CHAPTER XV 



A MYSTERIOUS BEAST 



"Then Brown he read a paper, and he reconstructed there, 

 From those same bones an animal, that was extremely rare." 



Bret Harte. 



FOR many years it had been rumored in Argentina 

 that there existed in the unexplored wilds a strange 

 animal, to which the Indians gave the name of Yemisch. 

 It was said to haunt the margins of streams, to have 

 webbed feet, a long tail, and to be endowed with incred- 

 ible ferocity. It was reported to attack men and cattle 

 when they were crossing streams. It had, so it was 

 affirmed, the habit of eviscerating its prey, and the 

 narrators told how after the fearful act the entrails of 

 its victims might be seen rising from the bloody water 

 and floating on the surface. Certain spots were pointed 

 out as being dangerous, because the brute was said to 

 have its lair in their neighborhood, and these places 

 were shunned by the natives. Nobody could be found 

 who had ever seen it, but many averred that they had 

 heard of it from those who had seen it. The eye- 

 witnesses of its atrocities were Indians, or deceased 

 wives* uncles, or maternal grandparents- 'the dear 

 departed. ' Nobody had ever succeeded in running 

 the beast to cover, or in the spirit of a modern Hercules 

 slain it in combat; but by camp fires, at the meetings 

 of sportsmen in their clubs, and in the homes of the 



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