32 THROUGH THE BRAZILIAN WILDERNESS 



into camp after this dried beef. Finally they succeeded in 

 protecting it so that he could not reach it. The result, 

 however, was disastrous. On the next occasion that he 

 visited camp, at midnight, he seized a man. Everybody 

 was asleep at the time, and the jaguar came in so noise- 

 lessly as to elude the vigilance of the dogs. As he seized 

 the man, the latter gave one yell, but the next moment 

 was killed, the jaguar driving his fangs through the man's 

 skull into the brain. There was a scene of uproar and con- 

 fusion, and the jaguar was forced to drop his prey and 

 flee into the woods. Next morning they followed him with 

 the dogs, and finally killed him. He was a large male, in 

 first-class condition. The only feature of note about these 

 two incidents was that in each case the man-eater was a 

 powerful animal in the prime of life; whereas it frequently 

 happens that the jaguars that turn man-eaters are old 

 animals, and have become too inactive or too feeble to 

 catch their ordinary prey. 



During the two months before starting from Asuncion, 

 in Paraguay, for our journey into the interior, I was kept 

 so busy that I had scant time to think of natural history. 

 But in a strange land a man who cares for wild birds and 

 wild beasts always sees and hears something that is new 

 to him and interests him. In the dense tropical woods 

 near Rio Janeiro I heard in late October — springtime, near 

 the southern tropic — the songs of many birds that I could 

 not identify. But the most beautiful music was from a 

 shy woodland thrush, sombre-colored, which lived near the 

 ground in the thick timber, but sang high aniong the 

 branches. At a great distance we could hear the ringing. 



