lf a dozen such sheets, each
extending between two trees. The webs could hardly be seen; and the
effect was of scores of big, formidable-looking spiders poised in
midair, equidistant from one another, between each pair of trees. When
darkness and rain fell they were still out, fixing their webs, and
pouncing on the occasional insects that blundered into the webs. I
have no question that they are nocturnal; they certainly hide in the
daytime, and it seems impossible that they can come out only for a few
minutes at dusk.

In the evenings, after supper or dinner--it is hard to tell by what
title the exceedingly movable evening meal should be called--the
members of the party sometimes told stories of incidents in their past
lives. Most of them were men of varied experiences. Rondon and Lyra
told of the hardship and suffering of the first trips through the
wilderness across which we were going with such comfort. On this very
plateau they had once lived for weeks on the fruits of the various
fruit-bearing trees. Naturally they became emaciated and feeble. In
the forests of the Amazonian basin they did better because they often
shot birds and plundered the hives of the wild honey-bees. In cutting
the trail for the telegraph-line through the Juruena basin they lost
every single one of the hundred and sixty mules with which they had
started. Those men pay dear who build the first foundations of empire!
Fiala told of the long polar nights and of white bears that came round
the snow huts of the explorers, greedy to eat them, and themselves
destined to be eaten by them. Of all the party Cherrie's experiences
had covered the widest range. This was partly owing to the fact that
the latter-day naturalist of the most vigorous type who goes into the
untrodden wastes of the world must see and do many strange things; and
still more owing to the character of the man himself. The things he
had seen and done and undergone often enabled him to cast the light of
his own past experience on unexpected subjects. Once we were talking
about the proper weapons for cavalry, and some one mentioned the
theory that the lance is especially formidable because of the moral
effect it produces on the enemy. Cherrie nodded emphatically; and a
little cross-examination elicited the fact that he was speaking from
lively personal recollection of his own feelings when charged by
lancers. It was while he was fighting with the Venezuelan insurgents
in an unsuccessf