Innumerable tigers are yearly caught with leathern thongs by the Spaniards and Indians, on horseback, and are strangled, after being swiftly dragged for some time along the ground. The Pampas wound the tiger's back with a slender arrow, and kill him instantly. At other times, for the same purpose, they use very strong arrows, or three round stones suspended from thongs, which they hurl at the tiger. How great their strength must be you may judge from this, that if they meet two horses in the pastures tied together with a thong to prevent their escaping, they will attack and slay the one, and drag him, along with the other live one, to their den. I should not have believed this, had I not myself witnessed it, when travelling in company with the soldiers of St. Iago. Their cunning is equal to their strength. If the wood and the plain deny them food, they will procure it by fishing in the water. As they are excellent swimmers, they plunge up to their neck in some lake or river, and spout from their mouths the white froth, which, swimming on the surface of the water, the hungry fishes eagerly devour as food, and are quickly tossed on to the shore by the claws of the tigers. They also catch tortoises, and tear them from their shells by wondrous artifice, in order to devour them. Sometimes a tiger, lurking unseen under the high grass or in a bramble bush, quietly watches a troop of horse passing by, and rushes with impetuosity on the horseman that closes the company. On rainy and stormy nights they creep into human habitations, not in search of prey or food, but to shelter themselves from the rain and from the cold wind. Though the very shadow of this beast is enough to create alarm, yet those are most to be dreaded which have already tasted human flesh. Tigers of this description have an intense craving after men, and continually lie in wait for them. They will follow a man's footstep for many leagues till they come up with the traveller.