“An earthquake?” you will perhaps say. By no means. The shock was given by an electrical eel. However, it instantly took away all my strength, and nearly all my senses, too; and I believe, in my heart, I should never have been here, but for help. It was close to a Missionary village, and an Indian woman happening to come down to the pond to dip up water, just at that moment, and guessing my situation, lost no time in dragging me out before the animal had an opportunity of repeating his shocks.
I had now reached a better country. The mornings, especially, were uncommonly beautiful. Birds of every color greeted my ears with their songs; and among the rest, I particularly noticed the companion or bell-bird. Perched on the top of a lofty mora tree, this bird used to awaken me by his clear ringing note that sounds exactly like a fine toned bell, and may be heard two or three miles. He is white, with a black spire on his head, and about three inches in length.
Among other creatures that arrested my attention, was the harmless, but misrepresented and slandered sloth. I used often to see him looking down in my face from the lofty trees, where he feels most at home and most happy.
It is true that after he has been caught and put on the ground, he is a dull lazy animal; for he is out of his element, almost as much as a fish out of water, or a human being in it.
But I will give you a few more particulars of this animal. He is formed to live on trees, and is never found any where else, unless by force or accident. While the weather is calm, he remains suspended or hanging from the branches; but during a high wind, when the boughs of the closely growing trees are shaken and laced together, as it were, he passes from one to the other with ease and quickness. He never moves upon, but under the branches; he hangs there to rest, to eat, and to sleep. The color of his fur is so nearly that of the moss on the bark, that it is not easy to discover him, except when he is moving. In short, instead of being an object of disgust, or even of pity, I do not know a creature that appears more happy, as long as man and other animals will let him alone. It is man, by his “meddling” that makes a great many of the woes that his fellow animals feel. It is guns and snares, and traps, and aviaries, and cages, that make birds and beasts most unhappy.
THE WILL-O’-THE-WISP.
India rubber shoes—Aloe-leaf hats—Will-o’-the-wisps—What they are.
I had now been so long or in the forests and among the Indians, that I began to be in want of some of those things that are only to be found in the abodes of civilized men. My shoes, in particular, began to fail me; and I dreaded the idea of going barefooted day after day.
But as good luck would have it, or rather, perhaps I ought to say, as a kind Providence designed it, I fell in with an India rubber tree, into which somebody had made incisions, and from which the gum was now flowing. So I let it flow upon my shoes, in order to form a new sole. In this undertaking, however, I was not quite so successful as in making a new hat to supply the place of my old one. I found a species of aloe, from the tough thick leaves of which, by splitting them I made me a very good hat, especially for the dry season. In the rainy season, it would not have been quite so comfortable, I suppose.