The morning after our arrival at Corumba I asked Colonel Rondon to
inspect our outfit; for his experience of what is necessary in
tropical travelling has been gained through a quarter of a century of
arduous exploration in the wilderness. It was Fiala who had assembled
our food-tents, cooking-utensils, and supplies of all kinds, and he
and Sigg, during their stay in Corumba, had been putting everything in
shape for our start. Colonel Rondon at the end of his inspection said
he had nothing whatever to suggest; that it was extraordinary that
Fiala, without personal knowledge of the tropics, could have gathered
the things most necessary, with the minimum of bulk and maximum of
usefulness.
Miller had made a special study of the piranhas, which swarmed at one
of the camps he and Cherrie had made in the Chaco. So numerous were
they that the members of the party had to be exceedingly careful in
dipping up water. Miller did not find that they were cannibals toward
their own kind; they were "cannibals" only in the sense of eating the
flesh of men. When dead piranhas, and even when mortally injured
piranhas, with the blood flowing, were thrown among the ravenous
living, they were left unmolested. Moreover, it was Miller's
experience, the direct contrary of which we had been told, that
splashing and a commotion in the water attracted 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 made by scrubbing the hands vigorously with soap,
immediately attracted the attention of the savage little creatures,
who darted to the place, evidently hoping to find some animal in
difficulties. Once, while Miller and some Indians were attempting to
launch a boat, and were making a great commotion in the water, a
piranha attacked a naked Indian who belonged to the party and
mutilated him as he struggled and splashed, waist-deep in the stream.
Men not making a splashing and struggling are rarely attacked; but if
one is attacked by any chance, the blood in the water maddens the
piranhas, and they assail the man with frightful ferocity.
At Corumba the weather was hot. In the patio of the comfortable little
hotel we heard the cicadas; but I did not hear the extraordinary
screaming whistle of the locomotive cicada, which I had heard in the
gardens of the house in which I stayed at Asuncion. This was 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 resembles
any other animal sound, at the beginning remotely suggests batrachian
affinities. The locomotive-whistle part of the utterance, however,
resembles nothing so much as a small steam siren; when first heard it
seems impossible that it can be produced by an insect.
On December 17 Colonel Rondon and several members of our party started
on a shallow river steamer for the ranch of Senhor de Barros, "Las
Palmeiras," on the Rio Taquary. We went down the Paraguay for a few
miles, and then up the Taquary. It was a beautiful trip. The shallow
river--we were aground several times--wound through a vast, marshy
plain, with occasional spots of higher land on which trees grew. There
were many water-birds. Darters swarmed. But the conspicuous and
attractive bird was the stately jabiru stork. Flocks of these storks
whitened the marshes and lined the river banks. They were not shy, for
such big birds; before flying they had to run a few paces and 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-nerved, cold-
blooded creatures. As it lay on a sand-bank, it was hit with a long 22
bullet. It slid into the water but found itself in the midst of a
school of fish. It at once forgot everything except its greedy
appetite, and began catching the fish. It seized fish after fish,
holding its head above water as soon as its jaws had closed on a fish;
and a second bullet killed it. Some of the crocodiles when shot
performed most extraordinary antics. Our weapons, by the way, were
good, except Miller's shotgun. The outfit furnished by the American
Museum was excellent--except in guns and cartridges; this gun was so
bad that Miller had to use Fiala's gun or else my Fox 12-bore.
In the late afternoon we secured a more interesting creature than the
jacares. Kermit had charge of two hounds which we owed to the courtesy
of one of our Argentine friends. They were biggish, nondescript
animals, obviously good fighters, and they speedily developed the
utmost affection for all the members of the expedition, but especially
for Kermit, who took care of them. One we named "Shenzi," the name
given the wild bush natives by the Swahili, the semi-civilized African
porters. He was good-natured, rough, and stupid--hence his name. The
other was called by a native name, "Trigueiro." The chance now came to
try them. We were 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 foot. The claws are used in
digging out ant-hills; but the beast has courage, and in a grapple is
a rather unpleasant enemy, in spite of its toothless mouth, for it can
strike a formidable blow with these claws. It sometimes hugs a foe,
gripping him tight; but its ordinary method of defending itself is to
strike with its long, stout, curved claws, which, driven by its
muscular forearm, can rip open man or beast. Several of our companions
had had dogs killed by these ant-eaters; and we came across one man
with a very ugly scar down his back, where he had been hit by one,
which charged him when he came up to kill it at close quarters.
