one. Following his track back they came to a ford, where in the
water they found the skeleton of the dead man, his clothes uninjured
but every particle of flesh stripped from his bones. Whether he had
drowned, and the fishes had then eaten his body, or whether they had
killed him it was impossible to say. They had not hurt the clothes,
getting in under them, which made it seem likely that there had been
no struggle. These man-eating fish are a veritable scourge in the
waters they frequent. But it must not be understood by this that the
piranhas--or, for the matter of that, the New-World caymans and
crocodiles--ever become such dreaded foes of man as for instance the
man-eating crocodiles of Africa. Accidents occur, and there are
certain places where swimming and bathing are dangerous; but in most
places the people swim freely, although they are usually careful to
find spots they believe safe or else to keep together and make a
splashing in the water.

During his trips Colonel Rondon had met with various experiences with
wild creatures. The Paraguayan caymans are not ordinarily dangerous to
man; but they do sometimes become man-eaters and should be destroyed
whenever the opportunity offers. The huge caymans and crocodiles of
the Amazon are far more dangerous, and the colonel knew of repeated
instances where men, women and children had become their victims. Once
while dynamiting a stream for fish for his starving party he partially
stunned a giant anaconda, which he killed as it crept slowly off. He
said that it was of a size that no other anaconda he had ever seen
even approached, and that in his opinion such a brute if hungry would
readily attack a full-grown man. Twice smaller anacondas had attacked
his dogs; one was carried under water--for the anaconda is a water-
loving serpent--but he rescued it. One of his men was bitten by a
jararaca; he killed the venomous snake, but was not discovered and
brought back to camp until it was too late to save his life. The puma
Colonel Rondon had found to be as cowardly as I have always found it,
but the jaguar was a formidable beast, which occasionally turned man-
eater, and often charged savagely when brought to bay. He had known a
hunter to be killed by a jaguar he was following in thick grass cover.

All such enemies, however, he regarded as utterly trivial compared to
the real dangers of the wilderness--the torment and menace of attacks
by the swarming insects, by mosquitoes