THE JAGUAR 19 



the wild banana are used for this purpose. Our rancho 

 was completed in less than half an hour, and when our 

 hammocks had been slung between the trees under the 

 thick covering of palm-branches, the place looked quite 

 snug with the big log-fire burning in front of it. Close to 

 our hut one of the men, while collecting firewood, came 

 across the fresh excrement of a full-grown jaguar. The 

 conversation immediately turned upon tigers, as the 

 jaguar is called all over South America, and their doings. 

 Each man had some story to tell of the cunning and 

 audacity of the tiger, and the speaker usually happened 

 to be the principal figure in the story which he was 

 telling. Isidor was an easy winner in this competition of, 

 I am afraid to have to admit, imaginary tiger-stories. As 

 he could speak Spanish fairly well, he not only told of his 

 own adventures, but he interpreted the tales of his two 

 friends, and put the finishing touches to them, so as to 

 render them more impressive. It may appear strange 

 that men of the same race who came from villages fairly 

 near to each other should have been utterly unable to 

 carry on a conversation of even a few sentences. Such, 

 however, was the case with Maite and Sylvestre. So 

 different were the dialects of these men, one of whom 

 had come from the mountainous country at the sources 

 of the Erewato, and the other from the Pacaraima range, 

 that they could not exchange even the simplest ideas. It 

 was amusing to observe their futile attempts to carry on 

 a conversation when Isidor, who spoke both dialects and 

 interpreted for them, happened to be absent. 



The fact of the members of a small village consisting 

 of but comparatively few individuals speaking a dialect 

 peculiar to themselves is not uncommon amongst the 

 Indians of Guiana. Probably the difficulties of com- 



c 2 



