I spent a couple of days of hard work in getting the big white-lipped peccaries—­white-lipped being rather a misnomer, as the entire under jaw and lower cheek are white.  They were said to be found on the other side of, and some distance back from, the river.  Colonel Rondon had sent out one of our attendants, an old follower of his, a full-blood Parecis Indian, to look for tracks.  This was an excellent man, who dressed and behaved just like the other good men we had, and was called Antonio Parecis.  He found the tracks of a herd of thirty or forty cashadas, and the following morning we started after them.

On the first day we killed nothing.  We were rather too large a party, for one or two of the visiting fazendeiros came along with their dogs.  I doubt whether these men very much wished to overtake our game, for the big peccary is a murderous foe of dogs (and is sometimes dangerous to men).  One of their number frankly refused to come or to let his dogs come, explaining that the fierce wild swine were “very badly brought up” (a literal translation of his words) and that respectable dogs and men ought not to go near them.  The other fazendeiros merely feared for their dogs; a groundless fear, I believe, as I do not think that the dogs could by any exertion have been dragged into dangerous proximity with such foes.  The ranch foreman, Benedetto, came with us, and two or three other camaradas, including Antonio, the Parecis Indian.  The horses were swum across the river, each being led beside a dugout.  Then we crossed with the dogs; our horses were saddled, and we started.

It was a picturesque cavalcade.  The native hunters, of every shade from white to dark copper, all wore leather leggings that left the soles of their feet bare, and on their bare heels wore spurs with wheels four inches across.  They went in single file, for no other mode of travel was possible; and the two or three leading men kept their machetes out, and had to cut every yard of our way while we were in the forest.  The hunters rode little stallions, and their hounds were gelded.

Most of the time we were in forest or swampy jungle.  Part of the time we crossed or skirted marshy plains.  In one of them a herd of half-wild cattle was feeding.  Herons, storks, ducks, and ibises were in these marshes, and we saw one flock of lovely roseate spoonbills.

In one grove the fig-trees were killing the palms, just as in Africa they kill the sandalwood-trees.  In the gloom of this grove there were no flowers, no bushes; the air was heavy; the ground was brown with mouldering leaves.  Almost every palm was serving as a prop for a fig-tree.  The fig-trees were in every stage of growth.  The youngest ones merely ran up the palms as vines.  In the next stage the vine had thickened and was sending out shoots, wrapping the palm stem in a deadly hold.  Some of the shoots were thrown round the stem like the tentacles of an immense cuttlefish.  Others looked