The footprints were  as large as dinner plates. They were almost perfectly round. They were pressed softly onto the earth as if a great weight had been supported upon velvet.

‘Just one foot could make a print like that, said roderick. ’ the jaguar's'. 

‘But I’v seen jaguar tracks in mexico' I said.' They were about one quarter this size'.

‘ The Mexican tigre is a house cat compared with this one’, said Rod. This variety is the world's biggest. And does he pack a wallop! He's a bit smaller than the African  lion or thebengal tigar but he can lick either one of them.

For many weeks Rod had been waiting for this. His collection would be incomplete without the king of amazon beasts. But so far the wily animal had completely eluded us.

Now we had a trail to follow. One of the indians was sent back to camp to get a heavy lasso made of stout piassava. That was to be the only weapon guns were out.

The spoor led through a forest that reminded one of a cathedral. Here there were no bushes or shrubs only enormous columns rising a hundred feet or more without a branch, then spreading to form a dark roof through which spots of sunlight shone like stars. Brazil nut trees, ceiba trees, greenheart trees, all seemed to be trying to out tower each other. There was no organ in the church no sound except the occasional crakle of atwig underfoot. Most of the animals of theamazon are found not in the deep jungle, but on the fringes of the savanna-s and along the rivers. That holds good during the day at night they retreat into the jungle and send up a chorus of roars, grunts and screams that chills the spine of the camper.

The noon sun beat upon the roof, but these dark depths were as cool as a crypt. It was hard to realise that we were only three degrees from the equator.

Even as the floor of a cathedral and my legs were already tiring. Sometime the jaguar keeps travelling steadily for a hundred miles.

But it was not to be so bad as all that. After about three miles the jungle began to thin and thriugh the trees we caught a glimpse of one of the paranas or channels of the amazin.

'Perhaps its at the shore getting a drink, whispered rod. We moved very quietly. At the edge of the jungle the great trees gave way to a screen of underbrush. Concealed by the screen, we could now see the breach