As soon as we saw the giant tamandua we pushed off in a rowboat, and
landed only a couple of hundred yards distant from our clumsy quarry.
The tamandua throughout most of its habitat rarely leaves the forest,
and it is a helpless animal in the open 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 that I had to wait another minute or so before I could fire
without risk of hitting a dog. We carried our prize back to the bank
and hoisted it aboard the steamer. The sun was just about to set,
behind dim mountains, many miles distant across the marsh.
Soon afterward we reached one of the outstations of the huge ranch we
were about to visit, and hauled up alongside the bank for the night.
There was a landing-place, and sheds and corrals. Several of the peons
or gauchos 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 blaze, where the light and the shadow met. It
was still and hot. There were mosquitoes, of course, and other insects
of all kinds swarmed round every light; but the steamboat was
comfortable, and we passed a pleasant night.
At sunrise we were off for the "fazenda," the ranch of M. de Barros.
The baggage went in an ox-cart--which had to make two trips, so that
all of my belongings reached the ranch a day later than I did. We rode
small, tough ranch horses. The distance was some twenty miles. The
whole country 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 then crossing boggy pools where the little horses
labored hard not to mire down. Our dusky guide was clad in a shirt,
trousers, and fringed leather apron, and wore spurs on his bare feet;
he had a rope for a bridle, and two or three toes of each foot were
thrust into little iron stirrups.
The pools in the marsh were drying. They were filled with fish, most
of them dead or dying; and the birds had gathered to the banquet. The
most notable dinner guests were the great jabiru storks; the stately
creatures dotted 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 to the fish; but the black carrion vultures
feasted on them in the mud; and in the pools that were not dry small
alligators, the jacare-tinga, were feasting also. In many places the
stench from the dead fish was unpleasant.
Then for miles we rode through a beautiful open forest of tall,
slender caranda palms, with other trees scattered among them. Green
parakeets with black heads chattered as they flew; noisy green and red
parrots climbed among the palms; and huge macaws, some entirely blue,
others almost entirely red, screamed loudly as they perched in the
trees or took wing at our approach. If one was wounded its cries kept
its companions circling around overhead. The naturalists found the
bird fauna totally different from that which they had been collecting
in the hill country near Corumba, seventy or eighty miles distant; and
birds swarmed, both species and individuals. South America has the
most extensive and most varied avifauna of all the continents. On the
other hand, its mammalian fauna, although very interesting, is rather
poor in number of species and individuals and in the size of the
beasts. It possesses more mammals that are unique and distinctive in
type than does any other continent save Australia; and they are of
higher and much more varied types than in Australia. But there is
nothing approaching the majesty, beauty, and swarming mass of the
great mammalian life of Africa and, 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
brothers of the magnificent mammalian life of the wilderness; for ages
he has been rooting out the higher forms of beast life in Europe,
Asia, and North Africa; and in our own day he has repeated the feat,
on a very large scale, in the rest of Africa and in North America. But
in South America, although he is in places responsible for the wanton
slaughter of the most interesting and the largest, or the most
beautiful, birds, his advent has meant a positive enrichment of the
wild mammalian fauna. None of the native grass-eating mammals, the
graminivores, approach in size and beauty the herds of wild or half-
wild cattle and horses, or so add to the interest of the landscape.
There is every reason why the good people of South America should
waken, as we of North America, very late in the day, are beginning to
waken, and as the peoples of northern Europe--not southern Europe--
have already partially wakened, to the duty of preserving from
impoverishment and extinction the wild life which is an asset of such
interest and value in our several lands; but the case against
civilized man in this matter is gruesomely heavy anyhow, when the
plain truth is told, and it is harmed by exaggeration.
