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[Illustration: "I SLASHED SAVAGELY AT IT WITH MY MACHETE."
A further instalment of a budget of breezy little narratives--exciting, humorous, and curious--hailing from all parts of the world. This month's collection deals with a thrilling fight between a jaguar and a boa-constrictor, the tragic fate of a Canadian cowboy, and a night adventure in Japan.
In the month of November, 1907, I arrived at the Isthmus of Panama to do some zoological work, and incidentally to get a better knowledge of the geography of the infant republic. I landed at Colon, a dirty, dingy town of about eight thousand inhabitants, built on a low, swampy island separated from the mainland by a narrow but deep lagoon. Here I secured the services of two Spaniards to act as carriers, and, going by boat some ten miles up the coast, disembarked in a drenching rain near the mouth of the Santa Rita River.
I carried a small supply of tinned and tabloid foods, and these we packed through the jungle to the highest point of the Santa Rita mountains, a distance of ten miles. We made a very comfortable camp, and after a hearty meal turned in for the night.
I slept very little, tired though I was, being kept awake by the howlings of jaguars, cougars, and bobcats. However, after a hasty breakfast in the early morning, I started out alone with my Winchester strapped on my back and carrying a single-barrelled sixteen-gauge shot-gun in my hand. I also carried a short but sharp and heavy machete, without which it is impossible to travel in this impenetrable jungle of mahogany, cedar, yellow-wood, and palms of various kinds, all supporting vines of every size and character. Some of these vines hang from a height of seventy-five feet, touching the ground and sending out tendrils which climb to unknown heights on other trees, thus forming a most intricate network, through which it is impossible to see more than a few feet ahead.
[Illustration: THE AUTHOR, DR. T. A. STODDARD, WHO WAS AN EYE-WITNESS OF A TERRIFIC FIGHT BETWEEN A JAGUAR AND A BOA-CONSTRICTOR, OF WHICH HE HERE GIVES A GRAPHIC ACCOUNT, AND ALSO OF HIS OWN ENCOUNTER WITH A SECOND HUGE SNAKE.