It was hot, we had been travelling for five hours, and the dogs were much exhausted.  The black hound in particular was nearly done up, for he had been led in a leash by one of the horsemen.  He lay flat on the ground, panting, unable to catch the scent.  Kermit threw water over him, and when he was thoroughly drenched and freshened, thrust his nose into the jaguar’s footprints.  The game old hound at once and eagerly responded.  As he snuffed the scent he challenged loudly, while still lying down.  Then he staggered to his feet and started on the trail, going stronger with every leap.  Evidently the big cat was not far distant.  Soon we found where it had swum across the bayou.  Piranhas or no piranhas, we now intended to get across; and we tried to force our horses in at what seemed a likely spot.  The matted growth of water-plants, with their leathery, slippery stems, formed an unpleasant barrier, as the water was swimming-deep for the horses.  The latter were very unwilling to attempt the passage.  Kermit finally forced his horse through the tangled mass, swimming, plunging, and struggling.  He left a lane of clear water, through which we swam after him.  The dogs splashed and swam behind us.  On the other bank they struck the fresh trail and followed it at a run.  It led into a long belt of timber, chiefly composed of low-growing nacury palms, with long, drooping, many-fronded branches.  In silhouette they suggest coarse bamboos; the nuts hang in big clusters and look like bunches of small, unripe bananas.  Among the lower palms were scattered some big ordinary trees.  We cantered along outside the timber belt, listening to the dogs within; and in a moment a burst of yelling clamor from the pack told that the jaguar was afoot.  These few minutes are the really exciting moments in the chase, with hounds, of any big cat that will tree.  The furious baying of the pack, the shouts and cheers of encouragement from the galloping horsemen, the wilderness surroundings, the knowledge of what the quarry is—­all combine to make the moment one of fierce and thrilling excitement.  Besides, in this case there was the possibility the jaguar might come to bay on the ground, in which event there would be a slight element of risk, as it might need straight shooting to stop a charge.  However, about as soon as the long-drawn howling and eager yelping showed that the jaguar had been overtaken, we saw him, a huge male, up in the branches of a great fig-tree.  A bullet behind the shoulder, from Kermit’s 405 Winchester, brought him dead to the ground.  He was heavier than the very big male horse-killing cougar I shot in Colorado, whose skull Hart Merriam reported as the biggest he had ever seen; he was very nearly double the weight of any of the male African leopards we shot; he was nearly or quite the weight of the smallest of the adult African lionesses we shot while in Africa.  He had the big bones, the stout frame, and the heavy muscular build of a small lion; he was not lithe and slender and long like a cougar or leopard; the tail, as with all jaguars, was short, while the girth of the body was great; his coat was beautiful, with a satiny gloss, and the dark-brown spots on the gold of his back, head, and sides were hardly as conspicuous as the black of the equally well-marked spots against his white belly.