IV. Note concerning Tehuelche Legends.
By Hesketh Prichard.
I now proceed to give the testimony of Dr. F. Ameghino, whose brother Carlos was well acquainted with the country and who early gave it as his opinion that the animal, which is named the Neomylodon listai, was still living in Patagonia. In support of his opinion he adduced tales which Carlos Ameghino had gathered from the Indians, who roam the pampas, of a vast mysterious beast said by them to haunt the distant lagoons and forests of the unexplored regions near the Andes. These stories had, moreover, been confirmed in Dr. Ameghino's opinion by the experience of the late well-known geographer and traveller, Señor Ramon Lista, who verbally told both Dr. Ameghino and his brother that he had seen and fired at a mysterious creature, which, however, disappeared in the brushwood and could not afterwards be traced. He described it as being covered with reddish-grey hair, and he believed it to be a pangolin or scaly-anteater.[65] Taking all things into consideration, Dr. Ameghino announced his conviction that the mysterious animal referred to was the last representative of a group, long believed extinct, related to the Mylodon.
According to Dr. Ameghino the Indians had bestowed upon the mysterious animal the name of Iemisch. Nothing would induce them to penetrate into the supposed haunts of this monster. It was described as amphibious, equally at home on land or in the water; in remote mountain recesses it lurked in caves, or had its lairs by the shores of lonely lagoons and rivers, or at times lay in wait among the lower passes of the Cordillera. In habits it was nocturnal, and its strength so great that it could seize a horse in its claws, and hold itself down to the bottoms of the lakes! The head was supposed to be short and without external ears, but showing enormous dog-teeth: the feet short and bear-like, armed with formidable claws united by a swimming membrane; the long tail, tapering and prehensile, the hair hard and of a uniform yellowish-brown. In size it far exceeded any creature they knew of, its legs, though short, being almost as great in girth as its body. It followed, naturally that narratives of personal experiences and encounters with this terrific animal were varied.
These data, it must be confessed, were bewildering. In fact, as described by the Indians the Iemisch was scientifically absurd; but the Indian is like a child in many ways and would naturally endow a creature he feared with extraordinary attributes.
I will quote here an extract from Winwood Reade's "Savage Africa," one of the finest books of travel ever written.
"It must be laid down as a general principle that man can originate nothing; that lies are always truths embellished, distorted, or turned inside out. There are other facts beside those which lie on the surface, and it is the duty of the traveller and the historian to sift and wash the gold-grains of truth from the dirt of fable.... It is true that some of the ancient myths have been sobered down to natural beings. The men with dogs' heads of whom Herodotus speaks are the barking baboons which I saw in Senegal: the men with their head under their shoulders, their eyes in their breast, are the ill-formed negroes, whose shoulders are shrugged up, and whose heads drop on their breasts: the mermaids of the Arab tales are the sea-cows of the African rivers, which have feminine dugs and a face almost human in expression: the huge serpent which opposed the army of Regulus is now well known as the python: the burning mountains which Hanno saw, and the sounds of the lutes which were believed to proceed from the strife of the elements, are only caused by the poor negroes burning the grass of their hill-tops: the music being that of their flutes, as I have heard it often in those long and silent African nights far away.
"Incredulity has now become so vulgar a folly, that one is almost tempted, out of simple hatred for a fashion, to run into the opposite extreme. However, I shall content myself with citing evidence respecting certain unknown, fabulous and monstrous animals of Africa, without committing myself to an opinion one way or the other; preserving only my conviction that there is always a basis of truth to the most fantastic fables, and that, by rejecting without inquiry that which appears incredible, one throws away ore in which others might have found a jewel. A traveller should believe nothing, for he will find himself so often deceived: and he should disbelieve nothing, for he will see so many wonderful things; he should doubt, he should investigate, and then, perhaps, he may discover."
It was in this spirit that I set out for the interior of Patagonia. Although the legends of the Indians were manifestly to a large extent the result of imaginative exaggeration, yet I hoped to find a substratum of fact below these fancies. After thorough examination, however, I am obliged to say that I found none. The Indians not only never enter the Cordillera but avoid the very neighbourhood of the mountains. The rumours of the Iemisch and the stories concerning it, which, in print, had assumed a fairly definite form, I found nebulous in the extreme when investigated on the spot.
Finally, after much investigation I came to the conclusion that the Indian legends in all probability refer to some large species of otter. Musters, in his book "At Home with the Patagonians," makes mention of an animal much feared by the tribe with whom he travelled, which they called "water-tiger," and which they said lived in a rapid and deep river near to Nahuel-huapi, a lake the name of which lends colour to the tale, for it means Tigers' Island. Musters says he himself saw two ostriches, that, being considered in too poor a condition to be worth taking to camp for food, were left on the bank of the river referred to, torn and partly devoured when on the following day he and his party revisited the spot. Tracks of an animal were also plainly visible leading down into the water.
