THE ROOSEVELT-RONDON SCIENTIFIC EXPEDITION 53 
the swamp and came out into the fields to 
feed morning and night, and in the tall grass, 
cavies! abounded. Ocelots had worn well- 
defined paths through the fields in their 
nightly raids on the cavy community. In 
the trees we found black howlers, night 
monkeys and tayras?; on the ground, opos- 
sums and various small rodents held sway. 
When time permitted us to take a few 
moments’ recreation, we fished for piranhas * 
in the stream, the ravenous creatures throw- 
ing each other clear of the water in their 
frantic struggles to get at the meat, bait. 
After a profitable week’s work on the Pil- 
comayo we returned to Asuncion, where we 
were joined by the two commissaries who had 
just arrived with the equipment. Two days 
later we boarded the comfortable little 
steamer ‘‘Asuncion”’ and sailed for Corumba. 
The four and a half days’ trip on the Paraguay 
was most interesting, although the heat was 
intense and insects at times were trouble- 
some. We had entered the great pantanal 
country, and the vast marshes teemed with 
bird life. As the ‘‘ Asuncion”’ plowed her way 
through the water, countless thousands of 
cormorants and anhingas‘ took wing; lining 
the pools and dotting the marshes were 
hordes of wood and scarlet ibises, together 
with herons and a sprinkling of spoonbills; 
egrets covered the small clump of trees as 
with a mantle of snowy white, and long lines 
of jabirus patrolled both shores. Scarcely 
a moment passed in which we did not see 
hundreds of birds. Many of the passengers 
were armed with rifles and revolvers, with 
which they kept up more or less of a fusillade 
on the feathered folk, but fortunately their 
aim was poor so that little injury was inflicted. 
The day before reaching Corumbd we passed 
an interesting old land-mark, the fort of 
Coimbra, built on a rocky hillside with a 
cluster of thatch-roofed huts nestling against 
the base. It is near the Bolivian border and 
in by-gone years figured prominently in 
several of the bloody controversies between 
the neighboring republics. 
Corumb4 is a very hot, dusty town built 
1Cavy: a rodent of South America allied to 
the guinea pig and capybara. 
2Tayra: a South American mammal resem- 
bling the weasels and martins. 
3 Piranha: the most ferocious small fish in the 
world, a deadly enemy of man, known as the can- 
nibal fish. It is generally about twelve inches 
in length. 
4 Anhinga: the American snake-bird. 
on a high rocky elevation on the west bank 
of the Paraguay. The city bears the unenvi- 
able reputation of being the rendezvous for 
fugitives from justice from many climes, 
but we saw nothing of the lawlessness and 
disorder which was said to prevail, and the 
treatment we received was all that could be 
desired. 
Having heard of a place called Uructim, 
but a short distance away, which seemed to 
offer unusual opportunities for collecting, Mr. 
Cherrie and the writer immediately moved to 
that place and established headquarters. 
Uructim proved to be a garden spot of clear, 
coll springs, shady groves, and plantations 
of tropical fruits and vegetables. Easy of 
access were fields, forested hillsides, marshes 
and lagoons in which dwelt an abundant and 
varied fauna. Swarms of bats of several spe- 
cies inhabited the mango trees as well as the 
culverts and manganese mines in the hillsides, 
and furnished an unfailing supply of mate- 
rial; squirrels, coatimondis,!| monkeys and 
marmosets lived in the trees; on the forest 
floor ranged agoutis,? deer and peccaries. 
Traps left overnight, caught wooly opossums 
(Metachirus), small rodents and giant black 
lizards that fought viciously when we sought 
to release them. One of the mammals added 
to the collection at Uructim was of unusual 
interest; it was the formidable guaraguasi, 
a yellow wolf which equals or exceeds in size 
the great gray wolf of our own north woods; 
it is an animal of solitary habits and is so 
rare that it is seldom met with. It was not 
previously represented in the American Mu- 
seum’s collection. From the hosts of birds, 
we secured pigmy owls, tinamous, thrushes, 
grebes, rails and ant birds that were out of 
the ordinary. We spent nearly three weeks 
at Uructim, and each day we added a number 
of species that were new to us. In the mean- 
time, Colonel Roosevelt and his Brazilian 
escort had reached Curumb4, and a hunting 
trip on the Rio Taquary had been planned 
to secure specimens of the large game that is 
found in that region. 
December 16 found the hunting party 
aboard the ‘‘Nyoac” steaming up the 
Taquary. This boat had been placed at the 
disposal of the expedition by the Brazilian 
1 Coatimondi: also costimundi and more popu- 
larly known as coati. An American carnivorous 
quadruped, most nearly related to the racoon, 
called also tejou. 
2 Agouti: arodent about the size of the rabbit. 
