the birds.

As we seated ourselves by the side of the rivulet in front of the
cavern, the doctor examined the birds we had killed; and calling to the
Indian, he made inquiries as to what he knew about them. He answered
that in another part of the country, where a similar cavern exists
inhabited by the same birds, they are called guacharos; that in that
other cavern--the cave of Caripe, as he called it--thousands of birds
exist, and that the Indians take the young birds for the sake of the oil
which they contain. They enter it once a year, armed with long poles,
with which they destroy all the nests they can reach; when the old ones,
hovering about their heads, attempt to defend their broods, uttering the
most terrible cries. The young birds which are thus killed are
immediately opened; and the fat being taken out, it is melted in pots of
clay over fires lighted at the entrance of the cave. During the oil
harvest, as the Indians call that time, they build huts with
palm-leaves, in which they live till they have melted down the fat. It
is half liquid, transparent, without any smell, and so pure that it may
be kept above a year without becoming rancid.

The race of birds would become extinct, were not the natives afraid of
entering into the depths of the cavern; as also because there are other
and smaller caverns, inaccessible to the hunters, inhabited by colonies
of birds from which the larger cavern is peopled. These birds are of
the size of ordinary fowls; their mouths resemble those of goat-suckers,
and their appearance is somewhat that of small vultures; but, unlike the
goat-suckers, they live entirely on fruits of a hard, dry character--and
such fruits only were found in the crops of the birds we killed. The
natives believe that the seeds found in the birds' crops are a specific
against intermittent fevers, and these are therefore carefully collected
and sent to the low regions where such fevers prevail.

The doctor was delighted with the information he had obtained, and
declared that, for the sake of it, he would have been ready to undergo
ten times as much fatigue and danger as that to which he had been
subjected.

We were all well pleased with the romantic beauty of the scenery, but my
father was not quite satisfied that the place was secure from attack.
Should we be betrayed, there was nothing to prevent our enemies from
following us; and there was no position in which we could defend
ourselves against