“Why?” he said. “You seem very hard to please.”
“The place isn’t perfect, uncle,” I said.
“No place is, but I don’t see much to find fault with. Oh, you mean that we can find no quetzals.”
“No, I did not,” I said. “I meant we find too many rattlesnakes.”
“Ah, yes, they are a nuisance, Nat; but they always get out of our way if they can, and so long as they don’t bite us we need not complain. Well, we have pretty well explored this valley, and it is time we tried another. We must get farther to the south.”
“Why not strike off, then, from the top of the great cliff above the arch, and try and find where the stream dives down?”
“What!” he said; “you don’t think, then, that the stream rises entirely there?”
“No,” I said; “I fancy it dives underground when it reaches a mountain, and comes out where we saw.”
“Quite likely,” he said, jumping at the idea. “We’ll try, for we have had some beautiful specimens from the woodlands on the banks of that stream. Perhaps we may find my golden-green trogons up there after all, for I feel sure that there are some to be found up among the head-waters of the river.”
The next day preparations were made for our expedition, and as the country we were in seemed to be so completely uninhabited from its unsuitability for agricultural purposes, and the little attraction it had for hunters other than such as we, there was no occasion to mind leaving the boat.