“After fully satisfying myself that it only leads the world into error to describe the sloth while he is on the ground, or in any place except in a tree, I carried the one I had in my possession to his native haunts. As soon as he came in contact with the branch of a tree, all went right with him. I could see, as he climbed up into his own country, that he was on the right road to happiness; and felt persuaded more than ever that the world has hitherto erred in its conjectures concerning the sloth, on account of naturalists not having given a description of him when he was in the only position in which he ought to have been described, namely, clinging to the branch of a tree.”
The vampires also come in for further notice. He says that “independent of the hollow trees, the vampires have another hiding-place. They clear out the inside of the large ants’ nests, and then take possession of the shell. I had gone about half a day down the river, to a part of the forest where the wallaba-trees were in great plenty. The seeds had ripened, and I was in hopes to have got the large scarlet ara, which feeds on them. But, unfortunately, the time had passed away, and the seeds had fallen.
“While ranging here in the forest, we stopped under an ants’ nest; and, by the dirt below, conjectured that it had got new tenants. Thinking it no harm to dislodge them, ‘vi et armis,’ an Indian boy ascended the tree; but, before he reached the nest, out flew above a dozen vampires.
“I have formerly remarked that I wished to have it in my power to say, that I had been sucked by the vampire. I gave them many an opportunity, but they always fought shy; and though they now sucked a young man of the Indian breed very severely, as he was sleeping in his hammock in the shed next to mine, they would have nothing to do with me. His great toe seemed to have all the attractions. I examined it minutely as he was bathing it in the river at daybreak. The midnight surgeon had made a hole in it, almost of a triangular shape, and the blood was then running from it apace. His hammock was so defiled and stained with clotted blood, that he was obliged to beg an old black woman to wash it. As she was taking it down to the river side, she spread it out before me, and shook her head. I remarked, that I supposed her own toe was too old and tough to invite the vampire-doctor to get his supper out of it; and she answered, with a grin, that doctors generally preferred young people.
“Nobody has yet been able to inform me how it is that the vampire manages to draw such a large quantity of blood, generally from the toe; and the patient, all the time, remains in a profound sleep. I have never heard of an instance of a man waking under the operation. On the contrary, he continues in a sound sleep, and at the time of rising, his eyes first inform him that there has been a thirsty thief on his toe.
“The teeth of the vampire are very sharp, and not unlike those of a rat. If it be that he inflicts the wound with his teeth (and he seems to have no other instruments), one would suppose that the acuteness of the pain would cause the person who is sucked to awake. We are in darkness in this matter; and I know of no means by which one might be enabled to throw light upon it. It is to be hoped that some future wanderer through the wilds of Guiana will be more fortunate than I have been, and catch this nocturnal depredator in the fact. I have once before mentioned that I killed a vampire which measured thirty-two inches from wing to wing extended; but others, which I have since examined, have generally been from twenty to twenty-six inches in dimension.”
Mr. Waterton corrects a common mistake as to the statements concerning the imitative actions of monkeys in casting back at men fruit and sticks in return for being pelted with stones. He believes that “travellers have erred in asserting that the monkeys of South America throw sticks and fruit at their pursuers. I have had fine opportunities of narrowly watching the different species of monkeys which are found in the wilds, betwixt the Amazons and the Oroonoque. I entirely acquit them of acting on the offensive. When the monkeys are in the high trees over your head, the dead branches will now and then fall down upon you, having been broken off as the monkeys pass along them; but they are never hurled from their hands.
“Monkeys, commonly so called, both in the old and new continent, may be classed into three grand divisions—namely, the ape, which has no tail whatever; the baboon, which has only a short tail; and the monkey, which has a long tail. There are no apes and no baboons as yet discovered in the New World. Its monkeys may be very well and very briefly ranged under two heads—namely, those with hairy and bushy tails, and those whose tails are bare of hair underneath, about six inches from the extremity. Those with hairy and bushy tails climb just like the squirrel, and make no use of the tail to help them from branch to branch. Those which have the tail bare underneath towards the end find it of infinite advantage to them in their ascent and descent. They apply it to the branch of the tree, as though it were a supple finger, and frequently swing by it from the branch like the pendulum of a clock. It answers all the purposes of a fifth hand to the monkey, as naturalists have already observed.
“The large red monkey of Demerara is not a baboon, though it goes by that name, having a long prensile tail.[2] Nothing can sound more dreadful than its nocturnal howlings. While lying in your hammock in these gloomy and immeasurable wilds, you hear him howling at intervals, from eleven o’clock at night till daybreak. You would suppose that half the wild beasts of the forest were collecting for the work of carnage. Now it is the tremendous roar of the jaguar, as he springs on his prey; now it changes to his terrible and deep-toned growlings, as he is pressed on all sides by superior force; and now you hear his last dying moan, beneath a mortal wound.
[2] I believe prensile is a new-coined word. I have seen it, but do not remember where.