Occasionally, therefore, even the fierce jaguar itself, with all its sinewy strength and lithe agility—armed, too, with the weapons of its tribe, the long canine teeth and hooked, retractile claws—falls a victim to the fury of these fierce little pigs, when banded together in herds. Quite recently, as I understand, a party of travellers found themselves present, as spectators, at one of these tragedies of the wilderness, of which wild nature is so full, but which are so seldom witnessed by man, even by savage man. In a clearing of the forest they came, suddenly, upon a huge jaguar, maintaining with difficulty a precarious foothold on the highest point of a fallen tree-trunk; to which it clung like a shipwrecked mariner on the mast of a sinking vessel, whilst, all around, there tossed and raged and bristled the living waves of a tempestuous sea of peccaries. Though just beyond the reach of his foes, the jaguar was not so much so, but that individuals of the herd, by leaping into the air, could sometimes strike their tusks against the tree, so near to his feet as to oblige, or, at any rate, to cause him to move them; nor did the fierce beast, though growling horribly, dare to strike at them in return, for fear of slipping on the smooth wood, from which the bark that would have offered him a securer footing, had long ago rotted. As it was, the embarrassed, yet still savage, tyrant of the forest slipped more than once, and was only enabled by desperate agility to recover its vantage ground, in time to avoid the fierce leaps of a dozen or more of the peccaries. The latter sometimes leaped upon the trunk, and ran along it as far as to a certain branch, which, by dividing the narrow causeway, presented an obstacle which it was beyond their utmost efforts to surmount. When they essayed to do so, they invariably fell amidst their comrades below, and as the attempt was renewed again and again, there was, for some time, a constant stream of ascending and then falling pigs, which presented a comic appearance, in strange contrast to the serious nature of the drama enacting. It would, generally, have been impossible for any one peccary to return, after reaching the branch in question, on account of those behind; but this none of them tried to do, but uniformly endeavoured to pass the branch by a leap round one or other side of it, in which they as uniformly failed. The branch itself, being not much more than a stump, ending in a sharp point at the place of breakage, was of no use to the jaguar, who, isolated on a narrow yard or so of horizontal fallen timber, cast many a longing glance at stately trees surrounding him on every side, and not far off, could he only have leaped clear of the circle of white, gnashing tusks. In this position matters remained for a considerable time, during the latter part of which the peccaries stood much more still, as though resolved to maintain a dogged siege, yet filling the air continually with their