132 
THE STORY OF THE JAGUAR. 
started the jaguar in an outlying district of the pampas, and it had taken 
refuge in a dense clump of dry weeds. Though they could see it, it was 
impossible to throw the lasso over its head, and after vainly trying to dis¬ 
lodge it, they at length set fire to the reeds. Still it refused to stir, but lay 
with head erect, fiercely glaring at them through the flames. Finally it 
disappeared from sight in the black smoke; and-when the fire had burnt 
itself out, it was found dead and charred in the same spot. Livingstone 
relates how one of the harnessed antelopes of South Africa will lie close 
among burning reeds until its horns and hair are singed; both these instances 
being examples of the paralyzing effects of fear, analogous to that which 
causes a wolf when caught in a pit to lie perfectly still, even under the inflic¬ 
tion of severe blows, as if simulating death. 
The jaguar is commonly called tiger by European residents of South 
America. 
Next to monkeys, peccaries are a favorite article of diet with the jaguar, 
but he finds scarcely less difficulty in picking up a peccary than in knocking 
down a monkey. For the little, active, sharp'-tusked peccary is more swinishly 
dull than is usual even with its swinish relatives, and, being too thick-headed 
to understand danger, is a very terrible antagonist to man or beast. It seems 
to care nothing for size, weapons, or strength, but launches itself as fearlessly 
on a jaguar or an armed man as on a rabbit or a child. So, unless the jaguar 
can quietly snap up a straggler, he has a small chance with even a small herd 
of these warlike little pigs. 
But it meets a foeman where we should least expect it—in the toothless 
ant-eater, or ant-lion, the Tamanduhuasu. When the fierce feline springs upon 
it, the long muzzled excavator throws itself on its back to meet its antagonist 
with the arms furnished by nature, and as the jaguar descends the ant-eater 
closes upon its assailant with its four terrible sets of claws, which tear to the 
very vitals, and if the jaguar’s teeth sink deep into the unprotected throat of 
the Tamandu, it purchases victory only with its life; both perish together; 
and the Tapuyas Indians in Brazil say that they often find the skeletons of the 
two interlaced, so as to show how they perished. 
