At This Place I Bought Two More Horses, And We Each Got A
Large Bullock's Horn In Which To Carry Water, Swinging From The
Saddle-Tree.
I was not sorry to leave this house, for, tearing up the
offal around the building, I counted as many as sixty black vultures.
Their king, a dirty white bird with crimson neck covered with gore
and filth, had already gorged himself with all the blood he could
get.
"All his sooty subjects stand apart at a respectful distance,
whetting their appetites and regaling their nostrils, but never
dreaming of an approach to the carcass till their master has sunk
into a state of repletion. When the kingly bird, by falling on his
side, closing his eyes, and stretching on the ground his unclenched
talons, gives notice to his surrounding and expectant subjects that
their lord and master has gone to rest, up they hop to the carcass,
which in a few minutes is stripped of everything eatable." Here we
left the high-road, which is cut through to Punta Pona on the
Brazilian frontier, and struck off to the west. Over the grassy
plains we made good progress, and by evening were thirty miles
farther on our journey. But when we had to cut the path before us
through the forest, ten or twelve miles was a good day's work. When
the growth was very dense, the morning and evening camps were perhaps
only separated by a league. Anon we struggled through a swamp, or the
horses stuck fast in a bog, and the carapatas feasted on our blood.
"What are carapatas?" you ask.
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