Wanderings in South America

Wanderings in South America is credited to Charles Waterton. The introduction says Plutarch, the most famous biographer of ancient times, is of opinion that the uses of telling the history of the men of past ages are to teach wisdom, and to show us by their example how best to spend life. A recollection says that on Easter Sunday Mr. Storey always treated the speaker and others to Pasche eggs, boiled hard in a concoction of whin-flowers, which rendered them beautifully purple.

According to the book, the wourali-poison almost instantaneously mixes with blood or water, so that if you wet your finger and dash it along the poisoned arrow in the quickest manner possible, you are sure to carry off some of the poison. Three minutes generally elapse before the convulsions come on in the wounded bird, yet a stupor evidently takes place sooner, the book says. The book says the prettily-mottled plumage of the goatsucker, like that of the owl, wants the lustre which is observed in the feathers of the birds of day.