28 THROUGH THE BRAZILIAN WILDERNESS 



I give it exactly as the doctor told it; paraphrasing a letter 

 he sent me, and including one or two answers to questions 

 I put to him. The doctor, by the way, stated to me that 

 he had known Mr. Hudson, the author of the "Naturalist 

 on the Plata," and that the latter knew nothing whatever 

 of pumas from personal experience and had accepted as 

 facts utterly wild fables. 



Undoubtedly, said the doctor, the puma in South 

 America, like the puma in North America, is as a general 

 rule a cowardly animal which not only never attacks man 

 but rarely makes any efficient defence when attacked. The 

 Indian and white hunters have no fear of it in most parts 

 of the country, and its harmlessness to man is proverbial. 

 But there is one particular spot in southern Patagonia 

 where cougars, to the doctor's own personal knowledge, 

 have for years been dangerous foes of man. This curious 

 local change in habits, by the way, is nothing unprece- 

 dented as regards wild animals. In portions of its range, 

 as I am informed by Mr. Lord Smith, the Asiatic tiger can 

 hardly be forced to fight man, and never preys on him, 

 while throughout most of its range it is a most dangerous 

 beast, and often turns man-eater. So there are waters in 

 which sharks are habitual man-eaters, and others where 

 they never touch men; and there are rivers and lakes 

 where crocodiles or caymans are very dangerous, and others 

 where they are practically harmless — I have myself seen 

 this in Africa. 



In March, 1877, Doctor Moreno with a party of men 

 working on the boundary commission, and with a number 

 of Patagonian horse-Indians, was encamped for some weeks 

 beside Lake Viedma, which had not before been visited 



