Ch. 21: The Dying Huanaco - Page 2

rather than its huge and,
from an aesthetic point of view, deformed Asiatic relation. In habits it
is gregarious, and is usually seen in small herds, but herds numbering
several hundreds or even a thousand are occasionally met with on the
stony, desolate plateaus of Southern Patagonia; but the huanaco is able
to thrive and grow fat where almost any other herbivore would starve.
While the herd feeds one animal acts as sentinel, stationed on the
hillside, and on the appearance of danger utters a shrill neigh of
alarm, and instantly all take to flight. But although excessively shy
and wary they are also very inquisitive, and have enough intelligence to
know that a single horseman can do them no harm, for they will not only
approach to look closely at him, but will sometimes follow him for
miles. They are also excitable, and at times indulge in strange freaks.
Darwin writes:--"On the mountains of Tierra del Fuego I have more than
once seen a huanaco, on being approached, not only neigh and squeal, but
prance and leap about in a most ridiculous manner, apparently in
defiance as a challenge." And Captain King relates that while sailing
into Port Desire he witnessed a chase of a huanaco after a fox, both
animals evidently going at their greatest speed, so that they soon
passed out of sight. I have known some tame huanacos, and in that state
they make amusing intelligent pets, fond of being caressed, but often so
frolicsome and mischievous as to be a nuisance to their master. It is
well known that at the southern extremity of Patagonia the huanacos have
a dying place, a spot to which all individuals inhabiting the
surrounding plains repair at the approach of death to deposit their
bones. Darwin and Fitzroy first recorded this strange instinct in their
personal narratives, and their observations have since been fully
confirmed by others. The best known of these dying or burial-places are
on the banks of the Santa Cruz and Gallegos rivers, where the river
valleys are covered with dense primeval thickets of bushes and trees of
stunted growth; there the ground is covered with the bones of countless
dead generations. "The animals," says Darwin, "in most cases must have
crawled, before dying, beneath and among the bushes." A strange instinct
in a creature so preeminently social in its habits; a dweller all its
life long on the open, barren plateaus and mountain sides! What a
subject for a painter! The grey wilderness of dwarf thorn trees, aged
and grotesque and scanty-leaved, nourished for a thousand years on the
bones that whiten the stony ground at their roots; the interior lit
faintly with the rays of the departing sun, chill and grey, and silent
and motionless--the huanacos' Golgotha. In the long