A JAGUAR-HUNT ON THE TAQUARY 85 



But it is a mistake to accept him as an authority on that 

 concerning which he was ignorant. 



An interesting incident occurred on the day we killed 

 our first jaguar. We took our lunch beside a small but 

 deep and obviously permanent pond. I went to the edge 

 to dip up some water, and something growled or bellowed 

 at me only a few feet away. It was a jacare-tinga or small 

 cayman about five feet long. I paid no heed to it at the 

 moment. But shortly afterward when our horses went 

 down to drink it threatened them and frightened them; 

 and then Colonel Rondon and Kermit called me to watch 

 it. It lay on the surface of the water only a few feet dis- 

 tant from us and threatened us; we threw cakes of mud 

 at it, whereupon it clashed its jaws and made short rushes 

 at us, and when we threw sticks it seized them and crunched 

 them. We could not drive it away. Why it should have 

 shown such truculence and heedlessness I cannot imagine, 

 unless perhaps it was a female, with eggs near by. In 

 another little pond a jacare-tinga showed no less anger 

 when another of my companions approached. It bellowed, 

 opened its jaws, and lashed its tail. Yet these pond ja- 

 cares never actually molested even our dogs in the ponds, 

 far less us on our horses. 



This same day others of our party had an interesting 

 experience with the creatures in another pond. One of 

 them was Commander da Cunha (of the Brazilian Navy), 

 a capital sportsman and delightful companion. They 

 found a deepish pond a hundred yards or so long and 

 thirty or forty across. It was tenanted by the small cay- 

 mans and by capybaras — the largest known rodent, a huge 

 aquatic guinea-pig, the size of a small sheep. It also 



