Through the Brazilian Wilderness

elling has been gained through a quarter of a century of arduous exploration in the wilderness. It was Fiala who had assembled our food-tents,

t it was extraordinary that Fiala, without personal knowledge of the tropics, could have

racted the piranhas, whereas they rarely attacked anything that was motionless unless it was bloody. Dead birds and mammals, thrown whole and unskinned into the water were permitted to float off unmolested, whereas the skinned carcass of a good-sized monkey was at once seized, pulled under the water, and completely devoured by the blood-crazy fish. A man who had dropped something of value waded in after it to above the knees, but went very slowly and quietly, avoiding every possibility of disturbance, and not venturing to put his hands into the water. But nobody could bathe, and even the slightest disturbance in the water, such as that

as remarkable a sound as any animal sound to which I have listened, except only the batrachian-like wailing of the tree hyrax in East Africa; and like the East African mammal this South American insect has a voice, or rather utters a sound which, so far as it rese

then launch themselves on the air. Once, at noon, a couple soared round overhead in wide rings, rising higher and higher. On another occasion, late in the day, a flock passed by, gleaming white with black points in the long afternoon lights, and with them were spoonbills, showing rosy amid their snowy companions. Caymans, always called jacares, swarmed; and we killed scores of the noxious creatures. They were singularly indifferent to our approach and to the sound of the shots. Sometimes they ran into the water erect on their legs, looking like miniatures of the monsters of the prime. One showed by its behavior how little an ordinary shot pains or affects these dull-ne

steaming between long stretches of coarse grass, about three feet high, when we spied from the deck a black object, very conspicuous against the vivid green. It was a giant ant-eater, or tamandua bandeira, one of the most extraordinary creatures of the latter-day world. It is about the size of a rather small black bear. It has a very long, narrow, toothless snout, with a tongue it can project a couple of feet; it is covered with coarse, black hair, save for a couple of white stripes; it has a long, bushy tail and very powerful claws on its fore feet. It walks on the sides of its fore feet with these claws curved in under the fo

plain. The two dogs ran ahead, followed by Colonel Rondon and Kermit, with me behind carrying the rifle. In a minute or two the hounds overtook the cantering, shuffling creature, and promptly began a fight with it; the combatants were so mixed up th

s had come to meet us. After dark they kindled fires, and sat beside them singing songs in a strange minor key and strumming guitars. The red firelight flickered over their wild figures as they squatted away from the bl

ry was marsh, varied by stretches of higher ground; and, although these stretches rose only three or four feet above the marsh, they were covered with thick jungle, largely palmetto scrub, or else with open palm forest. For three or four miles we splashed through the marsh, now and the

tted the marsh. But ibis and herons abounded; the former uttered queer, querulous cries when they discovered our presence. The spurred lapwings were as noisy as they always are. The ibis and plover did not pay any heed t

in a less degree, of tropical Asia; indeed, it does not even approach the similar mammalian life of North America and northern Eurasia, poor though this is compared with the seething vitality of tropical life in the Old World. During a geologically recent period, a period extending into that which saw man spread over the world in substantially the physical and cultural stage of many existing savages, South America possessed a varied and striking fauna of enormous beasts-sabre-tooth tigers, huge lions, mastodons, horses of many kinds, camel-like pachyderms, giant ground- sloths, mylodons the size of the rhinoceros, and many, many other strange and wonderful creatures. From some cause, concerning the nature of which we cannot at present even hazard a guess, this vast and giant fauna vanished completely, the tremendous catastrophe (the duration of which is unknown) not being consummated until within a few thousand or a few score thousand years. When the white man reached South America he found the same weak and impoverished mammalian fauna that exists practically unchanged to-day. Elsewhere civilized man has been even more destructive than his very destructive uncivilized brot

e-room, storehouse, chicken-house, and stable. The chicken-house was allotted to Kermit and Miller for the preparation of the specimens; and there they worked industriously. With a big skin, like that of the giant ant-eater, they had to squat on the ground; while the ducklings and wee chickens scuffled not only round the skin but all over it, grabbing the shreds and scraps of meat and catching flies. The fourth end of the quadrangle was formed by a corral and a big wooden scaffolding on which hung hides and strips of drying meat. Extraordinary to relate, there were no mosquitoes at the ranch; why I cannot say, as they ought to swarm in these vast "pantanals," or swamps. Therefore, in spite of the heat, it was very pleasant. Near by stood other buildings: sheds, and thatched huts of palm-logs in which the ordinary peons lived, and big corrals. In the quadrangle were flamboyant trees, with their masses of brilliant red flowers and delicately cut, vivid-green foliage. Noisy oven-birds haunted these trees. In a high palm in the garden a family of green parakeets had taken up their abode and were preparing to build nests. They chattered incessantly both when they flew and when they sat or crawled among the branches. Ibis and plover, crying and wailing, passed immediately overhead. Jacanas frequented the ponds near by; the peons, with a familiarity which to us seems sacrilegious, but to them was entirely inoffensive and matter of course, called them "the Jesus Christ birds," because they walked on the water. There was a wealth of strange bird life

