hen the
poison had affected these also it sank to the ground, but sank so gently,
that you could not distinguish the movement from an ordinary motion; and
had you been ignorant that it was wounded with a poisoned arrow, you
would never have suspected that it was dying. Its mouth was shut, nor
had any froth or saliva collected there.

There was no _subsultus tendinum_, or any visible alteration in its
breathing. During the tenth minute from the time it was wounded it
stirred, and that was all; and the minute after life's last spark went
out. From the time the poison began to operate, you would have
conjectured that sleep was overpowering it, and you would have exclaimed,
"Pressitque jacentem, dulcis et alta quies, placidaeque simillima morti."

There are now two positive proofs of the effect of this fatal poison,
viz., the death of the hog, and that of the sloth. But still these
animals were nothing remarkable for size; and the strength of the poison
in large animals might yet be doubted, were it not for what follows.

A large well-fed ox, from nine hundred to a thousand pounds' weight, was
tied to a stake by a rope sufficiently long to allow him to move to and
fro. Having no large coucourito spikes at hand, it was judged necessary,
on account of his superior size, to put three wild-hog arrows into him;
one was sent into each thigh just above the hock, in order to avoid
wounding a vital part, and the third was shot transversely into the
extremity of the nostril.

The poison seemed to take effect in four minutes. Conscious as though he
would fall, the ox set himself firmly on his legs, and remained quite
still in the same place till about the fourteenth minute, when he smelled
the ground, and appeared as if inclined to walk. He advanced a pace or
two, staggered, and fell, and remained extended on his side with his head
on the ground. His eye, a few minutes ago so bright and lively, now
became fixed and dim, and though you put your hand close to it, as if to
give him a blow there, he never closed his eyelid.

His legs were convulsed, and his head from time to time started
involuntarily; but he never showed the least desire to raise it from the
ground; he breathed hard, and emitted foam from his mouth. The
startings, or _subsultus tendinum_, now became gradually weaker and
weaker; his hinder parts were fixed in death; and in a minute or two more
his head and fore-legs ceased to stir.

Nothing now remained to