A JAGUAR-HUNT ON THE TAQUARY 71 



kitchen and the living-rooms of the upper-grade peons, 

 the headmen, the cook, and jaguar-hunters, with their 

 famiHes: dark-skinned men, their wives showing varied 

 strains of white, Indian, and negro blood. The children 

 tumbled merrily in the dust, and were fondly tended by 

 their mothers. Opposite the kitchen stood a row of build- 

 ings, some whitewashed daub and wattle, with tin roofs, 

 others of erect palm-logs with palm-leaf thatch. These 

 were the saddle-room, storehouse, chicken-house, and stable. 

 The chicken-house was allotted to Kermit and Miller 

 for the preparation of the specimens; and there they 

 worked industriously. With a big skin, like that of the 

 giant ant-eater, they had to squat on the ground; while 

 the ducklings and wee chickens scuffled not only round 

 the skin but all over it, grabbing the shreds and scraps 

 of meat and catching flies. The fourth end of the quad- 

 rangle was formed by a corral and a big wooden scaffold- 

 ing on which hung hides and strips of drying meat. Ex- 

 traordinary to relate, there were no mosquitoes at the 

 ranch; why I cannot say, as they ought to swarm in these 

 vast **pantanals," or swamps. Therefore, in spite of the 

 heat, it was very pleasant. Near by stood other build- 

 ings: sheds, and thatched huts of palm-logs in which the 

 ordinary peons lived, and big corrals. In the quadrangle 

 were flamboyant trees, with their masses of brilliant red 

 flowers and delicately cut, vivid-green foliage. Noisy 

 oven-birds haunted these trees. In a high palm in the 

 garden a family of green parakeets had taken up their 

 abode and were preparing to build nests. They chattered 

 incessantly both when they flew and when they sat or 

 crawled among the branches. Ibis and plover, crying and 



