Ch. 21: The Dying Huanaco

Lest any one should misread the title to this chapter, I hasten to say
that the huanaco, or guanaco as it is often spelt, is not a perishing
species; nor, as things are, is it likely to perish soon, despite the
fact that civilized men, Britons especially, are now enthusiastically
engaged in the extermination of all the nobler mammalians:--a very
glorious crusade, the triumphant conclusion of which will doubtless be
witnessed by the succeeding generation, more favoured in this respect
than ours. The huanaco, happily for it, exists in a barren, desolate
region, in its greatest part waterless and uninhabitable to human
beings; and the chapter-heading refers to a singular instinct of the
dying animals, in very many cases allowed, by the exceptional conditions
in which they are placed, to die naturally.

And first, a few words about its place in nature and general habits. The
huanaco is a small camel--small, that is, compared with its existing
relation--without a hump, and, unlike the camel of the Old World,
non-specializad; doubtless it is a very ancient animal on the earth, and
for all we know to the contrary, may have existed contemporaneously with
some of the earliest known representatives of the camel type, whose
remains occur in the lower and upper miocene deposits--Poebrotherium,
Protolabis, Procamelus, Pliauchenia, and Macrauchenia. It ranges from
Tierra del Fuego and the adjacent islands, northwards over the whole of
Patagonia, and along the Andes into Peru and Bolivia. On the great
mountain chain it is both a wild and a domestic animal, since the llama,
the beast of burden of the ancient Peruvians, is no doubt only a
variety: but as man's slave it has changed so greatly from the original
form that some naturalists have regarded the llama as a distinct
species, which, like the camel of the East, exists only in a domestic
state. It has had time enough to vary, as it is more than probable that
the tamed and useful animal was inherited by the children of the sun
from races and nations that came before them: and how far back Andean
civilization extends may be inferred from the belief expressed by the
famous American archaeologist, Squiers, that the ruined city of
Tiahuanaco, in the vicinity of Lake Titicaca, is as old as Thebes and
the Pyramids.

It is, however, with the wild animal, the huanaco, that I am concerned.
A full-grown male measures seven to eight feet in length, and four feet
high to the shoulder; it is well clothed in a coat of thick woolly hair,
of a pale reddish colour, Longest and palest on the under parts. In
appearance it is very unlike the camel, in spite of the long legs and
neck; in its finely-shaped head and long ears, and its proud and
graceful carriage, it resembles an antelope