Page:A narrative of travels on the Amazon and Rio Negro.djvu/196

 166 TRAVELS ON THE RIO NEGRO. [February

As I was walking quietly along I saw a large jet-black animal come out of the forest about twenty yards before me, which took me so much by surprise that I did not at first imagine what it was. As it moved slowly on, and- its whole body and long curving tail came into full view in the middle of the road, I saw that it was a fine black jaguar. I involun- tarily raised my gun to my shoulder, but remembering that both barrels were loaded with small shot, and that to fire would exasperate without killing him, I stood silently gazing. In the middle of the road he turned his head, and for an instant paused and gazed at me, but having, I suppose, other business of his own to attend to, walked steadily on, and disappeared in the thicket. As he advanced, I heard the scampering of small animals, and the whizzing flight of ground birds, clearing the path for their dreaded enemy.

This encounter pleased me much. I was too much surprised, and occupied too much with admiration, to feel fear. I had at length had a full view, in his native wilds, of the rarest variety of the most powerful and dangerous animal inhabiting the American continent. I was, however, by no means desirous of a second meeting, and, as it was near sunset, thought it most prudent to turn back towards the village.

The next morning I sent all my Indians to fish, and walked myself along the road to Javfta, and thus crossed the division between the basins of the Amazon and the Orinooko. The road is, generally speaking, level, consisting of a series of slight ascents and descents, nowhere probably varying more than fifty feet in elevation, and a great part of it being over swamps and marshes, where numerous small streams intersect it. At those places roughly squared trunks of trees are laid down longitudinally, forming narrow paths or bridges, over which passengers have to walk.

The road is about twenty or thirty feet wide, running nearly straight through a lofty forest. On the sides grow numbers of the Inaja" palm (Maximiliana regid), the prickly Mauritia (AT. aculeate?) in the marshes, and that curious palm the Piassdba, which produces the fibrous substance now used for making brooms and brushes in this country for street-sweeping and domestic purposes. This is the first and almost the only point where this curious tree can be seen, while following any regular road or navigation. From the mouth of the Padauari