Theodore Roosevelt (1858–1919). Through the Brazilian Wilderness. 1914.
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| at a point where a drinking-trail for game led down a break in the bank. The branches partially hid it, and it was in deep shadow, so that it did not offer a very good shot. My bullet went into its body too far back, and the tapir disappeared in the forest at a gallop as if un-hurt, although the bullet really secured it, by making it unwilling to trust to its speed and leave the neighborhood of the water. Three or four of the hounds were by this time swimming the river, leaving the others yelling on the opposite side; and as soon as the swimmers reached the shore they were put on the tapir’s trail and galloped after it, giving tongue. In a couple of minutes we saw the tapir take to the water far up-stream, and after it we went as fast as the paddles could urge us through the water. We were not in time to head it, but fortunately some of the dogs had come down to the river’s edge at the very point where the tapir was about to land, and turned it back. Two or three of the dogs were swimming. We were more than half the breadth of the river away from the tapir, and somewhat down-stream, when it dived. It made an astonishingly long swim beneath the water this time, almost as if it had been a hippopotamus, for it passed completely under our canoe and rose between us and the hither bank. I shot it, the bullet going into its brain, while it was thirty or forty yards from shore. It sank at once. |
| There was now nothing to do but wait until the body floated. I feared that the strong current would roll it down-stream over the river bed, but my companions assured me that this was not so, and that the body would remain where it was until it rose, which would be in an |