THE PECCARY. 363 



ground ; and it was sometimes only after two or three hours 

 incessant firing that they were at last compelled to quit the 

 field of battle, and to leave the bodies of the dead to the mercy 

 of the conquerors. These days of victory over the Peccaries, he 

 adds, are always days of abundance for the traveller in those 

 immense forests, who has no other resource except the chase. 

 An enormous gridiron is immediately constructed with sticks 

 fixed in the earth, and three feet in height, over which a 

 quantity of small branches are placed in a transverse direction. 

 On these the Peccaries are deposited after being cut in pieces, 

 and are cooked by a slow fire, which is kept up during the 

 whole night. From the enthusiasm with which our author 

 speaks of his desert feasts, and the regret which he expresses 

 that he is no longer a sharer in them, we may readily imag- 

 ine that, under the circumstances in which he partook of them, 

 they must have been an exquisite treat. It does not, how- 

 ever, follow as a necessary consequence that in other places 

 and at other times he might have been so well disposed to 

 relish these delicacies of the forest. 



It has been generally said that the secretion from its dorsal 

 gland is inodorous ; but M. Sonnini makes no distinction in 

 this respect between the two. 



