276 
VEETEBEATA. 
INUNDATION IN GUIANA. 
flow their banks ; forests, trees, shrubs, and parasitical plants seem to float npon the water. 
Quadrupeds are forced to take shelter in the highest trees ; large lizards, agoutis, and peccari 
quit their dens, now filled with water, and remain among the branches. Aquatic birds spring upon 
the trees, to avoid the alligators and serpents that infest the temporary lakes. The fishes forsake 
their ordinary food, and live upon the fruits and berries of the shrubs among which they swim : 
the crab is found upon the trees, and the oyster multiplies in the forest. The Indian, who surveys 
from his canoe this confasion of earth and sea, suspends his hammock on an elevated branch, and 
sleeps without fear in the midst of so great apparent danger. 
From the account we have given, it might seem that the jaguar in South America holds unques- 
tioned dominion over the animal creation, as does the lion in Africa and the tiger in India. It 
has, however, one enemy, living in its own haunts, which not unfrequently makes even this tyrant 
of the wilderness its prey. This is the boa constrictor. In the overgrown and swampy thickets of 
the tropical regions, these serpents, in many varieties — nursed by a perpetual simimer, and pam- 
pered by an uninterrupted feast — multiply in almost countless millions, and grow to an enormous 
size. They lie couched amid the rank herbage that cumbers the earth, or wind among the trail- 
ing mosses that festoon the forests, or hang suspended from the boughs of the trees. Silent and 
motionless they watch the approach of their prey. Often the stealthy jaguar comes unconsciously 
within the reach of one of them, when, with the quickness of thought, it darts upon him, embraces 
him in its folds, and his bones cracking like fagots, he expires in the invincible grasp. 
The Cougar, Felis concolor, has had the honor of bearing a great variety of names. Being, 
like the true lion, a ferocious beast, and nearly of a uniform color, it was originally called the 
American Lion ; consequently certain European naturalists found conclusive proof in this animal 
to sustain a favorite theory that every thing American was on an inferior scale, when compared 
with similar products of nature in the Old World. Among the people of New England it was for- 
