488 THE FELID^ OF THE NEW WOELD 



abandoned, and the neighbourhood was still considered so danger- 

 ous that few Indians ventured to travel through it alone. 



The chase of these formidable animals requires great caution^ 

 yet keen sportsmen will venture, single-handed, to seek the 

 jaguar in his lair, armed with a blow-pipe and poisoned arrows, 

 or merely with a long and powerful lance. The praise which is 

 due to the bold adventurers for their courage is, however, 

 too often tarnished by their cruelty. Thus, a famous jaguar 

 hunter once showed Poppig a large cavity under the tangled 

 roots of a giant bombax-tree, where he had some time back 

 discovered a female 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 previous 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 dex- 

 terity are required, but even these qualities do not always 

 ensure success 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 unconcerned, 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 suddenly 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 w^eight on the lance, the 

 huntsman enlarges and deepens the mortal wound. But if the 

 stroke is parried or glances off, the jaguar, roused to fury, 

 bounds on his aggressor, whose only hope now lies in the short 

 knife which he carries in his girdle. 



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 



