ed it, by making it unwilling to trust to its speed
and leave the neighborhood of the water. Three or four of the hounds
were by this time swimming the river, leaving the others yelling on
the opposite side; and as soon as the swimmers reached the shore they
were put on the tapir's trail and galloped after it, giving tongue. In
a couple of minutes we saw the tapir take to the water far up-stream,
and after it we went as fast as the paddles could urge us through the
water. We were not in time to head it, but fortunately some of the
dogs had come down to the river's edge at the very point where the
tapir was about to land, and turned it back. Two or three of the dogs
were swimming. We were more than half the breadth of the river away
from the tapir, and somewhat down-stream, when it dived. It made an
astonishingly long swim beneath the water this time, almost as if it
had been a hippopotamus, for it passed completely under our canoe and
rose between us and the hither bank. I shot it, the bullet going into
its brain, while it was thirty or forty yards from shore. It sank at
once.

There was now nothing to do but wait until the body floated. I feared
that the strong current would roll it down-stream over the river bed,
but my companions assured me that this was not so, and that the body
would remain where it was until it rose, which would be in an hour or
two. They were right, except as to the time. For over a couple of
hours we paddled, or anchored ourselves by clutching branches close to
the spot, or else drifted down a mile and paddled up again near the
shore, to see if the body had caught anywhere. Then we crossed the
river and had lunch at the lovely natural picnic-ground where the buck
was hung up. We had very nearly given up the tapir when it suddenly
floated only a few rods from where it had sunk. With no little
difficulty the big, round black body was hoisted into the canoe, and
we all turned our prows down-stream. The skies had been lowering for
some time, and now--too late to interfere with the hunt or cause us
any annoyance--a heavy downpour of rain came on and beat upon us.
Little we cared, as the canoe raced forward, with the tapir and the
buck lying in the bottom, and a dry, comfortable camp ahead of us.

When we reached camp, and Father Zahm saw the tapir, he reminded me of
something I had completely forgotten. When, some six years previously,
he had spoken to me in the White House about taking this South