TREE LIFE IN GENERAL, AND MONKEYS IN PARTICULAR.
The world has scarcely seen a worthier traveller or better naturalist than Charles Waterton. In an eminent degree he possessed the qualities essential to the study of the animal world. A good eye, a sympathy with moving nature, untiring patience, and a contempt for the comfortable and luxurious things of the earth—endued with these qualities, he had the necessary parts of a man who was sure to observe and note the admirable works of the Creator. His “Wanderings” in North and South America contain original descriptions of the objects to be seen in that magnificent continent, which have never been surpassed for their clearness and distinctness. In this volume we shall only refer to a few of his notes, which have more particular reference to those animals whose lives, like the monkeys, are spent more or less in the branches or under the leaves of the sheltering trees, the monarchs of the stupendous forests. Of Guiana he writes that four-footed animals are scarce there, considering how very thinly the forests are inhabited by man. The leopard, who is very much in the trees, and is called there a tiger, is found, and so are tiger-cats, fiercest and cruellest of all the feline race. The red monkey, erroneously called the baboon, is heard there oftener than he is seen; while the common brown monkey, the bisa, and sacawinki rove from tree to tree and amuse the stranger as he journeys. In the trees, too, you will see the polecat, the opossum, and now and then you will find a porcupine on a branch above your head. To some readers the famous story of the Coon may not be known, so we will tell it. An American colonel had become very famous for his skill in shooting the opossum, and it was said that the knowledge of his prowess had extended even to the animals he shot so well. It is very difficult for a novice to shoot opossum, because they lie upon the branch so closely to it, that it is with great difficulty an unpractised observer can see the animal. Nevertheless, the marksman became so known to the coons, as opossum are vulgarly called, that they gave themselves up as lost directly they espied him on their trail. “Is that you, colonel?” “Yes,” would reply the great shot. “Then I’ll come down,” rejoined the coon, who thought it more prudent to be taken captive and have a chance hereafter of escape, than to be shot there and then to death by the unerring tube of the colonel’s rifle.
Now listen to Mr. Waterton, as he describes that extraordinary animal, the sloth:—
“This, too, is the native country of the sloth. His looks, his gestures, and his cries, all conspire to entreat you to take pity on him. These are the only weapons of defence which nature hath given him. While other animals assemble in herds, or in pairs range through these boundless wilds, the sloth is solitary, and almost stationary; he cannot escape from you. It is said, his piteous moans make the tiger relent, and turn out of the way. Do not, then, level your gun at him, or pierce him with a poisoned arrow; he has never hurt one living creature. A few leaves, and those of the commonest and coarsest kind, are all he asks for his support. On comparing him with other animals, you would say that you could perceive deficiency, deformity, and superabundance in his composition. He has no cutting teeth, and, though four stomachs, he still wants the long intestines of ruminating animals. He has only one inferior aperture, as in birds. He has no soles to his feet, nor has he the power of moving his toes separately. His hair is flat, and puts you in mind of grass withered by the wintry blast. His legs are too short; they appear deformed by the manner in which they are joined to the body; and when he is on the ground, they seem as if only calculated to be used in climbing trees. He has forty-six ribs, while the elephant has only forty; and his claws are disproportionately long. Were you to mark down, upon a graduated scale, the different claims to superiority amongst the four-footed animals, this poor ill-formed creature’s claim would be last upon the lowest degree. His native haunts have hitherto been little known, and probably little looked into. Those who have written on this singular animal have remarked that he is in a perpetual state of pain, that he is proverbially slow in his movements, that he is a prisoner in space, and that as soon as he has consumed all the leaves of the tree upon which he had mounted, he rolls himself up in the form of a ball, and then falls to the ground. This is not the case.
“If the naturalists who have written the history of the sloth had gone into the wilds, in order to examine his haunts and economy, they would not have drawn the foregoing conclusions; they would have learned, that though all other quadrupeds may be described while resting on the ground, the sloth is an exception to this rule, and that his history must be written while he is in the tree.
“This singular animal is destined by nature to be produced, to live, and to die in the trees; and to do justice to him, naturalists must examine him in this his upper element. He is a scarce and solitary animal, and being good food, he is never allowed to escape. He inhabits remote and gloomy forests, where snakes take up their abode, and where cruelly-stinging ants and scorpions, and swamps, and innumerable thorny shrubs and bushes, obstruct the steps of civilised man. Were you to draw your own conclusions from the descriptions which have been given of the sloth, you would probably suspect that no naturalist has actually gone into the wilds with the fixed determination to find him out and examine his haunts, and see whether nature has committed any blunder in the formation of this extraordinary creature, which appears to us so forlorn and miserable, so ill put together, and so totally unfit to enjoy the blessings which have been so bountifully given to the rest of animated nature; for, as it has formerly been remarked, he has no soles to his feet, and he is evidently ill at ease when he tries to move on the ground, and it is then that he looks up in your face with a countenance that says, ‘Have pity on me, for I am in pain and sorrow.’
“It mostly happens that Indians and negroes are the people who catch the sloth, and bring it to the white man: hence it may be conjectured that the erroneous accounts we have hitherto had of the sloth have not been penned down with the slightest intention to mislead the reader, or give him an exaggerated history, but that these errors have naturally arisen by examining the sloth in those places where nature never intended that he should be exhibited.