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I did not notice any ruins of houses near the rocks. Neither of the Tejada brothers, who had been past here many times, nor any of the natives of this region appeared to have any idea of the origin or meaning of this singular collection of pictographic rocks. The drawings represented jaguars, birds, men, and dachshund-like dogs. They deserved careful study.
This spot had been selected to avoid the risk of being surprised by unfriendly natives or prowling jaguars. The canoes were hauled up, the goods landed, and fires were lighted, round which we were soon seated taking our evening meal.
If the engineer had had only to deal with wild beasts, jaguars or others, he would have simply lighted fires all around his camp, which would have sufficed for its defense; but the convicts would be rather attracted than terrified by the flames, and it was, therefore, better to be surrounded by the profound darkness of night. The watch was, however, carefully organized.
Close to them another pair, then another and another, until having looked on every side, he saw himself surrounded by a complete circle of glancing eyes! It is true they were small ones, and some of the heads which he could see by the blaze, were small they were not jaguars, but they had an ugly look they looked like the heads of serpents!
But when he got into the forests, he found very little food under the trees, only a very few deer; and so he was starved, and dwindled down to the poor little sheep-stealing rogue he is now, of whom nobody is afraid. Oh, yes! I remember now A. said he and his men killed six in one day. But do you think it is all true about the pumas and jaguars?
"But how do you intend to act?" inquired Don Estevan. "How do we intend to act?" repeated the second trapper. "That is simple enough. We shall place ourselves in the cistern the jaguars will come forward to its brink; and then, if we are only favoured by a blink of the moon, I'll answer for it that in the twinkling of an eye the brutes will neither feel hunger nor thirst."
His trips were invariably on glassy seas. He traveled by himself he hadn't even one chum whom he cared to have share his joys; and though he penetrated the jungles of Africa at one time, the lions remained mysteriously in hiding, and the jaguars didn't even growl. I remember that this came out one night at a dinner party he and I went to at the home of a friend of mine.
There also is found that black species of tiger* of which I saw some fine skins at Esmeralda. The black spots are scarcely visible on the dark-brown ground of its skin. The Indians assert, that these tigers are very rare, that they never mingle with the common jaguars, and that they form another race.
He never imagined that the year 1773 would behold him beneath the rainy season in a tropical country, wading through marshes and splashing through lakes, exploring with his feet for submerged paths, commanding impracticable troops, and commanded by an insufferable colonel, feeding on greegree worms and fed upon by mosquitos, howled at by jaguars, hissed at by serpents, and shot at by those exceedingly unattainable gentlemen, "still longed for, never seen," the Maroons of Surinam.
"You already knew, then, that we were here?" said Baraja. "Of course. We have been two hours involuntarily playing the spy upon you. Ah! I know a part of the country where travellers that take no more precautions than you would soon find their heads stripped of the skin. But come, Dormilon! to our work!" "What if the jaguars come our way?" suggested the Senator, apprehensively.
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