Page:The naturalist on the River Amazons 1863 v2.djvu/271

 moment and without thinking of what wo were doing, we took our guns (mine was a double-barrel, with one charge of B B and one of dust-shot) and gave chase. The animal increased his speed, and reaching the forest border dived into the dense mass of broad-leaved grass which formed its frontage. We peeped through the gap he had made, but, our courage being by this time cooled, did not think it wise to go into the thicket after him. The black tiger appears to be more abundant than the spotted form of jaguar in the neighbourhood of Ega. The most certain method of finding it is to hunt, assisted by a string of Indians shouting and driving the game before them, in the narrow restingas or strips of dry land in the forest, which are isolated by the flooding of their neighbourhood in the wet season. We reached Ega by eight o'clock at night.

On the 6th of October we left Ega on a second excursion; the principal object of Cardozo being, this time, to search certain pools in the forest for young turtles. The exact situation of these hidden sheets of water is known only to a few practised huntsmen; we took one of these men with us from Ega, a mameluco named Pedro, and on our way called at Shimuní for Daniel to serve as an additional guide. We started from the praia at sunrise on the 7th, in two canoes containing twenty-three persons, nineteen of whom were Indians. The morning was cloudy and cool, and a fresh wind blew from down river, against which we had to struggle with all the force of our paddles, aided by the current; the boats were tossed about most disagreeably, and