“Look here, Pete; you’ve seen macaws, or aras, as they call them. Mr Nat here shot one days ago.”
“Them big poll parrots, sir? Oh no, it warn’t one of them, sir. I know that sort well enough.”
“I hope we shall come upon it another day then,” said my uncle.
We had a short rest, and then turned in the direction of the river-gorge again, its presence simplifying our position, for we had only to steer south at any time to come upon the steep, well-wooded ravine, along whose sides we had constant peeps of the clear flowing water, finding several places where we could descend, while here the variety of birds, insects, and reptiles was wonderful, and had we wanted them we could soon have killed more than we should have been able to preserve.
But with most of them my uncle was familiar, and unless the specimen seen was something rare, he let it go in peace.
“Fortune may favour us, Nat,” he said, “and we may come upon the home of the beautiful trogons, especially the splendid trogon, or quetzal. Then we must make the best of our opportunities.”
I had expected that we should make our way back to the boat-camp that night, but we spent so much time exploring the wonders and beauties of the gorge, that evening was coming on when we stopped about a mile higher along the stream than the spot where we first climbed up, and as we were well supplied with provisions, and were pretty well fagged, my uncle decided to camp in the shelter of the rocky side of the ravine for the night.
So Pete was set to collect dead wood for a fire, Cross descended with our kettle to fill it below, and before long we were partaking of a capital meat-tea by the light of the fire; while we strolled a little way from our camp to listen to the various sounds of the night, it seemed as if a fresh world of inhabitants had awakened, and for hours we listened to the strange notes of bird and insect, and watched with wonder the beauty of the fire-flies, which never seemed to grow common.
The fire was burning low when we turned back to camp, and Pete was stretched out on the sandy shelf beneath the great tree he had selected for our resting-place, and snoring as if he meant to make up for the hard day’s work.
But Cross was wakeful and ready to throw a few more dry twigs upon the fire to light us as soon as he heard our steps.