ich
under man's persecution are so apt to become scarce and shy. The huge
jabiru storks, stalking through the water with stately dignity,
sometimes refused to fly until we were only a hundred yards off; one
of them flew over our heads at a distance of thirty or forty yards.
The screamers, crying curu-curu, and the ibises, wailing dolefully,
came even closer. The wonderful hyacinth macaws, in twos and threes,
accompanied us at times for several hundred yards, hovering over our
heads and uttering their rasping screams. In one wood we came on the
black howler monkey. The place smelt almost like a menagerie. Not
watching with sufficient care I brushed against a sapling on which the
venomous fire-ants swarmed. They burnt the skin like red-hot cinders,
and left little sores. More than once in the drier parts of the marsh
we met small caymans making their way from one pool to another. My
horse stepped over one before I saw it. The dead carcasses of others
showed that on their wanderings they had encountered jaguars or human
foes.

We had been out about three hours when one of the dogs gave tongue in
a large belt of woodland and jungle to the left of our line of march
through the marsh. The other dogs ran to the sound, and after a while
the long barking told that the thing, whatever it was, was at bay or
else in some refuge. We made our way toward the place on foot. The
dogs were baying excitedly at the mouth of a huge hollow log, and very
short examination showed us that there were two peccaries within,
doubtless a boar and sow. However, just at this moment the peccaries
bolted from an unsuspected opening at the other end of the log, dove
into the tangle, and instantly disappeared with the hounds in full cry
after them. It was twenty minutes later before we again heard the pack
baying. With much difficulty, and by the incessant swinging of the
machetes, we opened a trail through the network of vines and branches.
This time there was only one peccary, the boar. He was at bay in a
half-hollow stump. The dogs were about his head, raving with
excitement, and it was not possible to use the rifle; so I borrowed
the spear of Dom Joao the younger, and killed the fierce little boar
therewith.

This was an animal akin to our collared peccary, smaller and less
fierce than its white-jawed kinsfolk. It is a valiant and truculent
little beast, nevertheless, and if given the chance will bite a piece
the size of a teacup out of either man