found fresh sign at a spot in the swamp about nine miles distant. Next
morning we rose at two, and had started on our jaguar-hunt at three.
Colonel Rondon, Kermit, and I, with the two trailers or jaguar-
hunters, made up the party, each on a weedy, undersized marsh pony,
accustomed to traversing the vast stretches of morass; and we were
accompanied by a brown boy, with saddle-bags holding our lunch, who
rode a long-horned trotting steer which he managed by a string through
its nostril and lip. The two trailers carried each a long, clumsy
spear. We had a rather poor pack. Besides our own two dogs, neither of
which was used to jaguar-hunting, there were the ranch dogs, which
were well-nigh worthless, and then two jaguar hounds borrowed for the
occasion from a ranch six or eight leagues distant. These were the
only hounds on which we could place any trust, and they were led 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