d in
leashes by the two trailers. One was a white bitch, the other, the
best one we had, was a gelded black dog. They were lean, half-starved
creatures with prick ears and a look of furtive wildness.

As our shabby little horses shuffled away from the ranch-house the
stars were brilliant and the Southern Cross hung well up in the
heavens, tilted to the right. The landscape was spectral in the light
of the waning moon. At the first shallow ford, as horses and dogs
splashed across, an alligator, the jacare-tinga, some five feet long,
floated unconcernedly among the splashing hoofs and paws; evidently at
night it did not fear us. Hour after hour we slogged along. Then the
night grew ghostly with the first dim gray of the dawn. The sky had
become overcast. The sun rose red and angry through broken clouds; his
disk flamed behind the tall, slender columns of the palms, and lit the
waste fields of papyrus. The black monkeys howled mournfully. The
birds awoke. Macaws, parrots, parakeets screamed at us and chattered
at us as we rode by. Ibis called with wailing voices, and the plovers
shrieked as they wheeled in the air. We waded across bayous and ponds,
where white lilies floated on the water and thronging lilac-flowers
splashed the green marsh with color.

At last, on the edge of a patch of jungle, in wet ground, we came on
fresh jaguar tracks. Both the jaguar hounds challenged the sign. They
were unleashed and galloped along the trail, while the other dogs
noisily accompanied them. The hunt led right through the marsh.
Evidently the jaguar had not the least distaste for water. Probably it
had been hunting for capybaras or tapirs, and it had gone straight
through ponds and long, winding, narrow ditches or bayous, where it
must now and then have had to swim for a stroke or two. It had also
wandered through the island-like stretches of tree-covered land, the
trees at this point being mostly palms and tarumans; the taruman is
almost as big as a live-oak, with glossy foliage and a fruit like an
olive. The pace quickened, the motley pack burst into yelling and
howling; and then a sudden quickening of the note showed that the game
had either climbed a tree or turned to bay in a thicket. The former
proved to be the case. The dogs had entered a patch of tall tree
jungle, and as we cantered up through the marsh we saw the jaguar high
among the forked limbs of a taruman tree. It was a beautiful picture--
the spotted coat of the big, l