and other fruit-bearing shrubs are found everywhere.  There is one particular plant with yellow flowers, having leaves like those of celery, of most admirable virtues.  If applied to the most putrid sore, it makes it quite clean and sweet in a short time; but if laid upon a sound place it soon eats to the very bone.  There are many fruit-trees in this country of various kinds, carrying abundant crops of fruit as good as those of Spain without having the smallest care taken of them.

There are great numbers of sheep in the mountainous region, part of which are domesticated by the Indians, but vast numbers of them are wild; likewise abundance of deer and roes, many foxes and other smaller animals.  The natives often have public hunts of these animals, which they call chaco, in which they take great delight.  Four or five thousand natives, more or less according to the population of the district, assemble together, and enclose two or three leagues of country by forming a circle, in which at first they are at considerable distances from each other, and by gradually contracting their circle, beating the bushes, and singing certain songs appropriated to the occasion, they drive all the animals of every kind before them to an appointed place in the centre.  The whole company at length join in a small circle, holding each other by the hands, and hallooing loudly, by which the beasts are terrified from endeavouring to break through, and are easily taken in nets or even by the hand.  Even partridges, hawks, and other birds, are often so astonished by the loud cries of the hunters as to fall down in the circle and allow themselves to be taken.  In these mountains there are lions or pumas, black bears, wild cats of several kinds, and many species of apes and monkeys.  The principal birds, both of the plain and the mountain, are eagles, pigeons, turtle-doves, plovers, quails, parroquets, falcons, owls, geese, white and grey herons, and other water fowl; nightingales and other birds of sweet song, many kinds of which have very beautiful plumage.  There is one kind of bird very remarkable for its astonishing smallness, not being larger than a grasshopper or large beetle, which however has several very long feathers in its tail.  Along the coast there is a species of very large vulture, the wings of which, when extended, measure fifteen or sixteen palms from tip to tip.  These birds often make prey of large seals, which they attack when out of the water:  On these occasions, some of the birds attack the animal behind; others tear out his eyes; and the rest of the flock tear him on all sides with their beaks, till at length they kill him, and tear him to pieces.  Upon the coast of the South Sea there are great numbers of birds named alcatraz, somewhat like our ordinary poultry in shape, but so large that each individual may contain three pecks of grain in its crop.  These birds feed mostly on fish which they catch in the sea, yet are fond of carrion, which they go in search of thirty or forty leagues inland.  The flesh of these birds stinks most abominably, insomuch that some persons who have been driven to the necessity of eating it have died, as if poisoned.