American trip, I had answered that I could not, as I intended to go to
Africa, but added that I hoped some day to go to South America and
that if I did so I should try to shoot both a jaguar and a tapir, as
they were the characteristic big-game animals of the country. "Well,"
said Father Zahm, "now you've shot them both!" The storm continued
heavy until after sunset. Then the rain stopped and the full moon
broke through the cloud-rack. Father Zahm and I walked up and down in
the moonlight, talking of many things, from Dante, and our own plans
for the future, to the deeds and the wanderings of the old-time
Spanish conquistadores in their search for the Gilded King, and of the
Portuguese adventurers who then divided with them the mastery of the
oceans and of the unknown continents beyond.

This was an attractive and interesting camp in more ways than one. The
vaqueiros with their wives and families were housed on the two sides
of the field in which our tents were pitched. On one side was a big,
whitewashed, tile-roofed house in which the foreman dwelt--an olive-
skinned, slightly built, wiry man, with an olive-skinned wife and
eight as pretty, fair-haired children as one could wish to see. He
usually went barefoot, and his manners were not merely good but
distinguished. Corrals and outbuildings were near this big house. On
the opposite side of the field stood the row of steep-roofed, palm-
thatched huts in which the ordinary cowhands lived with their dusky
helpmeets and children. Each night from these palm-thatched quarters
we heard the faint sounds of a music that went far back of
civilization to a savage ancestry near by in point of time and
otherwise immeasurably remote; for through the still, hot air, under
the brilliant moonlight, we heard the monotonous throbbing of a tomtom
drum, and the twanging of some old stringed instrument. The small
black turkey-buzzards, here always called crows, were as tame as
chickens near the big house, walking on the ground or perched in the
trees beside the corral, waiting for the offal of the slaughtered
cattle. Two palm-trees near our tent were crowded with the long,
hanging nests of one of the cacique orioles. We lived well, with
plenty of tapir beef, which was good, and venison of the bush deer,
which was excellent; and as much ordinary beef as we wished, and fresh
milk, too--a rarity in this country. There were very few mosquitoes,
and everything was as comfortable as possible.