150 THROUGH THE BRAZILIAN WILDERNESS 



across one of my wounded ones, standing at bay by a 

 palm trunk; and I killed it forthwith. The dog would 

 not even trail the wounded ones; but here Antonio came 

 to the front. With eyes almost as quick and sure as those 

 of a wild beast he had watched after every shot, and was 

 able to tell the results in each case. He said that in addi- 

 tion to the one I had just killed I had wounded two others 

 so seriously that he did not think they would go far, and 

 that Colonel Rondon and he himself had each badly 

 wounded one; and, moreover, he showed the trails each 

 wounded animal had taken. The event justified him. In a 

 few minutes we found my second one dead. Then we found 

 Antonio's. Then we found my third one alive and at 

 bay, and I killed it with another bullet. Finally we found 

 the colonel's. I told him I should ask the authorities of 

 the American museum to mount his and one or two of 

 mine in a group, to commemorate our hunting together. 



If we had not used crippling rifles the peccaries might 

 have gotten away, for in the dark jungle, with the masses 

 of intervening leaves and branches, it was impossible to 

 be sure of placing each bullet properly in the half-seen 

 moving beast. We found where the herd had wallowed in 

 the mud. The stomachs of the peccaries we killed con- 

 tained wild figs, palm nuts, and bundles of root fibres. 

 The dead beasts were covered with ticks. They were at 

 least twice the weight of the smaller peccaries. 



On the ride home we saw a buck of the small species 

 of bush deer, not half the size of the kind I had already 

 shot. It was only a patch of red in the bush, a good dis- 

 tance off, but I was lucky enough to hit it. In spite of 

 its small size it was a full-grown male, of a species we had 



