A JAGUAR-HUNT ON THE TAQUARY 93 



heels into the ground, and the galloping beast would be 

 stopped short and whirled completely round when the rope 

 tautened. The maddened bulls, and an occasional steer or 

 cow, charged again and again with furious wrath; but two 

 or three ropes would settle on the doomed beast, and down 

 it would go; and when it was released and rose and charged 

 once more, with greater fury than ever, the men, shouting 

 with laughter, would leap up the sides of the heavy stock- 

 ade. 



We stayed at the ranch until a couple of days before 

 Christmas. Hitherto the weather had been lovely. The 

 night before we left there was a torrential tropic downpour. 

 It was not unexpected, for we had been told that the rainy 

 season was overdue. The following forenoon the baggage 

 started, in a couple of two-wheeled ox-carts, for the land- 

 ing where the steamboat awaited us. Each cart was drawn 

 by eight oxen. The huge wheels were over seven feet 

 high. Early in the afternoon we followed on horseback, 

 and overtook the carts as darkness fell, just before we 

 reached the landing on the river's bank. The last few miles, 

 after the final reaches of higher, tree-clad ground had been 

 passed, were across a level plain of low ground on which 

 the water stood, sometimes only up to the ankles of a man 

 on foot, sometimes as high as his waist. Directly in front 

 of us, many leagues distant, rose the bold mountains that 

 lie west of Corumba. Behind them the sun was setting 

 and kindled the overcast heavens with lurid splendor. 

 Then the last rose tints faded from the sky; the horses 

 plodded wearily through the water; on every side stretched 

 the marsh, vast, lonely, desolate in the gray of the half- 

 light. We overtook the ox-carts. The cattle strained in 



