The sudden daring of these lazy and stupid animals is very great.  Their brain seems to act like that of the alligator or the pike, paroxysmally, and by rare fits and starts, after lying for hours motionless as if asleep.  But when excited, they will attempt great deeds.  Dr. De Verteuil tells a story—­and if he tells it, it must be believed—­of some hunters who wounded a deer.  The deer ran for the stream down a bank; but the hunters had no sooner heard it splash into the water than they heard it scream.  They leapt down to the place, and found it in the coils of a Huillia, which they killed with the deer.  And yet this snake, which had dared to seize a full-grown deer, could have had no hope of eating her; for it was only seven feet long.

We set out down a foul porter-coloured creek, which soon opened out into a river, reminding us, in spite of all differences, of certain alder and willow-fringed reaches of the Thames.  But here the wood which hid the margin was altogether of mangrove; the common Rhizophoras, or black mangroves, being, of course, the most abundant.  Over them, however, rose the statelier Avicennias, or white mangroves, to a height of fifty or sixty feet, and poured down from their upper branches whole streams of air-roots, which waved and creaked dolefully in the breeze overhead.  But on the water was no breeze at all.  The lagoon was still as glass; the sun was sickening; and we were glad to put up our umbrellas and look out from under them for Manatis and Boas.  But the Manatis usually only come in at night, to put their heads out of water and browse on the lowest mangrove leaves; and the Boas hide themselves so cunningly, either altogether under water, or with only the head above, that we might have passed half a dozen without seeing them.  The only chance, indeed, of coming across them, is when they are travelling from lagoon to lagoon, or basking on the mud at low tide.

So all the game which we saw was a lovely white Egret, {278} its back covered with those stiff pinnated plumes which young ladies—­ when they can obtain them—­are only too happy to wear in their hats.  He, after being civil enough to wait on a bough till one of us got a sitting shot at him, heard the cap snap, thought it as well not to wait till a fresh one was put on, and flapped away.  He need not have troubled himself.  The Negroes—­but too apt to forget something or other—­had forgotten to bring a spare supply; and the gun was useless.

As we descended, the left bank of the river was entirely occupied with cocos; and the contrast between them and the mangroves on the right was made all the more striking by the afternoon sun, which, as it sank behind the forest, left the mangrove wall in black shadow, while it bathed the palm-groves opposite with yellow light.  In one of these palm-groves we landed, for we were right thirsty; and to drink lagoon water would be to drink cholera or fever.  But there was plenty of pure water in the coco-trees, and we soon had our fill.  A Negro walked—­not climbed—­up a stem like a four-footed animal, his legs and arms straight, his feet pressed flat against it, his hands clinging round it—­a feat impossible, as far as I have seen, to an European—­tossed us down plenty of green nuts; and our feast began.