52 UP THE PARAGUAY [chap, ii 



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. 



AU 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 

 insects, 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 

 interpreter. 



In the evening, soon after moonrise, we stopped for 

 wood at the Httle 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 high walls, inside of which trees rose, many of 

 them fragrant. We wandered through the wide, dusty 

 streets, and along the narrow sidewalks. It was a hot, 

 still evening ; the smell of the tropics was on the hea%'y 

 December air. Through the open doors and windows 



