heir
whereabouts.

How the noise is made is a question. Cuvier was of opinion that it
was made by the air-bladder, though he could not explain how: but
the truth, if truth it be, seems stranger still. These fish, it
seems, have strong bony palates and throat-teeth for crushing shells
and crabs, and make this wonderful noise simply by grinding their
teeth together.

I vouch for nothing, save that I heard this strange humming more
than once. As for the cause of it, I can only say, as was said of
yore, that 'I hold it for rashness to determine aught amid such
fertility of Nature's wonders.'

One afternoon we made an attempt on the other Guacharo cave, which
lies in the cliff on the landward side of the Monos Boca. But,
alas! the wind had chopped a little to the northward; a swell was
rolling in through the Boca; and when we got within twenty yards of
the low-browed arch our crew lay on their oars and held a
consultation, of which there could but be one result. They being
white gentlemen, and not Negroes, could trust themselves and each
other, and were ready, as I know well, to 'dare all that became a
man.' But every now and then a swell rolled in high enough to have
cracked our sculls against the top, and out again deep enough to
have staved the boat against the rocks. If we went to wreck, the
current was setting strongly out to sea; and the Boca was haunted by
sharks, and (according to the late Colonel Hamilton Smith) by a
worse monster still, namely, the giant ray, {111a} which goes by the
name of devil-fish on the Carolina shores. He saw, he says, one of
these monsters rise in this very Boca, at a sailor who had fallen
overboard, cover him with one of his broad wings, and sweep him down
into the depths. And, on the whole, if Guacharos are precious, so
is life. So, like Gyges of old, we 'elected to survive,' and rowed
away with wistful eyes, determining to get Guacharos--a
determination which was never carried out--from one of the limestone
caverns of the northern mountains.

And now it may be asked, and reasonably enough, what Guacharos
{111b} are; and why five English gentlemen and a canny Scots
coastguardman should think it worth while to imperil their lives to
obtain them.

I cannot answer better than by giving Humboldt's account of the Cave
of Caripe, on the Spanish main hard by, where he discovered them, or
rather described them to civilised Europe, for the firs