which he reproduces some of the stories which he gathered while
exploring the Amazons.
In the first of his series, a tortoise falls from a tree upon the
head of a jaguar and kills him; in one of Uncle Remus's stories,
the terrapin falls from a shelf in Miss Meadows's house and stuns
the fox, so that the latter fails to catch the rabbit. In the
next, a jaguar catches a tortoise by the hind-leg as he is
disappearing in his hole; but the tortoise convinces him he is
holding a root, and so escapes; Uncle Remus tells how the fox
endeavored to drown the terrapin, but turned him loose because
the terrapin declared his tail to be only a stump-root. Mr. Smith
also gives the story of how the tortoise outran the deer, which
is identical as to incident with Uncle Remus's story of how Brer
Tarrypin outran Brer Rabbit. Then there is the story of how the
tortoise pretended that he was stronger than the tapir. He tells
the latter he can drag him into the sea, but the tapir retorts
that he will pull the tortoise into the forest and kill him
besides. The tortoise thereupon gets a vine-stem, ties one end
around the body of the tapir, and goes to the sea, where he ties
the other end to the tail of a whale. He then goes into the wood,
midway between them both, and gives the vine a shake as a signal
for the pulling to begin. The struggle between the whale and
tapir goes on until each thinks the tortoise is the strongest of
animals. Compare this with the story of the terrapin's contest
with the bear, in which Miss Meadows's bed-cord is used instead
of a vine-stem. One of the most characteristic of Uncle Remus's
stories is that in which the rabbit proves to Miss Meadows and
the girls that the fox is his riding-horse. This is almost
identical with a story quoted by Mr. Smith, where the jaguar is
about to marry the deer's daughter. The cotia--a species of
rodent--is also in love with her, and he tells the deer that he
can make a riding-horse of the jaguar.
"Well," says the deer, "if you can make the jaguar carry you, you
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