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Updated: June 2, 2025
The gun went off, and the tapirs decamped; but one of them fell on the ground before it could enter the water; it was dead ere we reached it. "You have killed the object of your dread," said Lucien, who ran up to examine the curious animal. "Yes, Chanito, thanks to the enchanted bullets."
Tapirs gallop well, and their tough hide and wedge shape enable them to go at speed through very dense cover. They try to stamp on, and even to bite, a foe, but are only clumsy fighters. The tapir is a very archaic type of ungulate, not unlike the non- specialized beasts of the Oligocene.
"I also have lots of wild animals, and it was when some of my men were out after some tapirs, jaguars and leopards that I got on the track of the giants. It was about a year ago, but up to this time I haven't seen my way clear to send after the big men. It was this way:" Mr. Preston assumed a more comfortable position in his chair, nodded at Mr.
Rising in the grey dawn, I watered the horses, cooked a piece of ostrich meat, and started off on foot for a short distance to explore the country to the north, where I saw many indications that tapirs were numerous. My first sight of this peculiar animal of Paraguay I shall never forget. It resembles no other beast I have ever seen, but seems half elephant, with its muzzle like a short trunk.
In these vast Savannahs, intersected by marshes and virgin forests, the Spaniards encountered torrents of rain, which lasted quite two months; they found only a scattered population, who were not industrious and also hostile; in consequence, the invaders often suffered from hunger in a country where there were then neither horses nor oxen, where the largest quadrupeds were tapirs and llamas, and even the latter were seldom met with on this slope of the Andes.
They greeted these Indian relics as Crusoe did the footprints of the savages. Nor was it more reassuring to observe, among other callers like themselves who had left their visiting-cards at the doors since the departure of the proprietors, the sign-manual of jaguars and tapirs, whose footprints were plainly visible on the gravel.
Next morning there was to have been a great rodeo or round-up, and we determined to have a hunt first, as there were still several kinds of beasts of the chase, notably tapirs and peccaries, of which the naturalists desired specimens. Dom Joao, our host, and his son accompanied us. Theirs is a noteworthy family.
In the Miocene epoch, North America possessed Elephants, Horses, Rhinoceroses, and a great number and variety of Ruminants and Pigs, which are absent in the present indigenous fauna; Europe had its Apes, Elephants, Rhinoceroses, Tapirs, Musk-deer, Giraffes, Hyaenas, great Cats, Edentates, and Opossum-like Marsupials, which have equally vanished from its present fauna; and in Northern India, the African types of Hippopotamuses, Giraffes, and Elephants were mixed up with what are now the Asiatic types of the latter, and with Camels, and Semnopithecine and Pithecine Apes of no less distinctly Asiatic forms.
Near the lower end of the valley I passed a number of tapirs, and across the river saw a great sadok, the enormous double-horned progenitor of the modern rhinoceros. At the valley's end the cliffs upon the left ran out into the sea, so that to pass around them as I desired to do it was necessary to scale them in search of a ledge along which I might continue my journey.
Just look at the forest bordering the river. Think of trying to push through such a dense mass of over-grown jungle. And I bet it's just full of snakes, poisonous spiders, lizards and all such things." "Not to mention such trifling citizens as jaguars, ocelots, tapirs, alligators, crocodiles and their kind," laughed Frank.
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