CONDOR. 319 



ascribed to this cowardly Vulture the strength, courage, and raptorial 

 habits of an Eagle, and even in a higher degree, thus doing him the 

 honor to represent him as formidable to every living creature, and the 

 dreaded enemy of man himself. Desmarchais improves if possible upon 

 these stories, giving the Condor still greater size and strength, and stat- 

 ing that it is well known to carry off in its prodigious talons a hind, or 

 even a heifer, with as much ease as an Eagle would a rabbit ! Such a 

 creature could not of course dwell in forests, for how could it among 

 trees display its enormous wings ? They were therefore limited to 

 savannahs and open grounds. Antonio de Solis, Sloane in the Philoso- 

 phical Transactions, and even the learned La Condamine, who saw the 

 bird himself, and certainly witnessed no such exploits as had been 

 related of it, indulged in wild theories depending on popular tales and 

 superstitions. The obscurity created by so much misrepresentation 

 could not however conceal its true Vulture-like nature from the acute- 

 ness of Ray, who pointed out its appropriate place in the system. His 

 opinion was adopted by Brisson and Linn^, and it became among natu- 

 ralists generally a settled point, notwithstanding the eloquently expressed 

 doubts of Buffon, who wanted rather on account of its supposed great 

 strength and agility to elevate the Condor to the rank of an Eagia, 

 these qualities not permitting him to degrade it so low as the Vultures. 

 But a still greater error of the French Pliny, as he may be on every 

 account so appositely styled, was to consider the Condor as not peculiar 

 to America, but as a genuine cosmopolite, of which happily there were 

 but few, however, for otherwise the human race would not have been 

 able to stand against them. But it was only in its imaginary character 

 that the Condor of Buifon was truly cosmopolite, having no other exist- 

 ence than what was based upon absurd and ridiculous fictions gathered 

 in all parts of the globe ; for no living bird could be placed in competi- 

 tion with one for whose powers of flight distance was no impediment, 

 and whose strength and swiftness united would have rendered him lord 

 of creation. 



We should, however, make some allowance for the credulity of our 

 forefathers, in believing upon the reports of weak or lying travellers all 

 the romantic and extravagant tales related of this wondrous Condor. 

 They had not, as we have, the means of personally ascertaining the 

 sober truth. But it is almost incredible, and remarkably illustrates the 

 force of preconceived opinions, that in the year 1830, a traveller could 

 be found with assurance enough to impose upon us, and journals, even 

 of respectable standing, to copy as positive and authentic, a description 

 of a Condor of moderate size, just killed, and actually lying before the 

 narrator, so large that a single quill-feather was twenty good paces long ! 

 This indeed might have lifted an Elephant, and it is quite unfortunate 

 that Peru and Chili should no longer produce them for prey for such a 



