HINTERLAND NOTES 463 



anything of a meal left, if it did, for Nature's sanitary party 

 is early at work. The maikang arrives even before daylight, 

 and the vultures and krakras are busy, with the break of day. 

 Kaikuchi is to be found in the Thewarikuru Bush, Mare- 

 kupu Bush, and Marakanata Bush. I have the skin of one 

 which was shot close to the last-named Bush. It is that of 

 a young animal, measuring three feet ten inches from the 

 nose to the root of the tail. The markings resemble, some- 

 what, the beast's own pugs. The spotted jaguar would seem 

 to prefer the open country, where it can hunt deer, and, in 

 these days, cattle. Both the spotted and the black jaguar are 

 known not to despise fish ; and it is said that they will lie in 

 wait for turtles coming on to sand-banks, to lay eggs, and 

 successfully turn them, and extract the flesh. 



The ocelot may be found in these woods, also. It and 

 kaikuchi are reported as abounding in the Simuni Bush. 



There is another carnivorous animal, called iworo, which 

 is diurnal as well as nocturnal, in habits. One came to the 

 corral, at mid-day. It decamped when an Indian ran off for 

 a gun. This animal has always evaded me, so that I am un- 

 able to describe it, or to identify it. Christopher Davis calls 

 it a wolf, though it is solitary. One moonlight night, we saw 

 an iworo cross the wide road which we had made and cleared, 

 and go to the pineapple corral, where, finding no fruit, it 

 uttered its uncanny cry. Then it recrossed the road, went 

 off to another pine enclosure, repeating its cry, as if to mark 

 its disgust. This creature, although carnivorous (it carried 

 off a sitting turkey) relishes pineapples, and few were the 

 fruit we got from our two corrals. The Indians' fields, upon 

 the savannahs, suffer from its depredations. When one is 

 alone, upon the savannahs, at night, the cry of the iworo is 

 blood-curdling. 



Christopher Davis is a Negro, who has lived upon the 

 savannahs for a score of years. He has married an Indian 

 woman, and keeps cattle, at Tuka. He possesses a fund of 

 information with regard to the forests and savannahs and the 



