one up to his shoulder.

"We ought to respect the seriemas," said Manoel, "for they are great
destroyers of the snakes."

"Just as we ought to respect the snakes," replied Benito, "because they
eat the noxious insects, and just as we ought the insects because they
live on smaller insects more offensive still. At that rate we ought to
respect everything."

But the instinct of the young sportsman was about to be put to a still
more rigorous trial. The woods became of a sudden full of game. Swift
stags and graceful roebucks scampered off beneath the bushes, and a
well-aimed bullet would assuredly have stopped them. Here and there
turkeys showed themselves with their milk and coffee-colored plumage;
and peccaries, a sort of wild pig highly appreciated by lovers of
venison, and agouties, which are the hares and rabbits of Central
America; and tatous belonging to the order of edentates, with their
scaly shells of patterns of mosaic.

And truly Benito showed more than virtue, and even genuine heroism, when
he came across some tapirs, called "antas" in Brazil, diminutives of the
elephant, already nearly undiscoverable on the banks of the Upper Amazon
and its tributaries, pachyderms so dear to the hunters for their rarity,
so appreciated by the gourmands for their meat, superior far to beef,
and above all for the protuberance on the nape of the neck, which is a
morsel fit for a king.

His gun almost burned his fingers, but faithful to his promise he kept
it quiet.

But yet--and he cautioned his sister about this--the gun would go off in
spite of him, and probably register a master-stroke in sporting annals,
if within range there should come a _"tamandoa assa,"_ a kind of large
and very curious ant-eater.

Happily the big ant-eater did not show himself, neither did any
panthers, leopards, jaguars, guepars, or cougars, called indifferently
ounces in South America, and to whom it is not advisable to get too
near.

"After all," said Benito, who stopped for an instant, "to walk is very
well, but to walk without an object----"

"Without an object!" replied his sister; "but our object is to see, to
admire, to visit for the last time these forests of Central America,
which we shall not find again in Para, and to bid them a fast farewell."

"Ah! an idea!"

It was Lina who spoke.

"An idea of Lina's can be no other than a silly one," said Benito,
shaking his head.

"It is unkind, brother," said Minha, "to make fun of Lin