After five or six hours' travelling through this country of marsh and
of palm forest we reached the ranch for which we were heading. In the
neighborhood stood giant fig-trees, singly or in groups, with dense,
dark green foliage. Ponds, overgrown with water-plants, lay about; wet
meadow, and drier pastureland, open or dotted with palms and varied
with tree jungle, stretched for many miles on every hand. There are
some thirty thousand head of cattle on the ranch, besides herds of
horses and droves of swine, and a few flocks of sheep and goats. The
home buildings of the ranch stood in a quadrangle, surrounded by a
fence or low stockade. One end of the quadrangle was formed by the
ranch-house itself, one story high, with whitewashed walls and red-
tiled roof. Inside, the rooms were bare, with clean, whitewashed walls
and palm-trunk rafters. There were solid wooden shutters on the
unglazed windows. We slept in hammocks or on cots, and we feasted
royally on delicious native Brazilian dishes. On another side of the
quadrangle stood another long, low white building with a red-tiled
roof; this held the kitchen and the living-rooms of the upper-grade
peons, the headmen, the cook, and jaguar-hunters, with their families:
dark-skinned men, their wives showing varied strains of white, Indian,
and negro blood. The children tumbled merrily in the dust, and were
fondly tended by their mothers. Opposite the kitchen stood a row of
buildings, some whitewashed daub and wattle, with tin roofs, others of
erect palm-logs with palm-leaf thatch. These were the saddle-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 in the neighborhood. There were large papyrus-
marshes, the papyrus not being a fifth, perhaps not a tenth, as high
as in Africa. In these swamps were many blackbirds. Some uttered notes
that reminded me of our own redwings. Others, with crimson heads and
necks and thighs, fairly blazed; often a dozen sat together on a
swaying papyrus-stem which their weight bent over. There were all
kinds of extraordinary bird's-nests in the trees. There is still need
for the work of the collector in South America. But I believe that
already, so far as birds are concerned, there is infinitely more need
for the work of the careful observer, who to the power of appreciation
and observation adds the power of vivid, truthful, and interesting
narration--which means, as scientists no less than historians should
note, that training in the writing of good English is indispensable to
any learned man who expects to make his learning count for what it
ought to count in the effect on his fellow men. The outdoor
naturalist, the faunal naturalist, who devotes himself primarily to a
study of the habits and of the life-histories of birds, beasts, fish,
and reptiles, and who can portray truthfully and vividly what he has
seen, could do work of more usefulness than any mere collector, in
this upper Paraguay country. The work of the collector is
indispensable; but it is only a small part of the work that ought to
be done; and after collecting has reached a certain point the work of
the field observer with the gift for recording what he has seen
becomes of far more importance.
The long days spent riding through the swamp, the "pantanal," were
pleasant and interesting. Several times we saw the tamandua bandeira,
the giant ant-bear. Kermit shot one, because the naturalists eagerly
wished for a second specimen; afterward we were relieved of all
necessity to molest the strange, out-of-date creatures. It was a
surprise to us to find them habitually frequenting the open marsh.
They were always on muddy ground, and in the papyrus-swamp we found
them in several inches of water. The stomach is thick-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 rocking canter, the big bushy tail held aloft.
One, while fighting the dogs, suddenly threw itself on its back,
evidently hoping to grasp a dog with its paws; and it now and then
reared, in order to strike at its assailants. In one patch of thick
jungle we saw a black howler monkey sitting motionless in a tree top.
We also saw the swamp-deer, about the size of our blacktail. It is a
real swamp animal, for we found it often in the papyrus-swamps, and
out in the open marsh, knee-deep in the water, among the aquatic
plants.
