IN THE PRIMEVAL FOREST. 209 



Cassiquiare, and the Eio Negro, astronomical observations, and 

 where these were wanting, determinations by compass of the direc- 

 tion of the rivers, respectively showed us that two lonely mission 

 villages might be only a few miles apart, and yet that the monks, 

 when they wished to visit each other, could only do so by spending 

 a day and a half in following the windings of small streams, in 

 canoes hollowed out of the trunks of trees. A striking evidence of 

 the impenetrability of particular parts of the forest is afforded by a 

 trait related by an Indian of the habits of the large American tiger, 

 or panther-like jaguar. While in the Llanos of Varinas and the 

 Meta, and in the Pampas of Buenos Ayres, the introduction of 

 European cattle, horses, and mules has enabled the beasts of prey 

 to find an abundant subsistence so^ that, since the first discovery 

 of America, their numbers have increased exceedingly in those ex- 

 tended and treeless grassy steppes their congeners in the -dense 

 forests around the sources of the Orinoco lead a very different and 

 far less easy life. In a bivouac near the junction of the Gassiquiare 

 with the Orinoco we had had the misfortune of losing a large dog, 

 to which we were much attached, as the most faithful and affec- 

 tionate companion of our wanderings. Being still uncertain whether 

 he had been actually killed by the tigers, a faint hope of recovering 

 him induced us, in returning from the mission of Esmeralda through 

 the swarms of musquitoes by which it is infested, to spend another 

 night at the spot where we had so long sought him in vain. We 

 heard the cries of the jaguar, probably the very individual which 

 we suspected of the deed, extremely near to us ; and as the clouded 

 sky made astronomical observations impossible, we passed part of 

 the night in making our interpreter (lenguaraz) repeat to us the 

 accounts given by our native boat's crew of the tigers of the country. 

 The " black jaguar" was, they said, not unfrequently found there; 

 it is the largest and most bloodthirsty variety, with black spots 

 scarcely distinguishable on its deep, dark-brown skim It lives at the 

 foot of the mountains of Maraguaca and Unturan. One of the In- 

 dians of the Durimund tribe then related to us that jaguars are often 

 led, by their love of wandering and by their rapacity, to lose them- 

 selves in such impenetrable parts of the forest that they can no 

 longer hunt along the ground, and live instead in the trees, where 



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