166 WANDERINGS IN 



THIRD, solitary animal, and being good food, he is never 



JOURNEY. * 



Lives fa allowed to escape. He inhabits remote and 

 forests 7 gloomy forests, where snakes take up their abode, 

 and where cruelly stinging ants and scorpions, 

 and swamps, and innumerable thorny shrubs 

 and bushes, obstruct the steps of civilized man. 

 Were you to draw your own conclusions from the 

 descriptions which have been given of the sloth, 

 you would probably suspect, that no naturalist 

 has actually gone into the wilds with the fixed 

 determination to find him out and examine his 

 haunts, and see whether nature has committed 

 any blunder in the formation of this extraordi- 

 nary creature, which appears to us so forlorn and 

 miserable, so ill put together, and so totally unfit 

 to enjoy the blessings which have been so boun- 

 tifully given to the rest of animated nature ; for, 

 as it has formerly been remarked, he has no soles 

 to his feet, and he is evidently ill at ease when 

 he tries to move on the ground, and it is then 

 that he looks up in your face with a countenance 

 that says, " Have pity on me, for I am in pain 

 and sorrow." 



It mostly happens that Indians and Negroes 

 are the people who catch the sloth, and bring it 

 to the white man : hence it may be conjectured 

 that the erroneous accounts we have hitherto had 

 of the sloth, have not been penned down with the 

 slightest intention to mislead the reader, or give 

 him an exaggerated history, but that these errors 