hick-walled, like a gizzard; the stomachs of those we shot contained adult and larval ants, chiefly termites, together with plenty of black mould and fragments of leaves, both green and dry. Doubtless the earth and the vegetable matter had merely been taken incidentally, adhering to the viscid tongue when it was thrust into the ant masses. Out in the open marsh the tamandua could neither avoid observation, nor fight effectively, nor make good its escape by flight. It was curious to see one lumbering off at a rocki

and jackals, some of them probably belonging to what we style different genera. The degree of fecundity or lack of fecundity between different species varies in extraordinary and inexplicable fashion in different families of mammals. In the horse family, for instance, the species are not fertile inter se; whereas among the oxen, species seemingly at least as widely separated as the horse, ass, and zebra species such as the domestic ox, bison, yak, and gaur breed freely together and their offspring are fertile; the lion and ti

officers in every good military service. He is also a peculiarly hardy and competent explorer, a good field naturalist and scientific man, a student and a philosopher. With him the conversation ranged from jaguar-hunting and the perils of exploration in the "Matto Grosso," the great wilderness, to Indian anthropology, to the dangers of a purely materialistic ind

much the younger; and whenever we came to an unusually doubtful- looking ford or piece of boggy ground the elder man always sent the younger one on and sat on the bank until he saw what befell the experimenter. In that rather preposterous book of our youth, the "Swiss Family Robinson," mention is made of a tame monkey called Nips, which was used to test all edible-looking things as to the healthfulness of which the adventurers felt doubtful; and because of the obvious resemblan

the edges of the swamps; the papyrus was used only for cover, not for food. The buck had two big scent-glands beside the nostrils; in the doe these were rudimentary. On this day Kermit also came across a herd of the big, fierce white-lipped peccary; at the sound of their grunting Nips p

party, each on a weedy, undersized marsh pony, accustomed to traversing the vast stretches of morass; and we were accompanied by a brown boy, with saddle-bags holding our lunch, who rode a long-horned trotting steer which he managed by a string through its nostril and lip. The two trailers carried each a long, clumsy spear. We had a rather poor pack. Besides our own two dogs, neither of which was used to jaguar-hunting, the

dly among the splashing hoofs and paws; evidently at night it did not fear us. Hour after hour we slogged along. Then the night grew ghostly with the first dim gray of the dawn. The sky had become overcast. The sun rose red and angry through broken clouds; his disk flamed behind the tall, slender columns of the palms, and lit the waste fields of papyrus

ng mostly palms and tarumans; the taruman is almost as big as a live-oak, with glossy foliage and a fruit like an olive. The pace quickened, the motley pack burst into yelling and howling; and then a sudden quickening of the note showed that the game had either climbed a tree or turned to bay in a thicket. The former proved to be the case. The dogs had entered a patch of tall tree jungle, and as we cantered up through the marsh we saw the jaguar high among the forked limbs of a taruman tree. It was a beautiful picture- the spotted coat of the big, lithe, formidable cat fairly shone as it snarled defiance at the pack below. I di

was heavier and more powerful than a full-grown male cougar, or African panther or leopard. It was a big, powerfully built creature, giving the same effect of strength that a tiger or lion does, and that the lithe leopards and pumas do not. Its flesh, by the way,

started on the trail, going stronger with every leap. Evidently the big cat was not far distant. Soon we found where it had swum across the bayou. Piranhas or no piranhas, we now intended to get across; and we tried to force our horses in at what seemed a likely spot. The matted growth of water-plants, with their leathery, slippery stems, formed an unpleasant barrier, as the water was swimming-deep for the horses. The latter were very unwilling to attempt the passage. Kermit finally forced his horse through the tangled mass, swimming, plunging, and struggling. He left a lane of clear water, through which we swam after him. The dogs splashed and swam behind us. On the other bank they struck the fresh trail and followed it at a run. It led into a long belt of timber, chiefly composed of low-growing nacury palms, with long, drooping, many- fronded branches. In silhouette they suggest coarse bamboos; the nuts hang in big clusters and look like bunches of small, unripe bananas. Among the lower palms were scattered some big ordinary trees. We cantered along outside the timber belt, listening to the dogs within; and in a moment a burst of yelling clamor from the pack told that the jaguar was afoot. These few minutes are the really exciting moments in the chase, with hounds, of any big cat that will tree. The furious baying of the pack, the shouts and cheers of encouragement from t

caymans; for these small pond caymans, the jacare-tinga, form part of their habitual food, and a big jaguar when hungry will attack and kill large caymans and crocodiles if he can get them a few yards from the water. On these marshes the jaguars also followed the peccary herds; it is said that they always strike the hindmost of a band of the fierce little wild pigs. Elsewhere they often prey on the tapir. If in timber, however, the jaguar must kill it at once, for the squat, thick-skinned, wedge- shaped tapir has no respect for timber, as Colonel Rondon phrased it, and rushes with such blind, headlong speed through and among branches and trunks that if not immediately killed it brushes the jaguar off, the claws

