158 MARTIN RATTLER.

“So’t does,” said Barney, stopping to gaze on the
scene through which they were passing, with an ex-
pression of perplexity on his face, as if he found the
sight rather too much even for jis comprehension.
Besides the parrots and scarlet and yellow macaws,
and other strange-looking birds which we have else-
where 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 life-time,—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,