Viewing page 27 of 101

This transcription has been completed. Contact us with corrections.

[[Left Page]]
Bat hunting in old mines

[[Right Page]]
[[strikethrough]] On the 23d of June I was ready to return to Guadalajara but [[/strikethrough]]

Back of Itztlan are several old mines - some idle & others being worked in a small way. I went [[strikethrough]] back [[/strikethrough]] into several of them after bats. In one mine that had been deserted a long time there was quite a number of the flesh & blood eating bats that attack the cattle horses &c. on the neck & back.

We crawled back over great masses of fallen rock from the roof & finally penetrated to the extremity of the galleries hearing the wings of the bats all the time as they flew on ahead & secreted themselves in inaccessible crevices. I only secured one here. Then we went into another old mine being worked and after climbing down notched logs and inclined passages for several hundred feet to the lower levels we found quite a number of these vampires (#2787 & 2788) which were living in the extreme lower levels.

As we drew near the whirring of their wings could be heard very distinctly as they flew ahead & secreted themselves in the timbering.