The tough little horses bore us well through the marsh. Often in
crossing bayous and ponds the water rose almost to their backs; but
they splashed and waded and if necessary swam through. The dogs were a
wild-looking set. Some were of distinctly wolfish appearance. These,
we were assured, were descended in part from the big red wolf of the
neighborhood, a tall, lank animal, with much smaller teeth than a big
northern wolf. The domestic dog is undoubtedly descended from at least
a dozen different species of wild dogs, wolves, 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 tiger also breed together, and
produce offspring which will breed with either parent stock; and tame
dogs in different quarters of the world, although all of them fertile
inter se, are in many cases obviously blood kin to the neighboring
wild, wolf-like or jackal-like creatures which are specifically, and
possibly even generically, distinct from one another. The big red wolf
of the South American plains is not closely related to the northern
wolves; and it was to me unexpected to find it interbreeding with
ordinary domestic dogs.
In the evenings after dinner we sat in the bare ranch dining-room, or
out under the trees in the hot darkness, and talked of many things:
natural history with the naturalists, and all kinds of other subjects
both with them and with our Brazilian friends. Colonel Rondon is not
simply "an officer and a gentleman" in the sense that is honorably
true of the best army 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 industrial
civilization, and to Positivist morality. The colonel's Positivism was
in very fact to him a religion of humanity, a creed which bade him be
just and kindly and useful to his fellow men, to live his life
bravely, and no less bravely to face death, without reference to what
he believed, or did not believe, or to what the unknown hereafter
might hold for him.
The native hunters who accompanied us were swarthy men of mixed blood.
They were barefooted and scantily clad, and each carried a long,
clumsy spear and a keen machete, in the use of which he was an expert.
Now and then, in thick jungle, we had to cut out a path, and it was
interesting to see one of them, although cumbered by his unwieldy
spear, handling his half-broken little horse with complete ease while
he hacked at limbs and branches. Of the two ordinarily with us one was
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 resemblance of function we christened this younger hunter
Nips. Our guides were not only hunters but cattle-herders. The coarse
dead grass is burned to make room for the green young grass on which
the cattle thrive. Every now and then one of the men, as he rode ahead
of us, without leaving the saddle, would drop a lighted match into a
tussock of tall dead blades; and even as we who were behind rode by
tongues of hot flame would be shooting up and a local prairie fire
would have started.
Kermit took Nips off with him for a solitary hunt one day. He shot two
of the big marsh-deer, a buck and a doe, and preserved them as museum
specimens. They were in the papyrus growth, but their stomachs
contained only the fine marsh-grass which grows in the water and on
the land along 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 promptly spurred his horse and took to
his heels, explaining that the peccaries would charge them, hamstring
the horses, and kill the riders. Kermit went into the jungle after the
truculent little wild hogs on foot and followed them for an hour, but
never was able to catch sight of them.
In the afternoon of this same day one of the jaguar-hunters--merely
ranch hands, who knew something of the chase of the jaguar--who had
been searching for tracks, rode in with the information that he had
found fresh sign at a spot in the swamp about nine miles distant. Next
morning we rose at two, and had started on our jaguar-hunt at three.
Colonel Rondon, Kermit, and I, with the two trailers or jaguar-
hunters, made up the 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, there were the ranch dogs, which
were well-nigh worthless, and then two jaguar hounds borrowed for the
occasion from a ranch six or eight leagues distant. These were the
only hounds on which we could place any trust, and they were led in
leashes by the two trailers. One was a white bitch, the other, the
best one we had, was a gelded black dog. They were lean, half-starved
creatures with prick ears and a look of furtive wildness.
As our shabby little horses shuffled away from the ranch-house the
stars were brilliant and the Southern Cross hung well up in the
heavens, tilted to the right. The landscape was spectral in the light
of the waning moon. At the first shallow ford, as horses and dogs
splashed across, an alligator, the jacare-tinga, some five feet long,
floated unconcernedly 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. The black monkeys howled mournfully. The
birds awoke. Macaws, parrots, parakeets screamed at us and chattered
at us as we rode by. Ibis called with wailing voices, and the plovers
shrieked as they wheeled in the air. We waded across bayous and ponds,
where white lilies floated on the water and thronging lilac-flowers
splashed the green marsh with color.
