The rivers, with their innumerable branches, are the only means of traversing the country. Astronomical observations, or in the absence of these, determinations by compass of the bends of the rivers, between the Orinoco, the Cassiquiare, and the Rio Negro, have shewn that two lonely mission-stations might be situated only a few miles apart, and yet the monks thereof, in visiting each other would require a day and a half to make the passage in their hollow-tree canoes, along the windings of small streams. The most striking evidence of the impenetrability of some portions of these forests, is afforded by a trait in the habits of the American tiger, or panther-like Jaguar. While the introduction of European horned cattle, horses, and mules, has yielded so abundant a supply of food to the beasts of prey in the extensive grassy and treeless plains of Varinas, Meta, and Buenos Ayres; that these animals, (owing to the unequal contest between them and their prey,) have considerably increased since the discovery of America; other individuals of the same species lead a toilsome life in the dense forests contiguous to the sources of the Orinoco. The distressing loss of a large mastiff, the faithful companion of our travels, while we were bivouacking near the junction of the Cassiquiare with the Orinoco, induced us on our return from the insect-swarming Esmeralda, to pass another night on the same spot (uncertain whether he was devoured by a tiger) where we had already long sought him in vain. We again heard in the immediate neighbourhood the cries of the Jaguar, probably the very same animal to which we owed our loss. As the cloudy state of the sky rendered it impossible to conduct astronomical observations, we made our interpreter (_lenguaraz_) repeat to us what the natives, our boatmen, related of the tigers of the country. The so called black Jaguar is, as we learnt, not unfrequently found among them. It is the largest and most blood-thirsty variety, and has a dark brown skin marked with scarcely distinguishable black spots. It lives at the foot of the mountain ranges of Maraguaca and Unturan. “The love of wandering, and the rapacity of the Jaguars,” said our Indian narrator, one of the Durimond tribe; “often lead them into such impenetrable thickets of the forest, that they can no longer hunt on the ground, and then live for a long time in the trees—the terror of the families of monkeys, and of the prehensile-tailed viverra. (_Cercoleptes._)”