up the Paraguay 55 



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 occasionally 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 

 trivial compared to the real dangers of the wilderness — 

 the torment and menace of attacks by the swarming in- 

 sects, by mosquitoes and the even more intolerable tiny 

 gnats, by the ticks, and by the vicious poisonous ants 

 which occasionally 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 explorers have to fear. The conversation was 

 to me most interesting. The colonel spoke French about 

 to the extent I did; but of course he and the others 

 preferred Portuguese; and then Kermit was the inter- 

 preter. 



In the evening, soon after moonrise, we stopped for 

 wood at the little Brazilian town of Porto Martinho. 

 There are about twelve hundred inhabitants. Some of 

 the buildings were of stone ; a large private house with a 

 castellated tower was of stone; there were shops, and a 

 post-office, stores, a restaurant and billiard-hall, and 

 warehouses for matte, of which much is grown in the 

 region roundabout. Most of the houses were low, with 

 overhanging, sloping eaves ; and there were gardens with 



