the trees at this point being mostly palms and tarumans; the taruman is almost as big as a live-oak, with glossy foliage and a fruit like an olive.  The pace quickened, the motley pack burst into yelling and howling; and then a sudden quickening of the note showed that the game had either climbed a tree or turned to bay in a thicket.  The former proved to be the case.  The dogs had entered a patch of tall tree jungle, and as we cantered up through the marsh we saw the jaguar high among the forked limbs of a taruman tree.  It was a beautiful picture—­ the spotted coat of the big, lithe, formidable cat fairly shone as it snarled defiance at the pack below.  I did not trust the pack; the dogs were not stanch, and if the jaguar came down and started I feared we might lose it.  So I fired at once, from a distance of seventy yards.  I was using my favorite rifle, the little Springfield with which I have killed most kinds of African game, from the lion and elephant down; the bullets were the sharp, pointed kind, with the end of naked lead.  At the shot the jaguar fell like a sack of sand through the branches, and although it staggered to its feet it went but a score of yards before it sank down, and when I came up it was dead under the palms, with three or four of the bolder dogs riving at it.

The jaguar is the king of South American game, ranking on an equality with the noblest beasts of the chase of North America, and behind only the huge and fierce creatures which stand at the head of the big game of Africa and Asia.  This one was an adult female.  It was heavier and more powerful than a full-grown male cougar, or African panther or leopard.  It was a big, powerfully built creature, giving the same effect of strength that a tiger or lion does, and that the lithe leopards and pumas do not.  Its flesh, by the way, proved good eating, when we had it for supper, although it was not cooked in the way it ought to have been.  I tried it because I had found cougars such good eating; I have always regretted that in Africa I did not try lion’s flesh, which I am sure must be excellent.

Next day came Kermit’s turn.  We had the miscellaneous pack with us, all much enjoying themselves; but, although they could help in a jaguar-hunt to the extent of giving tongue and following the chase for half a mile, cowing the quarry by their clamor, they were not sufficiently stanch to be of use if there was any difficulty in the hunt.  The only two dogs we could trust were the two borrowed jaguar hounds.  This was the black dog’s day.  About ten in the morning we came to a long, deep, winding bayou.  On the opposite bank stood a capybara, looking like a blunt-nosed pig, its wet hide shining black.  I killed it, and it slid into the water.  Then I found that the bayou extended for a mile or two in each direction, and the two hunter-guides said they did not wish to swim across for fear of the piranhas.  Just at this moment we came across fresh jaguar tracks.