At last, on the edge of a patch of jungle, in wet ground, we came on
fresh jaguar tracks. Both the jaguar hounds challenged the sign. They
were unleashed and galloped along the trail, while the other dogs
noisily accompanied them. The hunt led right through the marsh.
Evidently the jaguar had not the least distaste for water. Probably it
had been hunting for capybaras or tapirs, and it had gone straight
through ponds and long, winding, narrow ditches or bayous, where it
must now and then have had to swim for a stroke or two. It had also
wandered through the island-like stretches of tree-covered land, the
trees at this point being 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 did not trust the pack; the dogs
were not stanch, and if the jaguar came down and started I feared we
might lose it. So I fired at once, from a distance of seventy yards. I
was using my favorite rifle, the little Springfield with which I have
killed most kinds of African game, from the lion and elephant down;
the bullets were the sharp, pointed kind, with the end of naked lead.
At the shot the jaguar fell like a sack of sand through the branches,
and although it staggered to its feet it went but a score of yards
before it sank down, and when I came up it was dead under the palms,
with three or four of the bolder dogs riving at it.
The jaguar is the king of South American game, ranking on an equality
with the noblest beasts of the chase of North America, and behind only
the huge and fierce creatures which stand at the head of the big game
of Africa and Asia. This one was an adult female. It 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, proved good eating,
when we had it for supper, although it was not cooked in the way it
ought to have been. I tried it because I had found cougars such good
eating; I have always regretted that in Africa I did not try lion's
flesh, which I am sure must be excellent.
Next day came Kermit's turn. We had the miscellaneous pack with us,
all much enjoying themselves; but, although they could help in a
jaguar-hunt to the extent of giving tongue and following the chase for
half a mile, cowing the quarry by their clamor, they were not
sufficiently stanch to be of use if there was any difficulty in the
hunt. The only two dogs we could trust were the two borrowed jaguar
hounds. This was the black dog's day. About ten in the morning we came
to a long, deep, winding bayou. On the opposite bank stood a capybara,
looking like a blunt-nosed pig, its wet hide shining black. I killed
it, and it slid into the water. Then I found that the bayou extended
for a mile or two in each direction, and the two hunter-guides said
they did not wish to swim across for fear of the piranhas. Just at
this moment we came across fresh jaguar tracks. It was hot, we had
been travelling for five hours, and the dogs were much exhausted. The
black hound in particular was nearly done up, for he had been led in a
leash by one of the horsemen. He lay flat on the ground, panting,
unable to catch the scent. Kermit threw water over him, and when he
was thoroughly drenched and freshened, thrust his nose into the
jaguar's footprints. The game old hound at once and eagerly responded.
As he snuffed the scent he challenged loudly, while still lying down.
Then he staggered to his feet and 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 the
galloping horsemen, the wilderness surroundings, the knowledge of what
the quarry is--all combine to make the moment one of fierce and
thrilling excitement. Besides, in this case there was the possibility
the jaguar might come to bay on the ground, in which event there would
be a slight element of risk, as it might need straight shooting to
stop a charge. However, about as soon as the long-drawn howling and
eager yelping showed that the jaguar had been overtaken, we saw him, a
huge male, up in the branches of a great fig-tree. A bullet behind the
shoulder, from Kermit's 405 Winchester, brought him dead to the
ground. He was heavier than the very big male horse-killing cougar I
shot in Colorado, whose skull Hart Merriam reported as the biggest he
had ever seen; he was very nearly double the weight of any of the male
African leopards we shot; he was nearly or quite the weight of the
smallest of the adult African lionesses we shot while in Africa. He
had the big bones, the stout frame, and the heavy muscular build of a
small lion; he was not lithe and slender and long like a cougar or
leopard; the tail, as with all jaguars, was short, while the girth of
the body was great; his coat was beautiful, with a satiny gloss, and
the dark-brown spots on the gold of his back, head, and sides were
hardly as conspicuous as the black of the equally well-marked spots
against his white belly.
