In these forests the multitude of insects that bite, sting, devour, and prey upon other creatures, often with accompaniments of atrocious suffering, passes belief.  The very pathetic myth of “beneficent nature” could not deceive even the least wise being if he once saw for himself the iron cruelty of life in the tropics.  Of course “nature”—­ in common parlance a wholly inaccurate term, by the way, especially when used as if to express a single entity—­is entirely ruthless, no less so as regards types than as regards individuals, and entirely indifferent to good or evil, and works out her ends or no ends with utter disregard of pain and woe.

The following morning at sunrise we started again.  This time only Colonel Rondon and I went with Benedetto and Antonio the Indian.  We brought along four dogs which it was fondly hoped might chase the cashadas.  Two of them disappeared on the track of a tapir and we saw them no more; one of the others promptly fled when we came across the tracks of our game, and would not even venture after them in our company; the remaining one did not actually run away and occasionally gave tongue, but could not be persuaded to advance unless there was a man ahead of him.  However, Colonel Rondon, Benedetto, and Antonio formed a trio of hunters who could do fairly well without dogs.

After four hours of riding, Benedetto, who was in the lead, suddenly stopped and pointed downward.  We were riding along a grassy intervale between masses of forest, and he had found the fresh track of a herd of big peccaries crossing from left to right.  There were apparently thirty or forty in the herd.  The small peccaries go singly or in small parties, and when chased take refuge in holes or hollow logs, where they show valiant fight; but the big peccaries go in herds of considerable size, and are so truculent that they are reluctant to run, and prefer either to move slowly off chattering their tusks and grunting, or else actually to charge.  Where much persecuted the survivors gradually grow more willing to run, but their instinct is not to run but to trust to their truculence and their mass-action for safety.  They inflict a fearful bite and frequently kill dogs.  They often charge the hunters and I have heard of men being badly wounded by them, while almost every man who hunts them often is occasionally forced to scramble up a tree to avoid a charge.  But I have never heard of a man being killed by them.  They sometimes surround the tree in which the man has taken refuge and keep him up it.  Cherrie, on one occasion in Costa Rica, was thus kept up a tree for several hours by a great herd of three or four hundred of these peccaries; and this although he killed several of them.  Ordinarily, however, after making their charge they do not turn, but pass on out of sight.  Their great foe is the jaguar, but unless he exercises much caution they will turn the tables on him.  Cherrie, also in Costa Rica, came on the body of a jaguar which had evidently been killed by a herd of peccaries some twenty-four hours previously.  The ground was trampled up by their hoofs, and the carcass was rent and slit into pieces.