256 OUR SEARCH FOR A WILDERNESS. 



on the lower back is cut out, a piece of skin being removed 

 about four by eight inches. If this is not done immediately, 

 the flesh will become musky and unfit to eat. The hunter 

 was familiar with the rare Whitedipped Peccary (Dicotyles 

 labiatus), which he described as larger than the common kind 

 and going in small families of two to five individuals. This 

 was a dangerous animal, and more than once he had been 

 treed by them, whereas the Common Peccary was timid and 

 harmless except when wounded or cornered. 



Mr. Nicholson had recendy seen a full-grown Great 

 Anteater {Myrmecophaga jiibata) swimming the river, and 

 curiously enough we later witnessed a similar performance 

 where the banks were about a third of a mile apart. 

 The creature was making fair headway, although drifting 

 rapidly, and was completely immersed save for the elon- 

 gated snout and head, and the upper part of the bushy tail, 

 which waggled frantically with the efforts the anteater was 

 making. 



Mr. Nicholson promised to obtain some living Trumpeters 

 for us and later kept his word by sending one to New York 

 a few months after we left. There are gold diggings near 

 here which were worked by the Dutch in 1625. In the earlier 

 days of the English occupancy, gold smuggling was an every- 

 day occurrence at Bartica, and Mr. Nicholson had to take 

 extraordinary precautions to guard against it. He would 

 scrape a line under the keel of a boat from stem to stern, by 

 this means often discovering hidden bags of gold. Many a 

 coopful of innocent looking fowls, brought down by the 

 " pork-knockers," were slain by the government inspectors 

 and found to have their crops and gizzards filled with the 

 precious yellow grain. Cartridges were a favorite means of 

 smuggling, the powder being removed and replaced with 

 gold. There is no longer any attempt at smuggling now as 

 it does not pay. 



