222 To the River Plate and Back 



six or seven languages, and would fill a large volume, if 

 brought together. 



Out of the affair came a better knowledge of Pata- 

 gonian lands and the perception of the fact that the 

 fauna of the Pampean beds had survived to some extent 

 to quite recent times ; at all events that one of the near 

 relatives of the Megatherium and the Mylodon had at 

 some remote period, perhaps within the Christian era, 

 been held in captivity, kept in corrals, fed with hay, and 

 used for food. In the case of the writer the most 

 interesting result was the acquisition for the Carnegie 

 Museum of a piece of the hide from the cave at Last 

 Hope Inlet, together with a lot of the hair and the dried 

 ordure of the "Mysterious Beast/ 



