54 CAMPS IN THE CARIBBEES. 
agoutz) left us ia the middle of our meal and darted 
into the forest with loud yelps. Frangois followed 
them, encouraging them with peculiar cries; for these 
mountaineers have.a sympathetic understanding with 
all animate objects about them, and can guide} hie on 
and recall their dogs simply by varying their voice. 
Frangois urged them on, but in a few minutes they 
came to a stand-still, and their excited yelps assured 
us that whatever they were pursuing was brought to 
bay. We thought they had an agout7—a small ani- 
mal, in size between a rabbit and a woodchuck — but 
the execrations of Frangois a little later, which pre- 
ceded his appearance from the deep shade, prepared 
us for the unwonted sight, in these wilds, of a wild 
cat. It was nota wild cat in the true sense of the 
word—nota Lynx rufus — being only a“ chat maron” 
—a cat of the domesticated species run wild. It was 
gray in color, striped with black, and larger and more 
strongly made than the cats of the coast, who do not 
have to forage for a living; showing how, in time, a 
new species might be possibly the result of this change 
of life. It lives in the deep woods, preying upon 
small birds, lizards and crabs, and is as savage and 
untamable as any specimen of the genus to be found 
in American back-woods. My men skinned it at my 
request and wrapped the skin in a plantain leaf, to be 
hung up until our return. The most weird thing 
about this animal was the eye; the iris yellow, chang- 
ing to green, but seen glowering from darkness it was 
red — blood-red — red as fire, that glaring, glassy red 
which I have seen in the panther, and which makes 
the wild_fe/de so terrible to face in their lairs. 
We had here to climb the sides of a steep gorge, the 
