UP THE PARAGUAY 63 



ever the opportunity offers. The huge caymans and croc- 

 odiles of the Amazon are far more dangerous, and the 

 colonel knew of repeated instances where men, women, and 

 children had become their victims. Once while dynamit- 

 ing a stream for fish for his starving party he partially 

 stunned a giant anaconda, which he killed as it crept 

 slowly off. He said that it was of a size that no other 

 anaconda* he had ever seen even approached, and that in 

 his opinion such a brute if hungry would readily attack 

 a full-grown man. Twice smaller anacondas had attacked 

 his dogs; one was carried under water — for the anaconda 

 is a water-loving serpent — but he rescued it. One of his 

 men was bitten by a jararaca; he killed the venomous 

 snake, but was not discovered and brought back to camp 

 until it was too late to save his life. The puma Colonel 

 Rondon had found to be as cowardly as I have always found 

 it, but the jaguar was a formidable beast, which occasion- 

 ally turned man-eater, and often charged savagely when 

 brought to bay. He had known a hunter to be killed 

 by a jaguar he was following in thick grass cover. 



All such enemies, however, he regarded as utterly triv- 

 ial compared to the real dangers of the wilderness — the 

 torment and menace of attacks by the swarming insects, 

 by mosquitoes and the even more intolerable tiny gnats, 

 by the ticks, and by the vicious poisonous ants which oc- 

 casionally cause villages and even whole districts to be 

 deserted by human beings. These insects, and the fevers 

 they cause, and dysentery and starvation and wearing 

 hardship and accidents in rapids are what the pioneer ex- 

 plorers have to fear. The conversation was to me most 

 interesting. The colonel spoke French about to the ex- 



