324 
even when no longerabletodo any injury. 
As to the female jaguar, they have only 
to come near her couching-place to pro- 
voke a quarrel, as she will often attack 
them before they are within two hundred 
yards of it: in her they sometimes find a 
more formidable enemy than in the male, 
although much inferior in point of size 
and strength, but more subtle and 
erafty : their bite is difficult to heal, 
and the Laneros think a wound from a 
jaguar a great disgrace; so much so 
that a young aspirant for the title of 
guapo, who had the misfortune of being 
wounded in a rencontre, was so much 
ashamed of acknowledging it, that he suf- 
fered a mortification sooner than expose 
the wound, although he was well aware 
the women possesseda salve that would 
eure him. 
The Oller. 
Pero de Agua water-dog, and otter 
are synonimous terms in both languages. 
As hunting this species of otter in South 
America forms a recreation for the 
grandees or better sort of gentry for 
two or three months in the year, like 
our grousing or partridge shooting par- 
ties, an account of their aquatic ex- 
cursions may prove interesting. In the 
month of May the parties assemble 
by previous arrangement, composed 
principally of the chief inhabitants of 
these districts and their relatives or 
clans and visitors, male slaves, mu- 
leteers, &c. Having ascended the water- 
falls, they encamp near those clear and 
transparent rivers in which otters abound 
in great numbers. After the business of 
physicking the blood-hounds and a spe- 
_ ¢ies of bluish cur without any hair, 
they make their hunting dispositions, 
and appoint their land and water cap- 
tains to head each party; the duty 
‘of the latter is to stand in the prow of 
the canoe and cheer the dogs to the 
grey. A huntsman, in fact, is mostly an 
Fadvan, as those dogs will not hunt to 
any other tongue; what this is owing 
to, whether custom or sagacity, I know 
not, but. it is certainly the case ; 
however, the young Spaniards and 
Creoles have latterly remedied this de- 
fect, and are now as well qualified to 
hunt a bloodhound im: the Indian 
tongue as an Indian himself, Both par- 
ties having armed themselves with otter 
spears, barbed like the harpoons, and 
with long handles made of rough light 
wood about ten feet ormore, they cheer,on 
the blood-hounds, who nosooner wind the 
prey than they join chorus with their 
untsmen, until they arrive nearthe Calle 
Mode of Hunting the Otter in South America. 
( Nov: 1, 
Pero, or otter city, when the land party 
divide into three; one watch; another 
ascend the ford; while the others pokethe 
banks, in order to ejéct the creature. 
As soon as he is started, the hounds 
are again in full ery, aud the curs are 
loosed to dive after him, and will relieve 
each other in this task; as soon'as one 
is up down goes the other, while the 
hounds keep up the ery in the water 
at a slow pace, until they eventually 
force the creature to’ the head ‘of the 
stream into shallow water, where: these 
curs either snap him up or he is‘speared 
by the hunters; after this, tne hounds 
are allowed the gratification of mouthing 
him until satisfied, when they again return 
to depopulate this little commonwealth 
of otters, After all the old otters have 
fled, the young ones betake themselves 
to the uppermost recesses of their bur- 
rows, and defend themselves with 
great obstinacy when they are dug 
out of their dirty habitation; a slight 
blow on the forehead will soon despateh 
them, as that seems their most vulne- 
rable part. In their abode the head, fins, 
tails and fragments of several species of 
fish are to be seen, for the otter is; like 
most aquatic monsters, a glutton’; as he 
seldom eats more than a mouthful of 
each fish, he must cause frightful des- 
truction among the finny race, and his 
depredation causes his haunts to be 
found out at low water; when the hounds 
would pass him: Abbé Ricardo; who 
wrote a little treatise on the history 
of this animal, about a century ago, 
(in good preservation in the’ ‘¢athe- 
dral of Carraccas) relates, that! while 
the parent otters are in existence, they 
do not suffer the young gentry to at- 
tempt propagating the specie, but that 
the young are two or three years under 
their parents’ guardianship: one thing 
is very certain,—in the same com- 
munity are to be met three or four 
different generations of those creatures 
under the guidance of their patriarch. 
The alligator is the only aquatic ene- 
my of this creature, with the excep; 
tion of the shark, with whom he has 
very little intercourse. It seems Father 
Ricardo caused a cage-pond’ to be 
erected in his garden, in’ order to 
study their natural history. His little 
legend teems with amusing anecdotes 
of the aboriginal hunters, of whose 
elub he was a member those “gentry, 
he said, during such excursions, “lived 
well. Certainly, ‘the heen get “of 
hounds and hunters is the midst delight- 
ful 1 ever beard. It vibrates throngh 
ever¢ 
