ced with another, and that I might, by catching hold of
the latter, save myself, should the peccaries succeed in their attempts.
The peccaries grunted and dug away below, and I climbed up higher and
higher. At last I reached a branch on which I could conveniently sit
and load my gun. "Stop," I thought to myself; "before I take more
trouble, I may as well shoot some of these gentlemen. They cannot carry
off their dead, and when they go away, as I suppose they will do some
time or other, they will leave them behind for me."

The execution followed the thought. I tumbled one of my enemies over,
and his companions finding that he was dead, set off to escape from a
similar fate. I had, however, time to load and fire again, and killed
another hog. As the one I had at the first wounded was by this time
dead, to my great satisfaction, the herd scampered off, leaving three of
their number behind. I fired a fourth time, but missed, and then
descended from the tree. How to get the peccaries to the camp was now
my puzzle, for one of them was rather too heavy a load for me to carry,
and I had no knife with me to cut them up. If I left them where they
were, in all probability they would be eaten up by some beasts or birds
of prey before I could return to them. To save them from the former, it
occurred to me that I might hang them up on the branches of the tree
which had enabled me to escape from becoming their food, instead of
their becoming mine.

There were a variety of creepers, out of which I could form ropes; and
selecting some of the toughest and most pliant, I secured them to the
peccaries, which I dragged under the tree. Having, with no little
satisfaction, hoisted up my spoils, I set out to return to the camp. On
my way I stopped to look at a tree which seemed to bear a great variety
of leaves. On examination, I discovered it to be a _mora_, round the
stem of which climbed a number of creepers. On the summit grew a
fig-tree, fully as large as a common English apple-tree; and from its
branches again hung pendant a number of vines, both fig-tree and vines
bearing a quantity of fruit; but the parent _mora_, from the undue
exhaustion of its sap, was already giving signs of decay, and in a short
time both fig-tree and vine, I saw, would inevitably follow its fate. A
little farther on, a couple of sloths were making their progress through
the woods. I watched them passing from one tree to the other, as the
branche