nother part of South America, near the town of Cumana, is
a vast cavern in the Valley of Caripe, which was many years ago visited
by Baron Humboldt, who found it inhabited by a remarkable species of
nocturnal bird, called the guacharo. The mouth of the cavern is pierced
in the side of the cliff looking towards the south, in the form of an
arch, eighty feet wide and seventy-two in height. The summit of the
cliff is covered with trees of gigantic size, and with shrubs and plants
growing in all the luxuriance of a tropical vegetation, while a variety
of creeping plants hang in elegant festoons before its entrance.
Visitors can proceed for upwards of 430 feet without being compelled to
light their torches. When the light of day begins to fail, the hoarse
cries of the nocturnal birds are heard coming out of the dark recesses
of the interior. The guacharo is of the size of the common fowl; its
hooked bill is white, like that of the goat-sucker, and furnished at the
base with stiff hairs, directed forwards. The plumage is of a sombre
brownish grey, mixed with black stripes and large white spots. Their
eyes are incapable of bearing the light of day, and their wings are
disproportionately large, measuring no less than four and a-half feet
from tip to tip. The birds quit the cavern only at nightfall, to feed
on fruits. A most horrible noise is made by them in the dark recesses
of the cavern, and the clamour increases as they are disturbed by the
visitors advancing deeper into it with torches, and those nestling in
the side avenues begin to utter their mournful cries. When the first
sink into silence, it seems as if the more remote inhabitants were
alternately complaining to each other of the intruders. The nests of
these birds are fixed fifty or sixty feet from the ground, in
funnel-shaped holes, with which the cavern roof is pierced like a sieve.

Armed with poles, the natives once a year, about mid-summer, enter the
cavern and knock down the young birds, while the old ones, with
lamentable cries, hover over the heads of the robbers. The young which
are taken are opened on the spot, when the peritonaeum is found loaded
with fat, and a layer of substance reaches from the abdomen to the vent,
forming a kind of cushion between the bird's legs. At this period,
called by the Indians the oil harvest, huts are erected by them, with
palm leaves, near the entrance. Here the fat of the young birds is
melted in clay pots, over