soon
engaged in searching for the black bear of the Cordilleras.

CHAPTER THIRTY FIVE.

EATING A NEGRO'S HEAD.

According to their usual practice, they had hired one of the native
hunters of the district to act as a guide, and assist them in finding
the haunts of Bruin. In Napo they were fortunate in meeting with the
very man in the person of a _mestizo_, or half-blood Indian, who
followed hunting for his sole calling. He was what is termed a
"tigrero," or tiger-hunter--which title he derived from the fact that
the jaguar was the principal object of his pursuit. Among all
Spanish-Americans--Mexicans included--the beautiful spotted jaguar is
erroneously termed _tigre_ (tiger), as the puma or couguar is called
_leon_ (lion). A hunter of the jaguar is therefore denominated a
"tiger-hunter," or _tigrero_.

There are no puma or lion-hunters by profession--as there is nothing
about this brute to make it worth while--but hunting the jaguar is, in
many parts of Spanish America, a specific calling; and men make their
living solely by following this occupation. One inducement is to obtain
the skin, which, in common with those of the great spotted cats of the
Old World, is an article of commerce, and from its superior beauty
commands a good price. But the _tigrero_ could scarce make out to live
upon the sale of the skins alone; for although a London furrier will
charge from two to three guineas for a jaguar's robe, the poor hunter in
his remote wilderness market can obtain little more than a tenth part of
this price--notwithstanding that he has to risk his life, before he can
strip the fair mantle from the shoulders of its original wearer.

It is evident, therefore, that jaguar-hunting would not pay, if there
was only the pelt to depend upon; but the _tigrero_ looks to another
source of profit--the _bounty_.

In the hotter regions of Spanish America,--the Brazils as well--there
are many settlements to which the jaguar is not only a pest, but a
terror. Cattle in hundreds are destroyed by these great predatory
animals; even full-grown horses are killed and dragged away by them!
But is this all? Are the people themselves left unmolested? No. On
the contrary, great numbers of human beings every year fall victims to
the rapacity of the jaguars. Settlements attempted on the edge of the
great Montana--in the very country where our young hunters had now
arrived--have, after a time, been abandoned from this cause alon