This was a well-known jaguar. He had occasionally indulged in cattle-
killing; on one occasion during the floods he had taken up his abode
near the ranch-house and had killed a couple of cows and a young
steer. The hunters had followed him, but he had made his escape, and
for the time being had abandoned the neighborhood. In these marshes
each jaguar had a wide irregular range and travelled a good deal,
perhaps only passing a day or two in a given locality, perhaps
spending a week where game was plentiful. Jaguars love the water. They
drink greedily and swim freely. In this country they rambled through
the night across the marshes and prowled along the edges of the ponds
and bayous, catching the capybaras and the 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 leaving long raking scars in the tough hide. Cattle are
often killed. The jaguar will not meddle with a big bull; and is
cautious about attacking a herd accompanied by a bull; but it will at
times, where wild game is scarce, kill every other domestic animal. It
is a thirsty brute, and if it kills far from water will often drag its
victim a long distance toward a pond or stream; Colonel Rondon had
once come across a horse which a jaguar had thus killed and dragged
for over a mile. Jaguars also stalk and kill the deer; in this
neighborhood they seemed to be less habitual deer-hunters than the
cougars; whether this is generally the case I cannot say. They have
been known to pounce on and devour good-sized anacondas.
In this particular neighborhood the ordinary jaguars molested the
cattle and horses hardly at all except now and then to kill calves. It
was only occasionally that under special circumstances some old male
took to cattle-killing. There were plenty of capybaras and deer, and
evidently the big spotted cats preferred the easier prey when it was
available; exactly as in East Africa we found the lions living almost
exclusively on zebra and antelope, and not molesting the buffalo and
domestic cattle, which in other parts of Africa furnish their habitual
prey. In some other neighborhoods, not far distant, our hosts informed
us that the jaguars lived almost exclusively on horses and cattle.
They also told us that the cougars had the same habits as the jaguars
except that they did not prey on such big animals. The cougars on this
ranch never molested the foals, a fact which astonished me, as in the
Rockies they are 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 pumas of
any portion of South America, into several different species, all with
widely different habits. They will, moreover, describe these imaginary
habits with such sincerity and minuteness that they deceive most
listeners; and the result sometimes is that an otherwise good
naturalist will perpetuate these fables, as Hudson did when he wrote
of the puma. Hudson was a capital observer and writer when he dealt
with the ordinary birds and mammals of the well-settled districts near
Buenos Aires and at the mouth of the Rio Negro; but he knew nothing of
the wilderness. This is no reflection on him; his books are great
favorites of mine, and are to a large degree models of what such books
should be; I only wish that there were hundreds of such writers and
observers who would give us similar books for all parts of America.
But it is a mistake to accept him as an authority on that concerning
which he was ignorant.
An interesting incident occurred on the day we killed our first
jaguar. We took our lunch beside a small but deep and obviously
permanent pond. I went to the edge to dip up some water, and something
growled or bellowed at me only a few feet away. It was a jacare-tinga
or small cayman about five feet long. I paid no heed to it at the
moment. But shortly afterward when our horses 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. Why it should have shown such truculence and
heedlessness I cannot imagine, unless perhaps it was a female, with
eggs near by. In another little pond a jacare-tinga showed no less
anger when another of my companions approached. It bellowed, opened
its jaws, and lashed its tail. Yet these pond jacares never actually
molested even our dogs in the ponds, far less us on our horses.
This same day others of our party had an interesting experience with
the creatures in another pond. One of them was Commander da Cunha (of
the Brazilian Navy), a capital sportsman and delightful companion.
They found a deepish pond a hundred yards or so long and thirty or
forty across. It was tenanted by the small caymans and by capybaras--
the largest known rodent, a huge aquatic guinea-pig, the size of a
small sheep. It also swarmed with piranhas, the ravenous fish of which
I have so often spoken. Undoubtedly the caymans were subsisting
largely on these piranhas. But the 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 either cayman
or capybara while it was unwounded; but blood excited them to frenzy.
Their habits are in some ways inexplicable. We saw men frequently
bathing unmolested; but there are places where this is never safe, and
in any place if a school of the fish appear swimmers are in danger;
and a wounded man or beast is in deadly peril if piranhas are in the
neighborhood. Ordinarily it appears that an unwounded man is attacked
only by accident. Such accidents are rare; but they happen with
sufficient frequency to justify much caution in entering water where
piranhas abound.
