TIGERS. 



145 



August 10. — The party for Huanuco got off this morning, and left 

 the shed to Ijurra and me. Whilst bathing in the river, I saw an 

 animal swimming down the stream towards me, which I took to be a 

 fox or cat. I threw stones at it, and it swam to the other side of the 

 river and took to the forest. Very soon after, a dog, who was evidently 

 in chase, came swimming down, and missing the chase from the river, 

 swam round in circles for some minutes before giving it up. This 

 animal, from my description, was pronounced to be an ounce, or tiger- 

 cat. It is called tigre throughout all this country, but is never so large 

 or ferocious as the African tiger. They are rather spotted like the 

 leopard, than striped like the tiger. They are said, when hungry, to 

 be sufficiently dangerous, and no one cares to bring them to bay with- 

 out good dogs and a good gun. 



We talked so much about tigers and their carrying off people whilst 

 asleep, that I, after going to bed, became nervous; and every sound 

 near the shed made me grasp the handles of my pistols. After mid- 

 night I was lulled to sleep by the melancholy notes of a bird that 

 Lieutenant Smyth calls "Alma Perdida," or lost soul. Its wild and 

 wailing cry from the depths of the forest seemed, indeed, as sad and 

 despairing as that of one without hope. 



August 11. — Ijurra went to Lamasillo to pay the boatmen, some of 

 them having come down to the port to carry up the cotton cloth. This 

 left me entirely alone. The sense of loneliness, an 4 the perfect stillness 

 of the great forest, caused me to realize in all its force the truth of 

 Campbell's fine line— 



" The solitude of earth that overawes." 



It was strange, when the scratch of my pen on the paper ceased, to 

 hear absolutely no sound. I felt so much the want of society, that I 

 tried to make a friend of the lithe, cunning-looking lizard that ran 

 along the canoe at my side, and that now and then stopped, raised up 

 his head, and looked at me, seemingly in wonder. 



I could see no traces of the height of the river in the crecido, or full ; 

 but, from a mark pointed out by one of the Indians, I judged that the 

 river has here a perpendicular rise and fall of thirty feet. He represents 

 it at a foot in depth at high water on the bill upon which we now are, 

 and its borders at three-fourths of a mile inland. Smyth speaks of the 

 river having fallen ten feet in a single night. 



The hill on which the port of Tocache is situated, is about thirty 

 feet above the present level of the river, and by boiling point is one 

 thousand five hundred and seventy-nine feet above the level of the sea. 



A canoe arrived from Juan Juy, and a party of two from Saposoa by 

 10 



