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 century of arduous 

 exploration in the wilderness. It was Fiala who had 

 assembled our food-tents, cooking utensils, 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 know- 

 ledge 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. MiUer 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 living, they were left unmolested. 



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