The tiger spares no living creature; all it attacks, but with various fortune and success: for horses and mules, unless they save their lives by speedy flight, are generally overcome; asses, when they can gain a place where they may defend their backs, repel the assailant, by going round and round, and kicking very quickly for a long time; but in the open plain they seldom obtain a victory. Cows, trusting to their horns, defend themselves and their calves with the utmost intrepidity. Mares, on the contrary, at the approach of a tiger, desert their foals and take to flight. Antas lie down on their backs, await the advancing foe with expanded arms, and immediately on his assault squeeze him to death, if we may credit the testimony of the natives. Tigers' skins are used by the Abipones for breastplates, for horsecloths, for carpets, and for wrappers. In Spain, every skin is sold for four, and sometimes six German florens. In the hope of gain, a number of Spaniards join together in Paraguay, and go out to hunt tigers. A vast quantity of tigers' skins are yearly sent to Spain. In the city of Sta. Fè, I knew a Spaniard at first indigent, who, from this trade in skins, within a few years excited the envy of others by his opulence.
To the tiger kind belong two other wild beasts, but smaller, and not so ferocious. One of them is called by the Spaniards onza, the other by the Guaranies mbaracaya. These, though seldom offensive to other animals, often depopulate a whole henroost by night, but are seldom seen by day.
THE LION.
The Paraguayrian lions seem unworthy of so great a name; for they are quite unlike those of Africa in form, size, and disposition. They never attempt any thing against horses, oxen, and men, and are dreaded only by calves, foals, and sheep. The Paraguayrian lions suit well with the old Spanish saying, No es tan bravo el leon, como se pinta, the lion is not so fierce as his picture. You can scarce distinguish their flesh from veal, so that the Spaniards and Indians devour it with avidity. Their skin is tawny and spotted with white. Their head is large and round, their eyes sparkling, and nose flat. Their whiskers are composed of long hard hairs, like bristles, for I have handled them myself; but hear on what occasion. The guards of the estates, both Spaniards and Indians, had a custom of preserving the heads of the lions and tigers which they slew, fastened with stakes to the folds of the cattle, as testimonies of their vigilance and courage, in the same manner as the heads and hands of criminals are seen fixed to a pole in the place appointed for their punishment. In a certain estate I got up upon the hedges, examined the heads of the lions and tigers, of which there was an immense number, observed their eyes, ears, and teeth, and tore some hair out of the whiskers of the tigers, which resembled wire, were thick at the root, and endued with a kind of elastic property. I cannot understand why the Abipones do not rear the whelps of lions, as they reckon tigers' whelps a dainty, though they are never procured without danger. Before they are full grown they give proofs of their native ferocity, and with their little tender claws and teeth fly upon all they meet, especially in the heat of the sun. One man deprived a tiger's whelp of its teeth and claws, to prevent it from doing any mischief, but though destitute of its arms, it used to rush upon children and calves, and would certainly have crushed and strangled them, had they not been instantly rescued. That the danger might not increase as he grew up, he was forced to be shot.
THE WILD CAT.
In most of the woods you may see wild cats, differing from the domestic ones in our country in no other respect except that the extremity of the tail is flatter and more compressed, and that they are superior in size. They are also of various colours. The Indians eat them roasted, but being extremely swift and shy, they are not killed without difficulty. We had a young cat in the town of Conception, born of a tame mother and a wild father, than which I never saw a larger or handsomer, or one more ferocious and fugitive.
THE ANTA, OR THE GREAT BEAST.
The more secluded woods towards the north are the haunts of this animal, which the Spaniards call the Anta, or La gran bestia. In size it resembles a full grown ass: in shape, if you except its eyes, head, and feet, a pig. It has rather short ears, inclining towards the forehead, very sharp teeth and lips, like those of a calf, the upper part of which somewhat resembles a proboscis, and is thrust forward by the animal when he is angry. The fore feet are cloven into two hollow nails, the hind feet into three. A smooth unhairy appendage supplies the place of a tail. The skin is of a tawny colour and extremely thick, on which account it is dried in the air by the Spaniards and Abipones, and used for a breast-plate to ward off the blows of swords and arrows, but is penetrable to shot and to spears. This beast flies the sight of man, though possessed of such extraordinary strength as, when caught with a rope, to drag along with him in his flight both horse and rider. It generally sleeps in the day-time, and by night, wandering up and down the recesses of the woods, feeds upon herbs; it frequently betrays itself by the rustling noise it makes in breaking the branches of shrubs and trees as it walks about the woods. The Indians who inhabit the woods lay traps, made of stakes, to catch the antas, or concealing themselves in some thicket, imitate the sound of their voices, and pierce the beasts on their arrival with arrows; for their flesh, either fresh or hardened by the air, is continually eaten by the savages, though its toughness renders it rather unpalatable. In the stomach of the anta lies a pouch, which is often found to contain a number of bezoar stones, scarce bigger than a hazle-nut, not oblong nor oval, but polygonous, and of the colour of ashes or lead. These are thought by physicians superior to the bezoar stones supplied by other beasts, and more efficacious as medicine. Arapotiyu, the young Indian whom I brought from the woods of Mbaeverà, which the savages call the country of the antas, gave me a heap of these bezoar stones:—"Take, father," said he, "these most salutary little stones, which I have collected from the antas I have killed." On my inquiring what virtue they attributed to them, and how they were used in the woods, he replied—"Whenever we are seized with a malignant heat, we rub our limbs with these antas' stones, after warming them at the fire, and receive immediate relief." This use of the bezoar stone I submit to the judgment of physicians, for it must be confessed I never made trial of its virtues. The nails of antas are much esteemed by the Spaniards, as remedies for ill-health, and worn by them as amulets, to defend them from noxious airs: they are said to be sold in the druggists' shops in Europe, for various medicinal purposes, especially for persons afflicted with epilepsy, small-pox, and measles, as is related by Woytz in his Medico-physical Thesaurus, where he affirms that antas are often afflicted with epilepsy or the falling-sickness, and that, to relieve the pain, they rub the left ear with the nail of the fore foot. The truth of the fact must be looked to by those who have affirmed it, and have hazarded the assertion that the anta is called by the Germans elendthier, the miserable beast, because it is subject to epilepsy. But in reality it was called by the old Germans elck, by the Greeks αλκη, and by the Latins alx or alce. As it appears from all writers, that elks are horned in the northern countries of Europe, and as I myself saw, that those in Paraguay have no horns, I began to doubt whether they were not a different animal altogether, and only bore the same name on account of some similitude.
I do not agree with those who call elks equi-cervi, mongrel creatures born of a stag and a mare. This cannot be imagined for a moment of the Paraguayrian antas, which inhabit the roughest and most rugged forests, not only unknown but almost inaccessible both to horses and stags. The antas choose plains full one hundred leagues distant, where they can never meet with either of those animals. However this may be, I advise giving credit to those who, in the present age, have written more fully on natural history from authority.