86 THROUGH THE BRAZILIAN WILDERNESS 



swarmed with piranhas, the ravenous fish of which I have 

 so often spoken. Undoubtedly the caymans were subsisting 

 largely on these piranhas. But the tables were readily 

 turned if any caymans were injured. When a capybara 

 was shot and sank in the water, the piranhas at once at- 

 tacked it, and had eaten half the carcass ten minutes 

 later. But much more extraordinary was the fact that 

 when a cayman about five feet long was wounded the pi- 

 ranhas attacked and tore it, and actually drove it out on 

 the bank to face its human foes. The fish first attacked 

 the wound; then, as the blood maddened them, they at- 

 tacked all the soft parts, their terrible teeth cutting out 

 chunks of tough hide and flesh. Evidently they did not 

 molest either cayman or capybara while it was unwounded; 

 but blood excited them to frenzy. Their habits are in 

 some ways inexplicable. We saw men frequently bathing 

 unmolested; but there are places where this is never safe, 

 and in any place if a school of the fish appear swimmers 

 are in danger; and a wounded man or beast is in deadly 

 peril if piranhas are in the neighborhood. Ordinarily it 

 appears that an unwounded man is attacked only by acci- 

 dent. Such accidents are rare; but they happen with suffi- 

 cient frequency to justify much caution in entering water 

 where piranhas abound. 



We frequently came across ponds tenanted by numbers 

 of capybaras. The huge, pig-like rodents are said to be 

 shy elsewhere. Here they were tame. The water was 

 their home and refuge. They usually went ashore to feed 

 on the grass, and made well-beaten trails in the marsh 

 immediately around the water; but they must have trav- 

 elled these at night, for we never saw them more than a 



