The Jaguar 183 



Brown was in a country infested by jaguars, but while 

 remaining in the peopled regions he does not say much 

 about them. Once, however, he records the fact that he en- 

 countered an Indian whose neck was much distorted by a 

 bite received from this animal. The man was accompanied 

 by a friend armed with a gun when the jaguar sprang 

 upon him, and was shot dead by his friend. Most of 

 Brown's explorations were made in boats, by the water- 

 ways of the Essequibo, Corentyne, and other rivers and 

 their affluents. He penetrated into parts which were, so 

 far as human beings are concerned, nearly or entirely 

 uninhabited. 



"On one occasion," says this author, "when we had 

 landed and were pursuing a herd of bush-hogs," pec- 

 caries, he means, " two men were left in charge of the 

 boat. We had not been away in the forest more than two 

 or three minutes, when these men heard a heavy footfall 

 on the bank above them, and looking up saw a large jaguar 

 gazing down upon them from the very spot up which we 

 had clambered." In other words, neither the sense of 

 smell, nor actual sight, taught him anything about those 

 enemies whom he, in common with all other wild beasts, is 

 so generally represented to fear instinctively. " They im- 

 mediately pushed the boat off shore, fearing an attack from 

 the tiger." Afterwards his men told Brown "that this 

 animal was one of those the Indians call ' Masters of the 

 herd,' that it followed herds of swine wherever they 

 went ; and that whenever it was hungry, and found a pig 

 at a little distance from the rest, pounced upon it, killing 

 it with one blow of its huge paw. The squeak of the 



