ON THE AMAZON. 243 
no more. When we afterwards recounted the adventure to some 
Indians, they told us that the crash we had heard was undoubtedly the 
tiger, either springing on some deer, of which he had been in chase, 
or, arriving in sight of us, and doubting his capacity to overcome us, 
betaking himself to flight, 
Rarely are tigers seen so near Santarem, yet a few years ago an 
engagement took place between three men and a tiger, in the very same 
valley. One of these men was armed with a musket, another with a 
trésado, and the third (a tall powerful man) was quite unarmed. It 
was upon the last that the tiger made his first attack, springing upon 
him out of a bush, and he had fortunately sufficient activity and presence 
of mind to seize the tiger by the fore-paws, one of which he secured 
by the wrist, and the other lower down, and consequently less firmly. 
They struggled until the tiger released this paw, and, making a claw 
with it at the man’s crown, tore his scalp completely over his eyes. He 
is now living at Santarem, and constantly wears a black skull-cap, his 
head being still very tender. At the moment of the attack the man 
with the musket was some distance in the rear, but the one with the 
trésado flew to his friend’s assistance, and the tiger, leaving the latter, 
turned on his new assailant, whom, also, he succeeded in wounding 
severely. He then sat down midway between them, eyeing first one 
and then the other, and looking, I dare say, as amiably as a cat might 
be supposed to do between two disabled mice, uncertain which to 
devour first. At this critical conjuncture the third man came up, and 
the contest was renewed, resulting finally in the death of the tiger, but 
not until he had wounded all his assailants. 
In this strip of forest were numerous trees of the Melastomacea I 
have sent you under No. 819, its slender trunks rising to the height | 
of fifty feet before branching. I might have passed it unnoticed, but — 
that the ground beneath was strewed with its ripe fruits, which more — - 
resemble the Apple in flavour than any other fruit I have met with on 
the Amazon : they are, however, more insipid, and the flesh less firm. 
In shape and in the way they grow along the naked branches, they 
are not unlike the Medinilla macrocarpa figured in Lindley's * Vegetable 
Kingdom, but the 12-celled ovary and the 12-lobed stigma are 
characters I have not met with in any other of the Order, 
Te found the shores of the lake rich in the little plants above-men- 
tioned, and I was glad to find a second species of Mayaca, with small 