We frequently came across ponds tenanted by numbers of capybaras. The
huge, pig-like rodents are said to be shy elsewhere. Here they were
tame. The water was their home and refuge. They usually went ashore to
feed on the grass, and made well-beaten trails in the marsh
immediately around the water; but they must have travelled these at
night, for we never saw them more than a few feet away from the water
in the daytime. Even at midday we often came on them standing beside a
bayou or pond. The dogs would rush wildly at such a standing beast,
which would wait until they were only a few 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 exposed. In these waters the capybaras and small
caymans paid no attention to one another, swimming and resting in
close proximity. They both had the same enemy, the jaguar. The
capybara is a game animal only in the sense that a hare or rabbit is.
The flesh is good to eat, and its amphibious habits and queer nature
and surroundings make it interesting. In some of the ponds the water
had about gone, and the capybaras had become for the time being beasts
of the marsh and the mud; although they could always find little slimy
pools, under a mass of water-lilies, in which to lie and hide.
Our whole stay on this ranch was delightful. On the long rides we
always saw something of interest, and often it was something entirely
new to us. Early one morning we came across two armadillos--the big,
nine-banded armadillo. We were riding with the pack through a dry,
sandy pasture country, dotted with clumps of palms, round the trunks
of which grew a dense jungle of thorns and Spanish bayonets. The
armadillos were feeding in an open space between two of these jungle
clumps, which were about a hundred yards apart. One was on all fours;
the other was in a squatting position, with its fore legs off the
ground. Their long ears were very prominent. The dogs raced at 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-shaped snout and armored
body, joined to the speed at which it was galloping, enabled it to
drive straight ahead through its pursuers, not one of which could halt
it or grasp it, and it reached in safety its thorny haven of refuge.
It had run at speed about a hundred and fifty yards. I was much
impressed by this unexpected exhibition; evidently this species of
armadillo only curls up as a last resort, and ordinarily trusts to its
speed, and to the protection its build and its armor give it while
running, in order to reach its burrow or other place of safety. Twice,
while laying railway tracks near Sao Paulo, Kermit had accidentally
dug up armadillos with a steam-shovel.
There were big ant-hills, some of them of huge dimensions, scattered
through the country. Sometimes they were built against the stems of
trees. We did not here come across any of the poisonous or biting ants
which, when sufficiently 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 suggested
that nestlings in their nests are in some way immune from the attack
of these ants. The experiments of our naturalists tended to show that
this was not the case. They plundered any nest they came across and
could get at.
Once we saw a small herd of peccaries, one a sow followed by three
little pigs--they are said to have only two young, but we saw three,
although of course it is possible one belonged to another sow. The
herd galloped into a mass of thorny cover the hounds could not
penetrate; and when they were in safety we heard them utter, from the
depths of the jungle, a curious moaning sound.
On one ride we passed a clump of palms which were fairly ablaze with
bird color. There were magnificent hyacinth macaws; green parrots with
red splashes; toucans with varied plumage, black, white, red, yellow;
green jacmars; flaming orioles and both blue and dark-red tanagers. It
was an extraordinary collection. 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 are
certainly noisy on the wing; and those that we saw were quiet while
they were feeding; but ordinarily when they were perched among the
branches, and especially when, as in the case of the little parakeets
near the house, they were gathering materials for nest-building, they
were just as noisy as while flying.
The water-birds were always a delight. We shot merely the two or three
specimens the naturalists needed for the museum. I killed a wood-ibis
on the wing with the handy little Springfield, and then lost all the
credit I had thus gained by a series of inexcusable misses, at long
range, before I finally killed a jabiru. Kermit shot a jabiru with the
Luger automatic. The great, splendid birds, standing about as tall as
a man, show fight when wounded, and advance against their assailants,
clattering their formidable bills. One day we found the nest of a
jabiru in a mighty fig-tree, on the edge of a patch of jungle. It was
a big platform 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 bird and the four young birds were
standing motionless, and with gliding flight the other old bird was
returning to the nest. It is hard to give an adequate idea of the
wealth of bird life in these marshes. A naturalist could with the
utmost advantage spend six months on such a branch as that we visited.
