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So much for llamas. Now the "guanaco." It is neither, but an animal of specific difference. It exists in a wild state in the high mountains, though, with great care and trouble, it can be domesticated and trained to carry burdens as well as its congener the llama. In form it resembles the latter, but, as is the case with most wild animals, the guanacos are all alike in colour.
"`We shall find them in there, muttered my companion, `that is their haunt. "Noble game are these guanacos large fine animals noble game as the red deer himself. They differ much from the vicunas. They herd only in small numbers, from six to ten or a dozen: while as many as four times this number of vicunas may be seen together.
The footsteps of the puma were to be seen almost everywhere on the banks of the river; and the remains of several guanacos, with their necks dislocated and bones broken, showed how they had met their death. Like the navigators of old when approaching an unknown land, we examined and watched for the most trivial sign of a change.
In this collection there are extinct species of all the thirty-two genera, excepting four, of the terrestrial quadrupeds now inhabiting the provinces in which the caves occur; and the extinct species are much more numerous than those now living: there are fossil ant-eaters, armadillos, tapirs, peccaries, guanacos, opossums, and numerous South American gnawers and monkeys, and other animals.
In the middle of summer cattle are brought up here to graze; but they had now all been removed: even the greater number of the guanacos had decamped, knowing well that if overtaken here by a snow-storm, they would be caught in a trap.
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