266 NOCTURNAL LIFE OF ANIMALS 



The "black jaguar" was, they said, not unfrequently 

 found there ; it is the largest and most bloodthirsty variety, 

 with black spots scarcely distinguishable on its deep dark- 

 brown skin. It lives at the foot of the mountains of Mara- 

 guaca and Unturan, One of the Indians of the Durimund 

 tribe then related to us that jaguars are often led, by their 

 love of wandering and by their rapacity, to lose themselves in 

 such impenetrable parts of the forest that they can no longer 

 hunt along the ground, and live instead in the trees, where 

 they are the terror of the families of monkeys and of the 

 prehensile-tailed viverra, the Cercoleptes. I borrow these 

 notices from journals written at the time in German, and 

 which were not entirely exhausted in the Narrative of my 

 Travels, which I published in the French language. They 

 contain a detailed description of the nocturnal life, or perhaps 

 I might rather say the nocturnal voices, of the wild animals 

 in the forests of the torrid zone ; which appears to me par- 

 ticularly suited to form part of a work bearing the title of 

 the present volumes. That which is written down on the 

 spot, either in the immediate presence of the phenomena, or 

 soon after the reception of the impressions which they 

 produce, may at least lay claim to more life and freshness 

 than can be expected in recollections. 



Descending from West to East the Rio Apure, the overflow- 

 ings of whose waters and the inundations produced by them 

 were noticed in the chapter on Steppes and Deserts, we 

 arrived at its junction with the Orinoco. It was the season 

 of low water, and the average breadth of the Apure was only 

 a little more than twelve hundred English feet, yet I found 



