“So’t does,” said Barney, stopping to gaze on the scene through which they were passing, with an expression of perplexity on his face, as if he found the sight rather too much even for his comprehension.  Besides the parrots and scarlet and yellow macaws, and other strange-looking birds which we have elsewhere mentioned, there were long-tailed light-coloured cuckoos flying about from tree to tree, not calling like the cuckoo of Europe at all, but giving forth a sound like the creaking of a rusty hinge; there were hawks and buzzards of many different kinds, and red-breasted orioles in the bushes, and black vultures flying overhead, and Muscovy ducks sweeping past with whizzing wings, and flocks of the great wood-ibis sailing in the air on noiseless pinions, and hundreds of other birds that it would require an ornithologist to name; and myriads of insects,—­especially ants and spiders, great and small,—­that no entomologist could chronicle in a lifetime; all these were heard and seen at once; while of the animals that were heard, but not so often seen, there were black and spotted jaguars, and pacas, and cotias, and armadillos, and deer, and many others, that would take pages to enumerate and whole books to describe.  But the noise was the great point.  That was the thing that took Martin and Barney quite aback, although it was by no means new to them; but they could not get used to it.  And no wonder!  Ten thousand paroquets shrieking passionately, like a hundred knife-grinders at work, is no joke; especially when their melodies are mingled with the discordant cries of herons, and bitterns, and cranes, and the ceaseless buzz and hum of insects, like the bagpipe’s drone, and the dismal croaking of boat-bills and frogs,—­one kind of which latter, by the way, doesn’t croak at all, but whistles, ay, better than many a bird!  The universal hubbub is tremendous!  I tell you, reader, that you don’t understand it, and you can’t understand it; and if, after I had used the utmost excess of exaggerated language to convey a correct impression of the reality, you were to imagine that you really did understand it, you would be very lamentably mistaken—­that’s all!

Nevertheless, you must not run away with the idea that the whole empire of Brazil is like this.  There are dark thick solitudes in these vast forests, which are solemn and silent enough at times; and there are wide grassy campos, and great sandy plains, where such sounds are absent.  Yet there are also thousands of such spots as I have just described, where all nature, in earth, air, and water, is instinct with noisy animal life.

After two hours’ walk, Martin and his companion reached the lake, and here active preparations were making for the alligator hunt.

“Is that the only place ye have to spind the night in, Sambo?” said Barney to their conductor, as he pointed to a wooden shed near which some fifteen or twenty Negro slaves were overhauling the fishing tackle.