|
|
Parthagica Directory 10
Page 04
The minimum temperature during the night was 69 deg. F. We slept in the boat, and were simply devoured by mosquitoes. The chief of the Indians who had been lent me by the Fiscal Agent became seriously ill during the night with a severe attack of fever. All my men, with no exception, also became ill, and were shivering with cold, owing to fever. The chief of the police, Luiz Perreira da Silva, who had been placed by Mr. Barretto in charge of the Indians who were to accompany me, in jumping from the boat that night on to the shore hurt his foot, the pain caused by that slight injury giving him also a severe attack of fever. So that of the entire crew there remained only two men in good health--viz. Mr. Julio Nery and myself.
The less skilful builders sometimes depart from their usual habit, and take up with the abandoned nest of some other species. The blue-jay now and then lays in an old crow's-nest or cuckoo's-nest. The crow-blackbird, seized with a fit of indolence, drops its eggs in the cavity of a decayed branch. I heard of a cuckoo that dispossessed a robin of its nest; of another that set a blue-jay adrift. Large, loose structures, like the nests of the osprey and certain of the herons, have been found with half a dozen nests of the blackbird set in the outer edges, like so many parasites, or, as Audubon says, like the retainers about the rude court of a feudal baron.
|
