amazons, or in other parts of Tropical America.The Hymenoptera were especially numerous, as they always are in districts which possess a sandy soil; but the many interesting facts which I gleaned relative to their habits will be more conveniently introduced when I treat of the same or similar species found in the localities above-named.

In the broad alleys of the forest several species of Morpho were common.One of these is a sister form to the Morpho Hecuba, which I have mentioned as occurring at Obydos.The Villa Nova kind differs from Hecuba sufficiently to be considered a distinct species, and has been described under the name of M.Cisseis; but it is clearly only a local variety of it, the range of the two being limited by the barrier of the broad Amazons.It is a grand sight to see these colossal butterflies by twos and threes floating at a great height in the still air of a tropical morning.They flap their wings only at long intervals, for I have noticed them to sail a very considerable distance without a stroke.Their wing-muscles and the thorax to which they are attached are very feeble in comparison with the wide extent and weight of the wings; but the large expanse of these members doubtless assists the insects in maintaining their aerial course.

Morphos are among the most conspicuous of the insect denizens of Tropical American forests, and the broad glades of the Villa Nova woods seemed especially suited to them, for I noticed here six species.The largest specimens of Morpho Cisseis measure seven inches and a half in expanse.Another smaller kind, which I could not capture, was of a pale silvery-blue colour, and the polished surface of its wings flashed like a silver speculum as the insect flapped its wings at a great elevation in the sunlight.

To resume our voyage-- We left Villa Nova on the 4th of December.

A light wind on the 5th carried us across to the opposite shore and past the mouth of the Parana-mirim do arco, or the little river of the bow, so-called on account of its being a short arm of the main river, of a curved shape, and rejoining the Amazons a little below Villa Nova.On the 6th, after passing a large island in mid-river, we arrived at a place where a line of perpendicular clay cliffs, called the Barreiros de Cararaucu, diverts slightly the course of the main stream, as at Obydos.A little below these cliffs were a few settlers' houses; here Penna remained ten days to trade, a delay which I turned to good account in augmenting very considerably my collections.