EXAGGERATED TALES. 69 



their young on their shoulders. The howling monkeys, 

 which live in society in different parts of America, every- 

 where resemble eacn other in their manners, though the 

 species are not always the same. The uniformity with 

 A\liichthe araguatos* perform their movements is extremely 

 striking. Whenever the branches of neighbouring trees do 

 not touch each other, the male who leads the party sus- 

 pends himself by the callous and prehensile part of his 

 tail ; and, letting fall the rest of his body, swings himself 

 till in one of his oscillations he reaches the neighbouriug 

 branch. The whole file performs the same movements on 

 the same spot. It is almost superfluous to add how dubious 

 is the assertion of Ulloa, and so many otherwise well- 

 informed travellers, according to whom, the marimondos,f 

 the araguatos, and other monkeys with a prehensile tail, 

 form a sort of chain, in order to reach the opposite side 

 of a river.J We had opportunities, during five years, of 

 observing thousands of these animals; and for this very 

 reason we place no confidence in statements possibly 

 invented by the Europeans themselves, though repeated by 

 the Indians of the Missions, as if they had been transmitted 

 to them by their fathers. Man, the most remote from civi- 

 lization, enjoys the astonishment he excites in recounting 

 the marvels of his country. He says he has seen what he 

 imagines may have been seen by others. Every savage is a 

 hunter, and the stories of hunters borrow from the imagi- 

 nation in proportion as the animals, of which they boast the 

 artifices, are endowed with a high degree of intelligence. 

 Hence arise the fictions of which foxes, monkeys, crows, 

 and the condor of the Andes, have been the subjects in both 

 hemispheres. 



The araguatos are accused of sometimes abandoning their 

 young, that they may be lighter for flight when pursued by 

 the Indian hunters. It is said that mothers have been seen 

 removing their young from their shoulders, and throwing 

 them down to the foot of the tree. I am inclined to believe 

 that a movement merely accidental has been mistaken for 



Simia ursina. t Simia belzebuth. 



% Ulloa has not hesitated to represent in an engraving this extraordi- 

 nary feat of the monkeys with a prehensile tail. See Viage 6 la America 

 Meridional (Madrid, 1748). 



