CHAPTER III 



A JAGUAR-HUNT ON THE TAQUARY 



THE morning after our arrival at Corumba I 

 asked Colonel Rondon to inspect our outfit; for 

 his experience of what is necessary in tropical 

 travelling has been gained through a quarter of a cen- 

 tury of arduous exploration in the wilderness. It was 

 Fiala who had assembled our food-tents, cooking-uten- 

 sils, and supplies of all kinds, and he and Sigg, during 

 their stay in Corumba, had been putting everything in 

 shape for our start. Colonel Rondon at the end of his 

 inspection said he had nothing whatever to suggest ; that 

 it was extraordinary that Fiala, without personal knowl- 

 edge of the tropics, could have gathered the things most 

 necessary, with the minimum of bulk and maximum of 

 usefulness. 



Miller had made a special study of the piranhas, 

 which swarmed at one of the camps he and Cherrie had 

 made in the Chaco. So numerous were they that the 

 members of the party had to be exceedingly careful in 

 dipping up water. Miller did not find that they were 

 cannibals toward their own kind ; they were "cannibals" 

 only in the sense of eating the flesh of men. When dead 

 piranhas, and even when mortally injured piranhas, with 

 the blood flowing, were thrown among the ravenous liv- 

 ing, they were left unmolested. Moreover, it was Miller's 



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