While standing by the marsh we heard something coming along one of the game paths.  In a moment a buck of the bigger species of bush deer appeared, a very pretty and graceful creature.  It stopped and darted back as soon as it saw us, giving us no chance for a shot; but in another moment we caught glimpses of it running by at full speed, back among the palms.  I covered an opening between two tree-trunks.  By good luck the buck appeared in the right place, giving me just time to hold well ahead of him and fire.  At the report he went down in a heap, the “umbrella-pointed” bullet going in at one shoulder, and ranging forward, breaking the neck.  The leaden portion of the bullet, in the proper mushroom or umbrella shape, stopped under the neck skin on the farther side.  It is a very effective bullet.

Miller particularly wished specimens of these various species of bush deer, because their mutual relationships have not yet been satisfactorily worked out.  This was an old buck.  The antlers were single spikes, five or six inches long; they were old and white and would soon have been shed.  In the stomach were the remains of both leaves and grasses, but especially the former; the buck was both a browser and grazer.  There were also seeds, but no berries or nuts such as I have sometimes found in deer’s stomachs.  This species, which is abundant in this neighborhood, is solitary in its habits, not going in herds.  At this time the rut was past, the bucks no longer sought the does, the fawns had not been born, and the yearlings had left their mothers; so that each animal usually went by itself.  When chased they were very apt to take to the water.  This instinct of taking to the water, by the way, is quite explicable as regards both deer and tapir, for it affords them refuge against their present day natural foes, but it is a little puzzling to see the jaguar readily climbing trees to escape dogs; for ages have passed since there were in its habitat any natural foes from which it needed to seek safety in trees.  But it is possible that the habit has been kept alive by its seeking refuge in them on occasion from the big peccaries, which are among the beasts on which it ordinarily preys.

We hung the buck in a tree.  The colonel returned, and not long afterward one of the paddlers who had been watching the river called out to us that there was a tapir in the water, a good distance up-stream, and that two of the other boats were after it.  We jumped into the canoe and the two paddlers dug their blades in the water as they drove her against the strong current, edging over for the opposite bank.  The tapir was coming down-stream at a great rate, only its queer head above water, while the dugouts were closing rapidly on it, the paddlers uttering loud cries.  As the tapir turned slightly to one side or the other the long, slightly upturned snout and the strongly pronounced arch of the crest along the head and upper neck gave it a marked and unusual aspect.