the worst enemies of foals. It was interesting to find that my hosts, and the mixed-blood hunters and ranch workers, combined special knowledge of many of the habits of these big cats with a curious ignorance of other matters concerning them and a readiness to believe fables about them. This was precisely what I had found to be the case with the old-time North American hunters in discussing the puma, bear, and wolf, and with the English and Boer hunters of Africa when they spoke of the lion and rhinoceros. Until the habit of scientific accuracy in observation and record is achieved and until specimens are preserved and carefully compared, entirely truthful men, at home in the wilderness, will whole-heartedly accept, and repeat as matters of gospel faith, theories which split the grizzly and black bears of each locality in the United States, and the lions and black rhinos of South Africa, or the jaguars and

s went down to drink it threatened them and frightened them; and then Colonel Rondon and Kermit called me to watch it. It lay on the surface of the water only a few feet distant from us and threatened us; we threw cakes of mud at it, whereupon it clashed its jaws and made short rushes at us, and when we threw sticks it seized them and crunched them. We could not drive it away.

e tables were readily turned if any caymans were injured. When a capybara was shot and sank in the water, the piranhas at once attacked it, and had eaten half the carcass ten minutes later. But much more extraordinary was the fact that when a cayman about five feet long was wounded the piranhas attacked and tore it, and actually drove it out on the bank to face its human foes. The fish first attacked the wound; then, as the blood maddened them, they attacked all the soft parts, their terrible teeth cutting out chunks of tough hide and flesh. Evidently they did not molest

ew yards off and then dash into and under the water. The dogs would also run full tilt into the water, and it was then really funny to see their surprise and disappointment at the sudden and complete disappearance of their quarry. Often a capybara would stand or sit on its haunches in the water, with only its blunt, short-eared head above the surface, quite heedless of our presence. But if alarmed it would dive, for capybaras swim with equal facility on or below the surface; and if they wish to hide they rise gently among the rushes or water-lily leaves with only their nostrils ex

them. I had always supposed that armadillos merely shuffled along, and curled up for protection when menaced; and I was almost as surprised as if I had seen a turtle gallop when these two armadillos bounded off at a run, going as fast as rabbits. One headed back for the nearest patch of jungle, which it reached. The other ran at full speed-and ran really fast, too-until it nearly reached the other patch, a hundred yards distant, the dogs in full cry immediately behind it. Then it suddenly changed its mind, wheeled in its tracks, and came back like a bullet right through the pack. Dog after dog tried to seize it or stop it and turned to pursue it; but its wedge-shap

y numerous, render certain districts uninhabitable. They are ordinarily not very numerous. Those of them that march in large bodies kill nestling birds, and at once destroy any big animal unable to get out of their way. It has been

three, although of course it is possible one belonged to another sow. The herd galloped into a mass of thorny cover the hounds

. All were noisy. Perhaps there was a snake that had drawn them by its presence; but we could find no snake. The assembly dispersed as we rode up; the huge blue macaws departed in pairs, uttering their hoarse "ar-rah-h, ar-rah-h." It has been said that parrots in the wilderness are only noisy on the wing. They

form of sticks, placed on a horizontal branch. There were four half-grown young standing on it. We passed it in the morning, when both parents were also perched alongside; the sky was then overcast, and it was not possible to photograph it with the small camera. In the early afternoon when we again passed it the sun was out, and we tried to get photographs. Only one parent bird was present at this time. It showed no fear. I noticed that, as it stood on a branch near the nest, its bill was slightly open. It was very hot, and I suppose it had opened its bill just as a hen opens her bill in hot weather. As we rode away the old bir

of the neck, which may be due merely to the craw. The big slender herons, on the contrary, bend the long neck back in a beautiful curve, so that the head is nearly between the shoulders. One day I saw what I at first thought was a small yellow-bellied kingfisher hovering over a pond, and finally plunging down to the surface of the water after a school of tiny young fish; but it proved to be a bien-te-vì king-bird. Curved-bill wood-hewers, birds the size and somewhat the coloration of veeries, but with long, slender sickle-bills, were common in the little garden back of the house; their habits were those of creepers, and they scrambled with agility up, along, and under the trunks and branches, and along the posts and rails of the fence, thrusting th

ously mainly of Indian and negro descent, although some of them also showed a strong strain of white blood. They wore the usual shirt, trousers, and fringed leather apron, with jim-crow hats. Their bare feet must have been literally as tough as horn; for when one of them roped a big bull he would brace himself, bending back until he was almost sitting down and digging his heels into the ground, and the galloping bea

ches of higher, tree-clad ground had been passed, were across a level plain of low ground on which the water stood, sometimes only up to the ankles of a man on foot, sometimes as high as his waist. Directly in front of us, many leagues distant, rose the bold mountains that lie west of Corumba. Behind them the sun was setting and kindled the overcast heavens with lurid splendor. Then the last rose tints faded from the sky; the horses plodded wearily through the water; on every side stretched the marsh, vast, lonely, desolate in the gray of the half-light. We overtook the ox-carts. The cattle strained in the yokes; the drivers wadin

at fitted for a sprit-sail put off from the bank. The owner, a countryman from a small ranch, asked for a tow to Corumba, which we gave. He had with him in the boat his comely brown wife-who was s