Chap. IV. 
POOLS m THE FOREST. 
257 
moment and without thinking of what we were doing, 
we took our guns {mine was a double-barrel, with one 
charge of B B and one of dust-shot) and gave chase. 
The animal increased his speed, and reaching the forest 
border dived into the dense mass of broad-leaved grass 
which formed its frontage. We peeped through the gap 
he had made, but, our courage being by this time cooled, 
did not think it wise to go into the thicket after him. 
The black tiger appears to be more abundant than the 
spotted form of jaguar in the neighbourhood of Ega. 
The most certain method of finding it is to hunt, 
assisted by a string of Indians shouting and driving 
the game before them, in the narrow restingas or strips 
of dry land in the forest, which are isolated by the 
flooding of their neighbourhood in the wet season. We 
reached Ega by eight o'clock at night. 
On the 6th of October we left Ega on a second excur- 
' sion ; the principal object of Cardozo being, this time, 
to search certain pools in the forest for young turtles. 
The exact situation of these hidden sheets of water is 
known only to a few practised huntsmen ; we took one 
of these men with us from Ega, a mameluco named 
Pedro, and on our way called at Shimuni for Daniel to 
serve as an additional guide. We started from the 
praia at sunrise on the 7th, in two canoes containing 
twenty-three persons, nineteen of whom were Indians. 
The morning was cloudy and cool, and a fresh wind 
blew from down river, against which we had to struggle 
with all the force of our paddles, aided by the current ; 
the boats were tossed about most disagreeably, and 
VOL. II. • S 
