t time:--

'The Cueva del Guacharo is pierced in the vertical profile of a
rock. The entrance is towards the south, and forms a vault eighty
feet broad and seventy-two feet high. This elevation is but a fifth
less than the colonnade of the Louvre. The rock that surmounts the
grotto is covered with trees of gigantic height. The Mammee-tree
and the Genipa, with large and shining leaves, raise their branches
vertically towards the sky; while those of the Courbaril and the
Erythrina form, as they extend themselves, a thick vault of verdure.
Plants of the family of Pothos with succulent stems, Oxalises, and
Orchideae of a singular construction, rise in the driest clefts of
the rocks; while creeping plants waving in the winds are interwoven
in festoons before the opening of the cavern. We distinguished in
these festoons a Bignonia of a violet blue, the purple Dolichos,
and, for the first time, that magnificent Solandra, the orange
flower of which has a fleshy tube more than four inches long. The
entrances of grottoes, like the view of cascades, derive their
principal charm from the situation, more or less majestic, in which
they are placed, and which in some sort determines the character of
the landscape. What a contrast between the Cueva of Caripe and
those caverns of the north crowned with oaks and gloomy larch-trees!

'But this luxury of vegetation embellishes not only the outside of
the vault, it appears even in the vestibule of the grotto. We saw
with astonishment plantain-leaved Heliconias, eighteen feet high,
the Praga palm-trees, and arborescent Arums follow the banks of the
river, even to those subterranean places. The vegetation continues
in the Cave of Caripe, as in the deep crevices of the Andes, half
excluded from the light of day; and does not disappear till,
advancing in the interior, we reach thirty or forty paces from the
entrance. . . .

'The Guacharo quits the cavern at nightfall, especially when the
moon shines. It is almost the only frugivorous nocturnal bird that
is yet known; the conformation of its feet sufficiently shows that
it does not hunt like our owls. It feeds on very hard fruits, as
the Nutcracker and the Pyrrhocorax. The latter nestles also in
clefts of rocks, and is known under the name of night-crow. The
Indians assured us that the Guacharo does not pursue either the
lamellicorn insects, or those phalaenae which serve as food to the
goat-s