He would have to do some collecting, but only a little. Exhaustive
observation in the field is what is now most needed. Most of this
wonderful and harmless bird life should be protected by law; and the
mammals should receive reasonable protection. The books now most
needed are those dealing with the life-histories of wild creatures.
Near the ranch-house, walking familiarly among the cattle, we saw the
big, deep-billed Ani blackbirds. They feed on the insects disturbed by
the hoofs of the cattle, and often cling to them and pick off the
ticks. It was the end of the nesting season, and we did not find their
curious communal nests, in which half a dozen females lay their eggs
indiscriminately. The common ibises in the ponds near by--which
usually went in pairs, instead of in flocks like the wood ibis--were
very tame, and so were the night herons and all the small herons. In
flying, the ibises and storks stretch the neck straight in front of
them. The jabiru--a splendid bird on the wing--also stretches his neck
out in front, but there appears to be a slight downward curve at the
base 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 the
bill into crevices for insects. The oven-birds, which had the carriage
and somewhat the look of wood-thrushes, I am sure would prove
delightful friends on a close acquaintance; they are very individual,
not only in the extraordinary domed mud nests they build, but in all
their ways, in their bright alertness; their interest in and curiosity
about whatever goes on, their rather jerky quickness of movement, and
their loud and varied calls. With a little encouragement they become
tame and familiar. The parakeets were too noisy, but otherwise were
most attractive little birds, as they flew to and fro and scrambled
about in the top of the palm behind the house. There was one showy
kind of king-bird or tyrant flycatcher, lustrous black with a white
head.
One afternoon several score cattle were driven into a big square
corral near the house, in order to brand the calves and a number of
unbranded yearlings and two-year-olds. A special element of excitement
was added by the presence of a dozen big bulls which were to be turned
into draught-oxen. The agility, nerve, and prowess of the ranch
workmen, the herders or gauchos, were noteworthy. The dark-skinned men
were obviously 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 beast would be stopped short and whirled completely round
when the rope tautened. The maddened bulls, and an occasional steer or
cow, charged again and again with furious wrath; but two or three
ropes would settle on the doomed beast, and down it would go; and when
it was released and rose and charged once more, with greater fury than
ever, the men, shouting with laughter, would leap up the sides of the
heavy stockade.
We stayed at the ranch until a couple of days before Christmas.
Hitherto the weather had been lovely. The night before we left there
was a torrential tropic downpour. It was not unexpected, for we had
been told that the rainy season was overdue. The following forenoon
the baggage started, in a couple of two-wheeled ox-carts, for the
landing where the steamboat awaited us. Each cart was drawn by eight
oxen. The huge wheels were over seven feet high. Early in the
afternoon we followed on horseback, and overtook the carts as darkness
fell, just before we reached the landing on the river's bank. The last
few miles, after the final reaches 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 wading
alongside cracked their whips and uttered strange cries; the carts
rocked and swayed as the huge wheels churned through the mud and
water. As the last light faded we reached the small patches of dry
land at the landing, where the flat-bottomed side-wheel steamboat was
moored to the bank. The tired horses and oxen were turned loose to
graze. Water stood in the corrals, but the open shed was on dry
ground. Under it the half-clad, wild-looking ox-drivers and horse-
herders slung their hammocks; and close by they lit a fire and
roasted, or scorched, slabs and legs of mutton, spitted on sticks and
propped above the smouldering flame.
Next morning, with real regret, we waved good-by to our dusky
attendants, as they stood on the bank, grouped around a little fire,
beside the big, empty ox-carts. A dozen miles down-stream a rowboat
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 smoking a very
large cigar--their two children, a young man, and a couple of trunks
and various other belongings. On Christmas eve we reached Corumba, and
rejoined the other members of the expedition.