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Updated: May 29, 2025
Little we cared, as the canoe raced forward, with the tapir and the buck lying in the bottom, and a dry, comfortable camp ahead of us. When we reached camp, and Father Zahm saw the tapir, he reminded me of something I had completely forgotten.
If in spite of this precaution one should have a bad dream, he must cry out on awaking, "tapir, come eat, tapir, come eat"; when the tapir will swallow the dream, and no evil results will happen to the dreamer. Little Silver listened with both eyes and open mouth to this account of the tapir, and then making the picture and wrapping it around her pillow, she fell asleep.
It was impossible, with the wet wood, to make a fire sufficiently hot to dry all our soggy things, for the rain was still falling. A tapir was seen from our boat, but, as at the moment we were being whisked round in a complete circle by a whirlpool, I did not myself see it in time to shoot. Next morning we went down a kilometre, and then landed on the other side of the river.
Thus a fossil of much significance in this connection is Moeritherium, whose remains have been found in the rocks exposed in the Libyan desert, for this creature was practically a tapir, while at the same time its characters of muzzle and tusk mark it as very close to the ancestors of the larger woolly elephants of later geological times, when the trunk had grown considerably and the tusks had become greatly prolonged.
The tapir, the lobba and deer afford excellent food, and chiefly frequent the swamps and low ground near the sides of the river and creeks. In stating that four-footed animals are scarce, the peccari must be excepted. Three or four hundred of them herd together and traverse the wilds in all directions in quest of roots and fallen seeds. The Indians mostly shoot them with poisoned arrows.
His rounded body gives him some resemblance to a great hog, or a donkey with its hair shaved off; but, in fact, he is not very like either; he is more like a tapir than anything else that is, he is a creature sui generis.
But as soon as he has consumed his provisions, he then rouses himself and, like the lion, scours the forest in quest of food. He plunges into the river after the deer and tapir, and swims across it; passes through swamps and quagmires, and never fails to obtain a sufficient supply of food.
We have not in many cases so rich a collection of intermediate forms as in the case of the horse, but our fossil mammals are numerous enough to suggest a similar development of all the mammals of to-day. The primitive family which gave birth to the horse also gave us, as we saw, the tapir and the rhinoceros.
Two of them disappeared on the track of a tapir and we saw them no more; one of the others promptly fled when we came across the tracks of our game, and would not even venture after them in our company; the remaining one did not actually run away and occasionally gave tongue, but could not be persuaded to advance unless there was a man ahead of him.
A herd will attack a jaguar or puma, and even the sturdy tapir, without fear; and rushing at their antagonist with their sharp tusks, never fail to come off victorious. Knowing their power, the jaguar, when meeting a herd, flies through the forest to avoid them.
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