82 THROUGH THE BRAZILIAN WILDERNESS 



was not lithe and slender and long like a cougar or leopard; 

 the tail, as with all jaguars, was short, while the girth of 

 the body was great; his coat was beautiful, with a satiny 

 gloss, and the dark-brown spots on the gold of his 

 back, head, and sides were hardly as conspicuous as the 

 black of the equally well-marked spots against his white 

 belly. 



This was a well-known jaguar. He had occasionally 

 indulged in cattle-killing; on one occasion during the 

 floods he had taken up his abode near the ranch-house 

 and had killed a couple of cows and a young steer. The 

 hunters had followed him, but he had made his escape, and 

 for the time being had abandoned the neighborhood. In 

 these marshes each jaguar had a wide irregular range and 

 travelled a good deal, perhaps only passing a day or two 

 in a given locality, perhaps spending a week where game 

 was plentiful. Jaguars love the water. They drink greed- 

 ily and swim freely. In this country they rambled through 

 the night across the marshes and prowled along the edges 

 of the ponds and bayous, catching the capybaras and the 

 caymans; for these small pond caymans, the jacare-tinga, 

 form part of their habitual food, and a big jaguar when 

 hungry will attack and kill large caymans and crocodiles 

 if he can get them a few yards from the water. On these 

 marshes the jaguars also followed the peccary herds; it is 

 said that they always strike the hindmost of a band of the 

 fierce little wild pigs. Elsewhere they often prey on the 

 tapir. If in timber, however, the jaguar must kill it at once, 

 for the squat, thick-skinned, wedge-shaped tapir has no 

 respect for timber, as Colonel Rondon phrased it, and 

 rushes with such blind, headlong speed through and among 



