one of the Eastern Andes. It is there he
spends most of his life, and that is his place of birth, and
consequently his true home. At a particular season of the year,
corresponding to the summer of our own country, he makes a roving
expedition to the lower regions; and for what purpose? This was the
very question which Alexis put to the tigrero. The answer was as
curious as laconic:

"_Comer la cabeza del negro_." (To eat the negro's head!)

"Ha, ha! to eat the negro's head!" repeated Ivan, with an incredulous
laugh.

"Just so, senorito!" rejoined the man; "that is what brings him down
here."

"Why, the voracious brute!" said Ivan; "you don't mean to say that he
makes food of the heads of the poor negroes?"

"Oh no!" replied the tigrero, smiling in his turn; "it is not that."

"What then?" impatiently inquired Ivan. "I've heard of negro-head
tobacco. He's not a tobacco chewer, is he?"

"_Carrambo_! no, senorito," replied the tiger-hunter, now laughing
outright; "that's not the sort of food the fellow is fond of. You'll
see it presently. By good luck, it's just in season now--just as the
bears fancy it--or else we needn't look to start them here. We should
have to go further up the mountains: where they are more difficult both
to find and follow. But no doubt we'll soon stir one up, when we get
among the _cabezas del negro_. The nuts are just now full of their
sweet milky paste, of which the bears are so fond, and about a mile from
here there are whole acres of the trees. I warrant we find a bear among
them."

Though still puzzled with this half-explanation, our young hunters
followed the guide--confident that they would soon come in sight of the
"negro's head."

CHAPTER THIRTY SIX.

THE TAGUA TREE.

After going about a mile further, as their guide had forewarned them,
they came within sight of a level valley, or rather a plain, covered
with a singular vegetation. It looked as if it had been a forest of
palms--the trunks of which had sunk down into the earth, and left only
the heads, with their great radiating fronds above the ground! Some of
them stood a foot or two above the surface; but most appeared as if
their stems had been completely buried! They were growing all the same,
however; and, at the bottom of each great bunch of pinnate leaves, could
be seen a number of large, roundish objects--which were evidently the
fruits of the plant.

There was no mystery about the stems being b