ey head and large curved claws. All
day long it remains sleepily hanging under a bough, and only wakes up
when night falls. It lives only on trees and eats leaves. In far-back
ages there were sloths as large as rhinoceroses and elephants. We have,
too, the raccoon in a greyish-yellow coat, also a nocturnal animal,
which sleeps during the day in a hollow tree. He lives on small mammals
and birds, eggs and fruits, but before he swallows his food he cleans it
well, generally in water.

There is a perpetual gloom under the crowns of the foliaged trees and
palms. It is the home of shadows. Only lianas, these parasites of the
vegetable kingdom, raise their stems above the dusky vault to open their
calyces in the sun. Round them flutter innumerable butterflies in gaudy
colours. On the border between sunlight and shade scream droll parrots,
and busy pigeons steer their way among the trees on rustling wings.
There humming-birds dart like arrows through the air. They are small,
dainty birds with breast, neck, and head shining like metal with the
brightest, most vivid colouring. They build their nests carefully with
vegetable fibres and moss, and their beaks are long and fine as a reed.
There is a humming-bird which does not grow longer than an inch and a
half, and weighs little more than fifteen grains.

We must now go back to see how Orellana got on with his two brigantines.

Below the mouth of the Madeira he landed once on the northern bank in a
region inhabited only by tall Amazons, from whom the river received its
name. But the tale of Amazons was really a sailor's romance, just as the
Spaniards dreamed of Eldorado, or the land of gold.

On they went and the river never ended. During their voyage they saw in
lakes by the bank, well sheltered and exposed to the sun, the grandest
of all flowers, the _Victoria regia_ of the water-lily family, floating
on the water. Its leaves measure six feet in diameter, and the blossoms
are more than a foot across. The flowers open only two evenings, first
white and then purple.

Between the mouths of the mighty tributaries Tapajos and Xingu the
Spaniards saw the great grassy plains stretching up to the river. They
only just escaped cannibals on the northern bank. Warned by friendly
Indians, they were on their guard against the _piroroca_, the mysterious
bore, fifteen feet high, which is connected with the flow of the tide
and rushes up the river twice a month from the sea, devastating
ev