Compare this with a story told me by Mr. Von Plaaten Hallermund. He described the case of a mule which had fallen over a precipice in the vicinity of the River Deseado. When on the following day the peones climbed down to salve its cargo, they found the animal on the edge of the water half eaten, and in its neighbourhood were tracks strange to them. "Like those of a puma, yet not those of a puma," as they said.
The manager of Messrs. Braun and Blanchard's store at Santa Cruz gave me a description of a skin brought in by Indians which, though not a puma-skin, was quite as large as the skin of the common silver-grey puma generally is. I myself saw a very large otter in the River Senguerr, but unluckily had not my rifle with me, and although I returned as quickly with it as I could, all trace of the otter had vanished.
Taking into consideration the amphibious nature attributed by the Indians to the Iemisch, there seems to be little reason to doubt that the real animal underlying the rumours of a mysterious monster is a sub-species of the large Brazilian otter (Lutra brasiliensis).
To return to the possible survival of the Mylodon, as far as our travels led us both north and south on the eastern side of the Cordillera, we could discover no trace whatever either by hearsay or from the evidence of our own experience to warrant the supposition that it continues to exist to the present day. But there are hundreds of square miles of dense forest still unexplored along the whole length of the Patagonian Andes, and I do not undertake to declare positively that no such animal exists in some unknown and hidden spot among their recesses. Roughly speaking, there are many thousand square miles of snowy summits, ravines, high plateaus and valleys in this region. The task of finding a final answer to the Mylodon problem on the drag-net principle of passing to and fro throughout the whole district would be so gigantic and prolonged where the natural difficulties are great, as to be practically impossible. Such an answer must be left to time and the slow process of things. In the meanwhile I can merely state my own conviction that the odds are very heavily against the chances of such a survival. The probable habitat of the Mylodon would naturally be the forests. I penetrated these in more than one direction, and one of the most striking characteristics of the forests was the absence of animal life, evidence of which grew less and less the farther we forced our way into their depths. It is a matter of common knowledge that, where the larger forms of life are to be found, there also a liberal catalogue of lesser creatures co-exist. The conditions which favour the life of the greater favour also the existence of the less. This is presumptive evidence only, and though it has certainly influenced my own conclusions, I do not wish to force it upon others. I have stated the case as fairly as I can, and I leave my readers to form their own opinions.
APPENDIX B
On a new Form of Puma from Patagonia.
By Oldfield Thomas, F.R.S.
The National Collection owes to the generosity of Mr. C. Arthur Pearson the skin of a fine puma, obtained by Mr. Hesketh Prichard during the recent Daily Express expedition to Patagonia. The skin is remarkably unlike any known form of puma, and appears certainly to represent a new sub-species.
Dr. Matschie has already shown[66] that the red puma of the tropics to which he restricts the name Felis concolor, is replaced south of 25° S. lat. by the silver-grey form for which Molina's name, F. puma, is used.
Now, again, south of about 44° S. lat., there proves to be another form, represented in the British Museum not only by Mr. Prichard's skin from Santa Cruz, but by a second much younger specimen from the Rio Senguerr. Both show the same characteristics, and are equally different from the Argentine silver-grey form.
In commemoration of Mr. Pearson's scientific spirit in sending out the expedition, and in presenting the specimen to the National Museum, I would propose to call it
Felis concolor Pearsoni, sub-sp. n.
General build thick and sturdy, with comparatively short limbs and tail. Fur thick and woolly, the specimens evidently in winter pelage. General colour nearest to Ridgway's "clay-colour," therefore exceedingly different from the nearly "drab-grey" of F. c. puma. This colour is most vivid along the back, paler laterally on the sides, but there is nothing that can be called a distinct dorsal dark line. Undersurface whitish-fawn, the hairs sandy at their bases, whiter terminally. Face very much like back, darker markings practically obsolete; the usual lighter markings near the eye present but not conspicuous. Ears of normal length, their backs uniformly whitish-fawn, without darker markings. Outer sides of limbs like back, inner sides like belly; ends of fingers and toes whitish, without any darker markings round the pads. Tail proportionally very short, brownish clay-colour above, whitish below, the tip not or scarcely darker.
Dimensions of the typical skin, which has been tanned and stretched, so that the measurements are merely approximate:—Head and body 1370 millim., tail 530, ear 80.
Hab. Santa Cruz, Patagonia; about 70 miles inland.
Type. Female. B.M. No. 1. 8. 12. 1. Brought home by Mr. H. Prichard and presented by Mr. C. Arthur Pearson.
The skin was bought by Mr. Prichard from Indians in the region mentioned, so that neither flesh-measurements nor skull were obtained.
The second skin is that of a young male, killed on the Senguerr River, in March 1897, by one of the collectors from the La Plata Museum, by whom it was presented to the British Museum. Owing to its youth, its peculiarities had not been previously noticed.
F. c. Pearsoni is distinguished from F. c. puma not only by its very different general colour, but also by its shorter tail, light-coloured ear-backs, and the absence of the dark markings round the digital pads.