078 THE TROPICAL WORLD. 



In the province of Huarochirin there is a large natural 

 funnel-shaped excavation, about sixty feet deep, with a diameter 

 of about eighty feet at the top. A dead mule is placed on the 

 brink of the precipice. The tugging of the condors at the 

 dead carciise causes it to fall into the hole ; they follow 

 it with greedy haste, and having gorged themselves with food, 

 are unable again to rise from the narrow bottom of the funnel. 

 In a somewhat similar manner condors are caught in Peru, 

 Bolivia, and Chili, and are frequently brought to Valparaiso 

 and Callao, where they are sold for a few dollars to the foreign 

 ships, and thence conveyed to Europe. 



The condor, though a very large bird, about four feet long 

 and measuring at least three yards from tip to tip of his ex- 

 tended wings, is far from attaining the dimensions assigned to 

 him by the earlier writers and naturalists, who, emulating 

 Sinbad the Sailor, in his account of the fabulous roc, described 

 him as a giant whose bulk darkened the air. 



The condor reminds us of the Albatross. As the former 

 sweeps in majestic circles high above the Andes, the latter 

 soars gracefully over the ocean, ' and without ever touching the 

 water with his wings, rises with the rising billow and falls with 

 the falling wave.'* If the wonderful power of wing which 

 bears the condor, often within the space of a few hours, from 

 the sea-shore into the highest regions of the air, and the strength 

 of breast which is able to support such changes of atmospheric 

 pressure, may well raise our wonder, the indomitable pinions 

 of the albatross are no less admirable. Both are unable to take 

 wing from a narrow space, and both 

 finally, so lordly in their movements, 

 feed in the same ignoble manner, the 

 condor pouncing from incredible dis- 

 tances upon the carcase of the mule or 

 lama, while the albatross gorges upon 

 the fat of the stranded whale. 



While the condor is considered an 

 enemy to man, the Gallinazos, turkey- 

 buzzards, or common American Carrion 

 Vultures ( Vultur aura, V. uruhu), are very serviceable to him, 



* 'The Seu and its Living Wonders,' p. 139. 



TURKEY BUZZARD. 



