94 HEADWATERS OF THE PARAGUAY 



We saw on the banks screamers — big, crested waders 

 of archaic tjrpe, with spurred wings, rather short bills, 

 and no especial affinities with other modern birds. In 

 one meadow by a pond we saw three marsh-deer, a buck 

 and two does. They stared at us, with their thickly 

 haired tails raised on end. These tails are black under- 

 neath, instead of white as in our whitetaU deer. One 

 of the vagaries of the ultra-conceahng colorationists has 

 been to uphold the (incidentally quite preposterous) 

 theory that the tail of our deer is coloured white beneath 

 so as to harmonize with the sky and thereby mislead the 

 cougar or wolf at the critical moment when it makes its 

 spring ; but this marsh-deer shows a black instead of a 

 white flag, and yet has just as much need of protection 

 from its enemies, the jaguar and the cougar. In South 

 America concealing coloration plays no more part in 

 the lives of the adult deer, the tamandua, the tapir, the 

 peccary, the jaguar, and the puma than it plays in Africa 

 in the lives of such animals as the zebra, the sable ante- 

 lope, the wildebeeste, the hon, and the hunting hyena. 



Next day we spent ascending the Sao Lourenco. It 

 was narrower than the Paraguay, naturally, and the 

 swirling brown current was, if anything, more rapid. 

 The strange tropical trees, standing densely on the 

 banks, were matted together by long bush ropes — 

 lianas, or vines, some very slender and very long. 

 Sometimes we saw brUhant red or blue flowers, or 

 masses of scarlet berries on a queer palm-like tree, or 

 an array of great white blossoms on a much larger tree. 

 In a lagoon bordered by the taquara bamboo a school 

 of big otters were playing ; when they came to the 

 surface, they opened their mouths like seals, and made 

 a loud hissing noise. The crested screamers, dark grey 

 and as large as turkeys, perched on the very topmost 



