176 JUNGLE ISLAND 



snow. We find their bones still buried in northern 

 Asia and North America, but no tapir lives now 

 outside the tropics. 



They like shady forests close to water, where 

 they can bathe when hot and hide when hunted. 

 They grow to be about four feet high and weigh 

 nearly a ton, which is as much as a heavy draft 

 horse weighs. Although they are shy and inoffen- 

 sive, they can make a truly terrifying noise crash- 

 ing through the jungle in a bee line of escape. My 

 Canal Zone policeman friend with whom I hunted 

 for them assured me that they went like an 

 express train and that they would certainly knock 

 down a man who stood still in their path. This 

 seems to be the only cause the natives have to 

 fear them, and it must be said that the natives 

 fear most things in the bush, whether real, like 

 tapirs, or imaginary, like pink scorpions. ' 



I was somewhat consoled for my failure to find 

 a tapir by learning that many others before me 

 had looked for them in vain, including Thomas 

 Belt, who did not see one in all his four years in 

 Nicaragua. 



Neither did I see a live sloth in his native bush, 

 but I did examine with curiosity and amusement 

 the sloth caught by two Frijoles negroes. Of all 

 the animals that my unfamiliar eyes met in the 

 tropics this is surely the strangest. 



His body looks like a dirty, shaggy doormat 

 (Fig. 78). His head and face are those of an 



