8 
JAGUAR. 
off a sheep, or by means of a dog trained for the purpose. On finding the 
enemy, the gaucho puts himself into a position for receiving him on the 
point of a bayonet or spear at the first spring which he makes, and thus 
waits until the dogs drive him out— an exploit which he performs with 
such coolness and dexterity that there is scarcely an instance of failure. 
In a recent instance related by our capitaz, the business was not so quickly 
completed. The animal lay stretched at full length on the ground, like a 
gorged cat. Instead of showing anger and attacking his enemies with 
fury, he was playful, and disposed rather to parley with the dogs with 
good humour than to take their attack in sober earnestness. He was now 
fired upon, and a ball lodged in his shoulders, on which he sprang so 
quickly on his watching assailant that he not only buried the bayonet in 
his body, but tumbled over the capitaz who held it, and they floundered on 
the ground together, the man being completely in his clutches. ‘ I 
thought,’ said the brave fellow, ‘ I was no longer a capitaz, while I held 
my arm up to protect my throat, which the animal seemed in the act of 
seizing ; but when I expected to feel his fangs in my flesh, the green fire 
of his eyes which blazed upon me flashed out in a moment. He fell on me, 
and expired at the very instant I thought myself lost for ever.’ ” — Captain 
Andrews’s Travels in South America, vol. i. p. 219. 
“ Two Indian children, a boy and girl eight or nine years of age, were 
sitting among the grass near the village of Atures, in the midst of a 
savannah. It was two in the afternoon when a Jaguar issued from the 
forest and approached the children, gambolling around them, sometimes 
concealing himself among the long grass, and again springing forward, with 
his back curved and his head lowered, as is usual with our cats. The 
little boy was unaware of the danger in which he was placed, and became 
sensible of it only when the Jaguar struck him on the head with one of his 
paws. The blows thus inflicted were at first slight, but gradually became 
ruder. The claws of the Jaguar wounded the child, and blood flowed 
with violence. The little girl then took up a branch of a tree, and struck 
the animal, which fled before her. The Indians, hearing the cries of the 
children, ran up and saw the Jaguar, which bounded off without showing 
any disposition to defend itself.”— Humboldt’s Travels and Researches, fyc., 
Edinburgh, 1833, p. 245. 
Humboldt speculates on this cat-like treatment of the children, and we 
think it very likely that occasionally the Jaguar plays in a similar manner 
with its prey, although we have not witnessed it, nor heard of any 
authentic case of the kind. 
D’Azara says (vol. i. p. 116) that the black Jaguar is so rare that in 
forty years only two had been killed on the head waters of the river 
