LITMIR.BIZ

      Published by Good Press, 2021

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      EAN 4057664592811

Table of Contents

       INTRODUCTION

       CHAPTER I PATAGONIA

       CHAPTER II SOUTHWARD HO!

       CHAPTER III THE BATTLE OF THE HORSES

       CHAPTER IV THE BATTLE OF THE HORSES—(continued)

       CHAPTER V THE RIVER VALLEYS

       CHAPTER VI MANNERS AND CUSTOMS OF THE TEHUELCHES

       CHAPTER VII TEHUELCHE METHODS OF HUNTING

       CHAPTER VIII THE KINGDOM OF THE WINDS

       CHAPTER IX ROUND AND ABOUT LAKE BUENOS AIRES

       CHAPTER X THE GORGE OF THE RIVER DE LOS ANTIGUOS

       CHAPTER XI SOME HUNTING CAMPS

       CHAPTER XII BACK TO CIVILISATION

       CHAPTER XIII JOURNEY TO LAKE ARGENTINO

       CHAPTER XIV THE DOWN-STREAM NAVIGATION OF THE RIVER LEONA

       CHAPTER XV A HARD STRUGGLE

       CHAPTER XVI WILD CATTLE

       CHAPTER XVII ON THE FIRST ATTITUDE OF WILD ANIMALS TOWARDS MAN

       CHAPTER XVIII [27] THE LARGER MAMMALS OF PATAGONIA

       CHAPTER XIX FIRST PASSING THROUGH HELLGATE

       CHAPTER XX DISCOVERY OF THE RIVER KATARINA AND LAKE PEARSON

       CHAPTER XXI HOMEWARD

       A FEW WORDS ABOUT THE FUTURE OF PATAGONIA

       APPENDIX A

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

       II. Description and Comparison of the Specimen. By A. Smith Woodward .

       III. Description of Additional Discoveries. By A. Smith Woodward . [39]

       APPENDIX B On a new Form of Puma from Patagonia. By Oldfield Thomas , F.R.S.

       APPENDIX C LIST OF PLANTS. [67] By James Britten, F.L.S., and A. B. Rendle, M.A., D.Sc.

       GLOSSARY

       INDEX

INTRODUCTION

       Table of Contents

      Patagonia is a country about which little is known to the world in general, books dealing with it being few and far between, while the aspect of that quaint tail of South America and its wild denizens has practically never before been pictorially brought under the eye of the public. The following pages have been written with the idea of familiarising my readers with the conditions of life in Patagonia, and of reproducing as strongly as possible the impressions we gathered during our journey through regions most interesting and varied, and, as regards a certain portion of them, hitherto unvisited and unexplored.

      The original motive with which these travels were undertaken lay in a suggestion that a couple of years ago created a considerable stir amongst many besides scientific people, namely, that the prehistoric Mylodon might possibly still survive hidden in the depths of the forests of the Southern Andes. In a lecture delivered on June 21, 1900, before the Zoological Society, Professor E. Ray Lancaster, the Director of the British Museum of Natural History, said: "It is quite possible—I don't want to say more than that—that he (the Mylodon) still exists in some of the mountainous regions of Patagonia." Mr. Pearson, the proprietor of the Daily Express, most generously financed the Expedition in the interests of science, and entrusted me with the task of sifting all the evidence for or against the chances of survival obtainable on the spot.

      During the whole time I spent in Patagonia I came upon no single scrap of evidence of any kind which would support the idea of the survival of the Mylodon. I hoped to have found the Indian legends of some interest in this connection, and I took the utmost pains to sift most thoroughly all stories and rumours that could by any means be supposed to refer to any unknown animal. Of this part of the subject I have given a full account elsewhere.

      There then remained to us but one thing more to do, and that was to examine as far as we could—I will not say the forests of the Andes, for they are primeval forests, dense and heavily grown, and, moreover, cover hundreds of square miles of unexplored country—but the nature of these forests, so as to be able to come to some conclusion on the point under discussion. This we did, with the result that I personally became convinced—and my opinion was shared by my companions—that the Mylodon does not survive in the depths of the Andean forests. For there is a singular absence of animal life in the forests. The deeper we penetrated, the less we found. It is a well-known fact that, where the larger forms of animal life exist, a number of the lesser creatures are to be found co-existing with them, the conditions favouring the life of the former equally conducing to the welfare of the latter.

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