IN THE PRIMEVAL FOREST. 265 



wished to visit each other could only do so by spending a 

 day and a half in following the windings of small streams, 

 in canoes hollowed out of the trunks of trees. A striking 

 evidence of the impenetrability of particular parts of the 

 forest is afforded by a trait related by an Indian of the habits 

 of the large American tiger, or panther-like jaguar. While 

 in the Llanos of Varinas and the Meta, and in the Pampas of 

 Buenos Ayres, the introduction of European cattle, horses, 

 and mules has enabled the beasts of prey to find an abun- 

 dant subsistence, so that since the first discovery of 

 America their numbers have increased exceedingly in those 

 extended and treeless grassy steppes, their congeners in 

 the dense forests around the sources of the Orinoco lead a 

 very different and far less easy life. In a bivouac near the 

 junction of the Cassiquiare with the Orinoco we had had the 

 misfortune of losing a large dog, to which we were much 

 attached, as the most faithful and affectionate companion of 

 our wanderings. Being still uncertain whether he had been 

 actually killed by the tigers, a faint hope of recovering him 

 induced us, in returning from the mission of Esmeralda 

 through the swarms of musquitoes by which it is infested, 

 to spend another night at the spot where we had so long 

 sought him in vain. We heard the cries of the jaguar, 

 probably the very individual which we suspected of the 

 deed, extremely near to us ; and as the clouded sky made 

 astronomical observations impossible, we passed part of the 

 night in making our interpreter (lenguaraz) repeat to us the 

 accounts given by our native boat's crew of the tigers of the 

 country. 



