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Our friends, I should have said, had brought half-a-dozen of the large blood-hounds I have before described, which were used for hunting ocelots and other fierce game, as well as for searching out runaway negroes. These were likely to prove of the greatest service in exploring the hummocks, as they would quickly give tongue on discovering any lurking enemies.
Just look at the forest bordering the river. Think of trying to push through such a dense mass of over-grown jungle. And I bet it's just full of snakes, poisonous spiders, lizards and all such things." "Not to mention such trifling citizens as jaguars, ocelots, tapirs, alligators, crocodiles and their kind," laughed Frank.
They were too small to be dangerous. Plum had told him that there were very few ocelots in that vicinity and these rather cowardly, unless attacked or enraged. Jack looked hurriedly around. The parent ocelot was not in evidence. The baby cub he had stumbled over, however, was making a great outcry, and our hero decided he would not linger any longer than was necessary.
As evening approached, once more the feathered songsters suddenly burst forth; then for a short time there would be silence; when again, towards midnight, the hootings and shrieks of numerous night-birds, and the more savage cries and hideous voices of alligators, wolves, and ocelots, would break our slumbers.
We saw numbers of young fellows sitting by the roadside, and learned that they were the lovers of the young women, awaiting their return from the cemetery. The name Tehuantepec means the mountain of man-eaters. These man-eaters were not men, but tigers, or ocelots. The story runs that long ago this mountain was infested with wild beasts who destroyed the people of the neighboring villages.
So the shattered casques and broken bones of many a luckless armadillo were strewn along the way, mute evidences of Suma's insatiable savagery. In contrast to the actions of the agoutis and armadillos was the behavior of the ocelots.
The pumas were for the most part bright red, but some were reddish gray, there being much the same dichromatism that I found among their Colorado kinsfolk. The jaguarundis were dark brownish gray. All these animals, the spotted jaguars and ocelots, the monochrome black jaguars, red pumas, and dark-gray jaguarundis, were killed in the same locality, with the same environment.
The jaguars, the ocelots, the crocodiles, the cranes, and the vultures, all prey upon them; and, perhaps, if man were to leave them alone, the result would be, not such a great increase in the number of the turtles, but that the creatures who prey upon them would come in for a larger share. The "carapa," or arrau turtle, is, when full grown, forty or fifty pounds in weight.
The boy learned in Natural History went over the terrible list of all the fierce animals. "Yes, there were ocelots and cougars and jaguars, peculiarly shy and stealthy in approaching their prey," so the book said. "There was the chibiguasu " But Jedidiah said he didn't believe his Noah cared for such out-of-the-way beasts; they must have come in since his ark.
The dogs in a short time hunted out two other ocelots, which were speedily shot; and we killed also several racoons, polecats, opossums, two deer, besides turkeys, ducks, snipes, and quails, which I mention to show the abundance of game to be found in that part of the country.
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