THE ROMANCE OF NATURAL HISTORY. 



night, his party actually killed at one spot eight 

 hippopotamuses, and saw many more. In this 

 same river there were likewise crocodiles. 



Among birds, the condor of the Andes has been 

 the subject of greatly exaggerated reports of its 

 dimensions. When it was first discovered by the 

 Spanish conquerors of America, it was compared 

 to the Rokh of Arabian fable, and by some even 

 considered to be the identical bird, "which is able 

 to trusse an elephant." Garcilasso states that 

 some of those killed by the Spaniards measured 

 fifteen or sixteen feet (the vagueness of the "or" 

 in what professes to be actual measurement is 

 suspicious) from tip to tip of the extended wings. 

 He adds that two will attack a bull and devour 

 it, and that single individuals will slay boys of 

 twelve years old. 



Desmarchais improves upon this; stretches the 

 expansion of the wings to eighteen feet ; a width 

 so enormous that, as he says, the bird can never 

 enter the forest ; and he declares that a single one 

 will attack a man, and carry off a stag. 



A modern traveller, however, soars far beyond 

 these puny flights of imagination, and gravely 

 gives forty feet as the measurement, carefully 

 noted, as he informs us, "with his own hand," 

 from the actual specimen. It is only charitable to 

 conclude that he really measured sixteen feet, and 

 that he either wrote "spaces" by mistake, or, 

 which is most likely, wrote simply "16," translat- 

 ing it afterwards when he compared his notes 

 with what others had said before him. Here, 

 however, is the veracious description, which the 

 reader will see does not lack romance in its em- 

 bellishment. 



"It was so satiated with its repast on the car- 

 cass of a horse, as to suffer me to approach 

 118 



