CHAPTER XIII. 



THE PECCARY. 



JS a general rule, all animals are seized with a 

 panic-terror at the discharge of a gun ; and if 

 they escape the murderous lead, they fly as 

 best they can, with all the speed which fear 

 can lend to their wings or feet. The peccary is, I sup- 

 pose, the only being in nature which cannot be accused 

 of this pusillanimity. I will say more. It has been 

 proved to me that the report of a gun as loud as the 

 volcanic detonations of Hecla or Chimborazo will but 

 redouble the rage of the peccary, who becomes more and 

 more irritated as the danger increases. The animal 

 seems completely insensible to those nervous influences, 

 those inevitable sensations which noise, under whatever 

 form it may be produced, excites in man and the brute. 

 Though the size of the peccary does not ordinarily exceed 

 twenty to twenty-four inches in height, and three and 



