creature than any American dog. There are also small dogs without hair except on the head and tail, which are shagged; they are often companions of the ladies of the country.

Stedman in his Surinam' tells us that dogs taken to Guiana lose the habit of barking, and that the native dogs never bark. He also states that he never saw or heard of

hydrophobia there. The Indians all keep dogs and hunt with them; they are of a dirty white colour, meagre, and small, with short hair, a sharp muzzle, and erect ears, very dexterous in finding game; but mischievous.

European dogs taken to Congo are also said to lose the faculty of barking. The natives there eat them.

WILD DOGS IN PUERTO RICO.

"This scant of sheep," says Aglionby," is not to be laid upon the nature of the soil, as being unfit, or unwilling, to feed that sober, harmless creature; but it proceedeth rather of the wolvish kind of dogs which are here in multitudes: and who knows not that when they that should be friends become enemies there is no cruelty compared with theirs? There have been in this island far greater flocks, the cause of whose decay when I enquired of them that had been long dwellers here, they told us the reason was that which I mentioned; namely, wild dogs which are bred in the woods, and there go in great companies together. These wild dogs, whereas they should be protectors, through want of man's voice and presence to direct them better, become wolvish in their nature, and now make pityful havoc of the poor silly sheep.

"Now this strange alteration of these dogs proceedeth not

of any mixture of their kind with wolves, or any other ravenous beast (for I have not heard, nor could learn that the island breedeth any such, though I have asked many); but they tell me this cometh to pass by reason that these dogs find in the woods sufficient sustenance, and prefer wild liberty before domestical, and to themselves much more profitable service. A notable instruction to man, the natural reasonable beast, how easily he may grow wild, if once he begin to like better of licentious anarchy than of wholesome obedience.

"Here, if any desire (as I think all that hear hereof will desire), to know how these dogs can live in these woods, the answer, although very true, will seem happily as strange as anything that hitherto hath been reported. For they live of crabs; I mean not fruits of trees, though every tree hanging laded with strange fruits might perchance yield nourishment to that beast specially, which Nature above the rest hath enabled with a distinguishing and perceiving faculty of what is good or ill for them to eat but by crabs I mean an animal, a living and sensible creature, in feeding whereupon even men find a delight, not only contentedness. For it is not only in these southerly parts of the world, as in England and the like countries, that these crabs can live only and are to be found in the sea: but these woods are full of these crabs, in quantity bigger than ever I saw any sea crabs in England, and in such multitudes that they have burrowed like conies in English warrens. They are in shape not different from sea crabs, for ought I can perceive: I have seen multitudes of them both here and at Dominica; the whitest whereof (for some are ugly black) some of our men did eat with good

liking, and without any harm that ever I heard complaint of. This is the meat which these wild dogs live of: which I do the rather believe, because at Dominica we did indeed see dogs in the woods, so far from any man's dwelling, that we wondered whereof they lived.

"The remembrance of what we had seen at Dominica, brought us to a more assenting of what was told us of the dogs and crabs of Puerto Rico: and then that leads us to another point looking the same way. For at our first coming to Puerto Rico, the dogs of the city every night kept a fearful howling, and in the daytime you should see them go in flocks into the woods along the sea side. This we took at first for a kind bemoaning of their masters' absence and leaving of them; but when within a while they were acquainted with us who at first were strangers to them, and so began to leave their howling by night, yet still they continued their daily resort to the woods, and that in companies: we understood by asking, that their resort thither was to hunt and to eat crabs, whereof in the woods they should find store."1

The traveller and naturalist, Von Tschudi, in describing the high table lands of Peru, called the Puna, lying between the lofty mountain chains of the Cordillera and the Andes; states that cats are unable to live at an elevation of 13,000 feet; and that dogs also suffer, but not to the same extent :

"Thickets of rushy grass are inhabited by the Pishacas, or Yutu, a species of partridge which the Indians catch by dogs.

1 Aglionby's Account of the Earl of Cumberland's Expedition to Puerto Rico. MS.

These dogs of the Puna Indians are a peculiar race (Canis Inga, Tsch). They are distinguished by a small head, a pointed muzzle, small erect ears, a tail curling upwards, and a thick shaggy skin. They are in a half-wild state, and very surly and snappish. They furiously attack strangers, and even after having received a deadly wound they will crawl along the ground, and make an effort to bite. To white people they appear to have a particular antipathy; and sometimes it becomes rather a venturous undertaking for a European traveller to approach an Indian hut, for these mountain dogs spring up to the sides of the horse, and try to bite the rider's legs. They are snarlish and intractable even to their masters, who are often obliged to enforce obedience by the help of a stick. Yet these dogs are very useful animals for guarding flocks, and they have a keen scent for the pishacas, which they catch and kill with a single bite."

Tschudi, one night, slept in the hut of a Puna shepherd; "and," says he," while saddling my mule at daybreak, one of those fierce little dogs which are domiciled in every Indian hut, slily watched my movements; and though he had rested at the foot of my bed during the night, yet he was only prevented, by the repeated threats of his master, from making an attack upon me."

In the province of Maynas, in Tropical America, dogs bury themselves in the sand to avoid the musquitos or sancudos. The chegoe, also attacks them.

VOL. I.

Y

CHAPTER XXVII.

PHILIP Camerarius, after detailing some of the fearful

and almost incredible atrocities, practised by Italian nobles in the Old World in demoralised Italy; recounts the misery and despair inflicted by Europeans on the unoffending and defenceless people of the New. How has that priceless gift, the dog, been abused!

66

But what should let us to tell here that which histories report touching the conquerors of the New World, who have not been much gentler to the West Indians, than the aforesaid princes to others of their time: especially after they made themselves masters of the citie of Cusco, where they committed (as in all the countrey besides) most horrible ravages and massacres. For Benzo and others write, that there were some Spaniards who having passed away the time with cutting a many poore Indians into pieces, like flesh for the butcherie, gave the pieces when they had done, for meat to their dogs. Oviedus reporteth a pleasant storie, which I will here set downe. Diego Salazar, famous for having beene one of the conquerors of Saint John's Island, had a great dog, very cruell, and well flesht upon the Indians, which dog was called Bezerillo. The night after that day wherein the

1 Living Librarie.