up the River of Tapirs 155 



Then we found my third one alive and at bay, and I killed 

 it with another bullet. Finally we found the colonel's. I 

 told him I should ask the authorities of the American 

 museum to mount his and one or two of mine in a group, 

 to commemorate our hunting together. 



If we had not used crippling rifles the peccaries might 

 have gotten away, for in the dark jungle, with the masses 

 of intervening leaves and branches, it was impossible to 

 be sure of placing each bullet properly in the half-seen 

 moving beast. We found where the herd had wallowed 

 in the mud. The stomachs of the peccaries we killed con- 

 tained wild figs, palm nuts, and bundles of root fibres. 

 The dead beasts were covered with ticks. They were at 

 least twice the weight of the smaller peccaries. 



On the ride home we saw a buck of the small species 

 of bush deer, not half the size of the kind I had already 

 shot. It was only a patch of red in the bush, a good dis- 

 tance off, but I was lucky enough to hit it. In spite of its 

 small size it was a full-grown male, of a species we had 

 not yet obtained. The antlers had recently been shed, and 

 the new antler growth had just begun. A great jabiru 

 stork let us ride by him a hundred and fifty yards off 

 without thinking it worth while to take flight. This day 

 we saw many of the beautiful violet orchids ; and in the 

 swamps were multitudes of flowers, red, yellow, lilac, of 

 which I did not know the names. 



I alluded above to the queer custom these people in 

 the interior of Brazil have of gelding their hunting-dogs. 

 This absurd habit is doubtless the chief reason why there 

 are so few hounds worth their salt in the more serious 

 kinds of hunting, where the quarry is the jaguar or big 



