Page:Tale of Paraguay - Southey.djvu/173

Rh putrid. They are caught in large traps of the cage kind, baited with stinking meat, and then speared or shot through the bars. The Chalcaquines had a braver way of killing them: they provoked the animal, fronted it, received its attack upon a thick truncheon, which they held by the two ends, threw it down while its teeth were fixed in the wood, and ripped the creature up before it could recover. (Techo, p. 59.) A great profit is made by their skins. The jaguar which has once tasted human flesh becomes a most formidable animal; such a beast is called a tigre cevado, a fleshed tiger. There was one who infested the road between Santa Fé and Santiago, and killed ten men; after which a party of soldiers were sent to destroy it. The same thing is said of the lion and other beasts of prey, probably with truth; not as is vulgarly supposed, because they have a particular appetite for this kind of food, but because having once fed upon man, they from that time regard him like any animal of inferior strength, as their natural prey. "It is a constant observation in Numidia," says Bruce, "that the lion avoids and flies from the face of men, till by some accident they have been brought to engage, and the beast has prevailed against him; then that feeling of superiority, imprinted by the Creator in the heart of all animals, for man's preservation, seems to forsake him. The lion having once tasted human blood, relinquishes