4G0 THE TROPICAL WORLD. 



jaguar with her young. Dexterously rolling down a large stone, 

 he closed the entrance, and then with fiendish delight slowly 

 smoked the animals to death, by applying fire from time to time 

 to their dungeon. Having lost one-half of his scalp in a pre- 

 vious conflict with a jaguar, he pleaded his sufferings as an 

 excuse for his barbarity. 



To attack these creatures with a lance, a sure arm, a cool 

 determined courage, and great bodily strength and dexterity 

 are required ; but even these qualities do not always ensure suc- 

 cess if the hunter is unacquainted with the artifices of the 

 animal. The jaguar generally waits for the attack in a sitting 

 posture, turning one side towards the assailant, and, as if un- 

 concerned, moves his long tail to and fro. The hunter, carefully 

 observing the eye of his adversary, repeatedly menaces him with 

 slight thrusts of his lance, which a gentle stroke of the paw 

 playfully wards off ; then seizing a favourable moment, he sud- 

 denly steps forward and plunges his weapon into his side. If 

 the thrust be well aimed, a second is not necessary, for pressing 

 with his full weight on the lance, the huntsman enlarges and 

 deepens the mortal wound. But if the stroke is parried or 

 glances off, the jaguar, roused to fmy, bounds on his aggressor, 

 and fells him to the ground with a stroke of his paw. Having 

 his enemy now fully in his power, the jaguar looks at him 

 quietly for a few moments as if enjoying his pangs, like a cat 

 playing with a mouse, and this short delay has not seldom 

 enabled the companion of the unfortunate hun^ter to save his 

 life by a timely sliot. 



All those that have escaped from one of these death-struggles 

 affirm that the breath of the enraged animal is of a suffocating 

 heat, with a smell like that of burning capsicum, and that its 

 pestilential contact produces an inflammation of the throat, which 

 lasts for several days. Those who are less inclined to desperate 

 conflicts destroy- the jaguar by poisoned pieces of meat, or else 

 they lay pitfalls for him, when they kill him without running 

 any personal risk. Like the cayman, the jaguar, after having 

 once tasted the flesh of man, is said to prefer it to anything 

 else. During his first solitary journeys through the American 

 wilds, the traveller's sensations, on meeting with the fresh foot- 

 marks of the monster, are like those of Kobinson Crusoe when 

 he discovered the vestiges of the savage on the beach of his lonely 



