use of
the obvious resemblance of function we christened this younger hunter
Nips. Our guides were not only hunters but cattle-herders. The coarse
dead grass is burned to make room for the green young grass on which
the cattle thrive. Every now and then one of the men, as he rode ahead
of us, without leaving the saddle, would drop a lighted match into a
tussock of tall dead blades; and even as we who were behind rode by
tongues of hot flame would be shooting up and a local prairie fire
would have started.

Kermit took Nips off with him for a solitary hunt one day. He shot two
of the big marsh-deer, a buck and a doe, and preserved them as museum
specimens. They were in the papyrus growth, but their stomachs
contained only the fine marsh-grass which grows in the water and on
the land along the edges of the swamps; the papyrus was used only for
cover, not for food. The buck had two big scent-glands beside the
nostrils; in the doe these were rudimentary. On this day Kermit also
came across a herd of the big, fierce white-lipped peccary; at the
sound of their grunting Nips promptly spurred his horse and took to
his heels, explaining that the peccaries would charge them, hamstring
the horses, and kill the riders. Kermit went into the jungle after the
truculent little wild hogs on foot and followed them for an hour, but
never was able to catch sight of them.

In the afternoon of this same day one of the jaguar-hunters--merely
ranch hands, who knew something of the chase of the jaguar--who had
been searching for tracks, rode in with the information that he had
found fresh sign at a spot in the swamp about nine miles distant. Next
morning we rose at two, and had started on our jaguar-hunt at three.
Colonel Rondon, Kermit, and I, with the two trailers or jaguar-
hunters, made up the party, each on a weedy, undersized marsh pony,
accustomed to traversing the vast stretches of morass; and we were
accompanied by a brown boy, with saddle-bags holding our lunch, who
rode a long-horned trotting steer which he managed by a string through
its nostril and lip. The two trailers carried each a long, clumsy
spear. We had a rather poor pack. Besides our own two dogs, neither of
which was used to jaguar-hunting, there were the ranch dogs, which
were well-nigh worthless, and then two jaguar hounds borrowed for the
occasion from a ranch six or eight leagues distant. These were the
only hounds on which we could place any trust, and they were le