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Updated: July 29, 2025
In his wanderings he had come upon a huge tapir, half eaten by a tiger, and saw footprints of that lord of the forest in all directions. Let me here say, that to our hunter we were indebted for many a good dish, and when not after game he lured from the depths of the lake many a fine perch or turbot. Fishing is an art in which I am not very skilled, but one evening I borrowed his line.
Wood for firing and water were to be had close by; they were also well provided with smoked flesh of a tapir they had slaughtered a day or two before, so that they could afford to rest for a time in so comfortable a shelter.
Though he found no foot-prints, it was easy to trace the couple, because avocados were springing up from seeds that the woman spat out as she journeyed on. At the edge of the earth he caught the tapir and killed him; yet the creature's shadow arose from the body and kept on its flight with the wife. Straightforth she leaped into the blue vast, and there she hangs, only we call her the Pleiades.
At this stage there was what to the eye of fancy looks like a bold attempt to grow a nose in the case of a tapir, but it miscarried. These hoofed beasts are all very hard up for something in the way of a hand to bring their food to their mouths.
It is an open country, producing a coarse grass and interspersed with clumps of trees. The banks have some wood on them, but it appears stinted and crooked, like that on the bleak hills in England. The tapir frequently plunged into the river; he was by no means shy, and it was easy to get a shot at him on land.
In the cave he made her a second couch, and tended her assiduously. He made a fire on the floor and kept it burning night and day, and supplied her with water to drink and fresh leaves for her foot. There was little more that he could do. From the choicest and fattest bits of toasted tapir flesh he offered her she turned away with disgust.
There were none of the bovine tribe, as the buffalo and musk-ox of North America; and no large deer, as the elk and moose of the Northern latitudes. The deer of South America, of which there are several undescribed species, are all small animals. The tapir, then, in point of size takes precedence in the South-American fauna.
The common parent will have had in its whole organisation much general resemblance to the tapir and to the horse; but in some points of structure may have differed considerably from both, even perhaps more than they differ from each other.
"It made for the water, just a few feet from the bow of our canoe. The chief and I fired at the same time. I thought my bullet took effect, and so thought the chief did his; but the tapir, seeming not to heed the shots, plunged into the stream, and went under. "The next moment the whole string of dyed dogs came sweeping out of the thicket, and leaped forward to where the game had disappeared.
Its long proboscis-like snout, its stiff-maned neck, and clumsy hog-like body, render the tout ensemble of this creature so peculiar, that there is no mistaking it for any other animal. "When full-grown, the tapir, or anta, as it is sometimes called, is six feet in length by four in height its weight being nearly equal to that of a small bullock.
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