Through the Heart of Patagonia

by H. Hesketh-Prichard

To begin with, I give the story of Dr. Moreno's discovery as he himself told it to the Zoological Society, and the description of the remains by Dr. A. Smith Woodward, LL.D., F.R.S.

I. Account of the Discovery. By Dr. Moreno.

In November 1897 I paid a visit to that part of the Patagonian territory which adjoins the Cordillera of the Andes, between the 51st and 52nd degrees of South latitude, where certain surveyors, under my direction, were carrying out the preliminary studies connected with the boundary-line between Chile and Argentina; and in the course of this expedition I reached Consuelo Cove, which lies in Last Hope Inlet. In that spot, hung up on a tree, I found a piece of a dried skin, which attracted my attention most strangely, as I could not determine to what class of Mammalia it could belong, more especially because of the resemblance of the small incrusted bones it contained to those of the Pampean Mylodon. On inquiring whence it came, I was informed that it was only a fragment of a large piece of skin which had been discovered two years before, by some Argentine officers, in a cavern which existed in the neighbouring heights. Immediately on receiving this news, I hastened to the spot, guided by a sailor who had been present when the original discovery had been made. As, at that moment, I had no means of making more than a few hurried excavations, which gave no further traces of the discovery, I left orders that the search should be continued after my departure; but this once more also failed to give any ultimate results. Nothing could be found but modern remains of small rodents, and these chiefly on or near the surface of the ground. From the most careful inquiries which I set on foot, it appeared that, when the first discovery was made, no bones were found, the skin being half buried in the dust which had accumulated from the gradual falling away of the roof of the cavern, composed of Tertiary Conglomerate. It was only in the broad entrance to the cavern that were found a few human bones, borne thence to the shore of the Cove and afterwards broken up.

As already stated, the skin here presented to you formed but a small part of a larger one. One small piece had been carried off by Dr. Otto Nordenskjöld, and others by officers of the Chilian Navy, who later on had visited the spot. The inhabitants of the locality looked upon it as an interesting curiosity, some of them believing that it was the hide of a cow incrusted with pebbles, and others asserting that it was the skin of a large Seal belonging to a hitherto unknown species.

In Consuelo Cove, I embarked on board a small Argentine transport, which had been placed at my disposal to carry out the study of the western coast as far as Port Montt, in lat. 42°. At this latter place I left the steamer, which then proceeded to make a series of surveys. These lasted until her return to La Plata, at the latter end of July 1898, when she brought back to me the fragment of skin in question.

This is an accurate and true version of the discovery of this skin, which gave rise to the publication of Señor Ameghino's small pamphlet,[33] in which he gave an account of the discovery of a living representative of the "Gravigrades" of Argentina, distinguishing it by the name of "Neomylodon listai".

I have an idea that Señor Ameghino never saw the skin itself, but only some of the small incrusted bones, of which he had obtained possession. The vague form in which he draws up his account compels me to believe this suspicion to be true.

My opinion is that this skin belongs to a genuine Pampean Mylodon, preserved under peculiar circumstances resembling those to which we owe the skin and feathers of the Moa. I have always maintained that the Pampean Edentates, now extinct, disappeared only in the epoch which is called the "historical epoch" of our America. In the province of Buenos Aires, buried chiefly in the humus, I have found remains of Panochthus, and others of the same Mylodon from the seashore, all of which present the same characteristic marks of preservation as the remains of human beings discovered in the same spot. In this identical layer of the sea-shore, close to the bones I have also found stones polished by the hand of man, and flints cut like those found in the Pampean formation. In 1884, in a cavern near to the Rio de los Patos, in the Cordillera, I discovered some paintings in red ochre, one of which, in my opinion, resembles the Glyptodon on account of the shape of the carapace.

Ancient chroniclers inform us that the indigenous inhabitants recorded the existence of a strange, ugly, huge hairy animal which had its abode in the Cordillera to the south of lat. 37°. The Tehuelches and the Gennakens have mentioned similar animals to me, of whose existence their ancestors had transmitted the remembrance; and in the neighbourhood of the Rio Negro, the aged cacique Sinchel, in 1875, pointed out to me a cave, the supposed lair of one of these monsters, called "Ellengassen"; but I must add that none of the many Indians with whom I have conversed in Patagonia have ever referred to the actual existence of animals to which we can attribute the skin in question, nor even of any which answer to the suppositions of Señor Ameghino according to Señor Lista. It is but rarely that a few Otters (Lutra) are found in the lakes and rivers of the Andes, as in the neighbourhood of Lake Argentino, in the "Sierra de las Viscachas," and in the regions which I believe Señor Lista visited, there are only a few scarce Chinchillas (Lagidium), which have a colouring more dark greyish than those found to the north, and are in every case separated from these by a large extent of country.