82 A JAGUAR-HUNT ON THE TAQUARY 



the ordinary birds and mammals of the well-settled 

 districts near Buenos Aires and at the mouth of the 

 Rio Negro ; but he knew nothing of the wilderness. 

 This is no reflection on him ; his books are great 

 favourites of mine, and are to a large degree models 

 of what such books should be ; I only wish that there 

 were hundreds of such writers and observers who would 

 give us similar books for all parts of America. But it is 

 a mistake to accept him as an authority on that con- 

 cerning which he was ignorant. 



An interesting incident occurred on the day we killed 

 our first jaguar. We took our lunch beside a small but 

 deep and obviously permanent pond. I went to the 

 edge to dip up some water, and something growled or 

 bellowed at me only a few feet away. It was a jacare- 

 tinga, or small cayman, about five feet long. I paid no 

 heed to it at the moment. But shortly afterward when 

 our horses went down to drink, it threatened them 

 and frightened them ; and then Colonel Rondon and 

 Kermit called me to watch it. It lay on the surface of 

 the water only a few feet distant from us and threatened 

 us ; we threw cakes of mud at it, whereupon it clashed 

 its jaws and made short rushes at us, and when we 

 threw sticks it seized them and crunched them. We 

 could not drive it away. Why it should have 

 shown such truculence and heedlessness I cannot 

 imagine, unless perhaps it was a female, with eggs near 

 by. In another Uttle pond a jacar^-tinga showed no 

 less anger when another of my companions approached. 

 It bellowed, opened its jaws, and lashed its tail. Yet 

 these pond jacares never actually molested even our 

 dogs in the ponds, far less us on our horses. 



This same day others of our party had an interesting 

 experience with the creatures in another pond. One 



