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Great areas of the Ordos region, now dry steppe, were traversed in that epoch by small rivers and lakes beside which men could live. There were elephants, rhinoceroses, extinct species of stag and bull, even tapirs and other wild animals. They are not, however, exactly like the European implements, but have a character of their own.
Indeed, in some parts there seemed a prospect of its becoming still more lively, for their little guide pointed out in soft places the footprints of tapirs and jaguars, which seemed to be quite fresh.
As compared with their early Tertiary representatives' some of our modern mammals have increased seven or eight-fold in brain-capacity. While the horses and tapirs and rhinoceroses were being gradually evolved from the primitive types, the Artiodactyl branch of the Ungulates the pigs, deer, oxen, etc. were also developing. We must dismiss them briefly.
We find ancestral tapirs in Europe and America during the Tertiary period, but the later cold has driven them to the warm swamps of Brazil and Malaysia. The rhinoceros has had a long and interesting history. From the primitive Hyrochinus of the Eocene, in which it is dimly foreshadowed, we pass to a large and varied family in the later periods.
In South America, allowing 1200 pounds for the two tapirs together, 550 for the guanaco and vicuna, 500 for three deer, 300 for the capybara, peccari, and a monkey, we shall have an average of 250 pounds, which I believe is overstating the result. With regard to the number of large quadrupeds, there certainly exists no quarter of the globe which will bear comparison with Southern Africa.
The Indian who had it said that he had killed a number of wild hogs with it and two tapirs. Appearances seemed to confirm what he had said; for on one side it had been nearly taken out to the bottom at different times, which probably would not have been the case had the first or second trial failed. Its strength was proved on a middle-sized dog.
After leaving Caceres we went up the Sepotuba, which in the local Indian dialect means River of Tapirs. This river is only navigable for boats of size when the water is high. It is a swift, fairly clear stream, rushing down from the Plan Alto, the high uplands, through the tropical lowland forest.
It is probable that they took rise earlier than their split-footed relations, and their Tertiary remains are far more numerous, but their tendency is toward disappearance, and among existing mammals they are represented only by horses, asses, rhinoceroses, and tapirs.
Tigers, tapirs, jaguars, boars, besides numberless lesser quadrupeds, issue out of these dark arches in the green wilderness, and cross the strip of sand which generally lies between it and the edge of the water, formed by the large space which is annually devastated and covered with shingle or mud, during the rise of the water in the rainy season.
Tapirs are hunted with canoes, as they dwell in thick jungle and take to the water when hounds follow them. In this region there were extensive papyrus-swamps and big lagoons, back from the river, and often the tapirs fled to these for refuge, throwing off the hounds.
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