The distance was some twenty miles. The
whole country was marsh, varied by stretches of higher ground; and,
although these stretches rose only three or four feet above the marsh,
they were covered with thick jungle, largely palmetto scrub, or else
with open palm forest. For three or four miles we splashed through the
marsh, now and then crossing boggy pools where the little horses
labored hard not to mire down. Our dusky guide was clad in a shirt,
trousers, and fringed leather apron, and wore spurs on his bare feet;
he had a rope for a bridle, and two or three toes of each foot were
thrust into little iron stirrups.

The pools in the marsh were drying. They were filled with fish, most
of them dead or dying; and the birds had gathered to the banquet. The
most notable dinner guests were the great jabiru storks; the stately
creatures dotted the marsh. But ibis and herons abounded; the former
uttered queer, querulous cries when they discovered our presence. The
spurred lapwings were as noisy as they always are. The ibis and plover
did not pay any heed to the fish; but the black carrion vultures
feasted on them in the mud; and in the pools that were not dry small
alligators, the jacare-tinga, were feasting also. In many places the
stench from the dead fish was unpleasant.

Then for miles we rode through a beautiful open forest of tall,
slender caranda palms, with other trees scattered among them. Green
parakeets with black heads chattered as they flew; noisy green and red
parrots climbed among the palms; and huge macaws, some entirely blue,
others almost entirely red, screamed loudly as they perched in the
trees or took wing at our approach. If one was wounded its cries kept
its companions circling around overhead. The naturalists found the
bird fauna totally different from that which they had been collecting
in the hill country near Corumba, seventy or eighty miles distant; and
birds swarmed, both species and individuals. South America has the
most extensive and most varied avifauna of all the continents. On the
other hand, its mammalian fauna, although very interesting, is rather
poor in number of species and individuals and in the size of the
beasts. It possesses more mammals that are unique and distinctive in
type than does any other continent save Australia; and they are of
higher and much more varied types than in Australia. But there is
nothing approaching the majesty, beauty, and swarming mass of the
great mammalia