SINGULAR LEGENDS. 271 



monkey of America. There are certain regions where this 

 belief is particularly prevalent among the people ; such are 

 the banks of the Upper Orinoco, the valley of TJpar near 

 the lake of Maracaybo, the mountains of Santa Martha and 

 of Merida, the provinces of Quixos, and the banks of the 

 Amazon near Tomependa. In all these places, so distant 

 one from the other, it is asserted that the salvage is easily 

 recognized by the traces of its feet, the toes of which are 

 turned backward. But if there exist a monkey of a large 

 size in the New Continent, how has it happened that for 

 three centuries no man worthy of belief has been able to 

 procure the skin of one ? Several hypotheses present them- 

 selves to the mind, in order to explain the source of so 

 ancient an error or belief. Has the famous capuchin mon- 

 key of Esmeralda (Simia chiropotes), with its long canine 

 teeth, and physiognomy much more like man's* than that 

 of the orang-otang, given rise to the fable of the salvage ? 

 It is not so large indeed as the coaita (Simia paniscus) ; 

 but when seen at the top of a tree, and the head only 

 visible, it might easily be taken for a human being. It may 

 be also (and this opinion appears to me the most probable) 

 that the * man of the woods ' was one of those large bears, 

 the footsteps of which resemble those of a man, and which 

 are believed in every country to attack women. The animal 

 killed in my time at the foot of the mountains of Merida, 

 and sent, by the name of salvaje, to Colonel Ungaro, the 

 governor of the province of Varinas, was in fact a bear with 

 black and smooth fur. Our fellow-traveller, Don Nicolas 

 Soto, had examined it closely. Did the strange idea of a 

 plantigrade animal, the toes of which are placed as if it 

 walked backward, take its origin from the haoit of the real 

 savages of the woods, the Indians of the weakest and most 

 timid tribes, of deceiving their enemies, when they enter 

 a forest, or cross a sandy shore, by covering the traces of 

 their feet with sand, or walking backward ? 



Though I have expressed my doubts of the existence of 

 an unknown species of large monkey in a continent which 

 appears entirely destitute of quadrumanous animals of the 

 family of the orangs, cynocepnali, mandrils, and pongos ; yet 



* The whole of the features the expression of the physiognomy ; but 

 not the forehead. 



