332 THROUGH THE HEART OF PATAGONIA 



It was in this spirit that I set out for the interior of Patagonia. 

 Although the legends of the Indians were manifestly to a large extent 

 the result of imaginative exaggeration, yet I hoped to find a substratum 

 of fact below these fancies. After thorough examination, however, I am 

 obliged to say that I found none. The Indians not only never enter the 

 Cordillera but avoid the very neighbourhood of the mountains. The 

 rumours of the lemisch and the stories concerning it, which, in print, had 

 assumed a fairly definite form, I found nebulous in the extreme when 

 investigated on the spot. 



Finally, after much investigation I came to the conclusion that the 

 Indian legends in all probability refer to some large species of otter. 

 Musters, in his book "At Home witli the Patagonians," makes mention of 

 an animal much feared by the tribe with whom he travelled, which they 

 called " water-tiger," and which they said lived in a rapid and deep river 

 near to Nahuel-huapi, a lake the name of which lends colour to the tale, 

 for it means Tigers' Island. Musters says he himself saw two ostriches,, 

 that, being considered in too poor a condition to be worth taking to camp 

 for food, were left on the bank of the river referred to, torn and partly 

 devoured when on the following day he and his party revisited the spot. 

 Tracks of an animal were also plainly visible leading down into the 

 water. 



Compare this with a story told me by Mr. Von Plaaten Hallermund. 

 He described the case of a mule which had fallen over a precipice in the 

 vicinity of the River Deseado. When on the following day the pcones 

 climbed down to salve its cargo, they found the animal on the edge of 

 the water half eaten, and in its neighbourhood were tracks strange to 

 them. " Like those of a puma, yet not those of a puma," as they said. 



The manager of Messrs. Braun and Blanchard's store at Santa Cruz 

 gave me a description of a skin brought in by Indians which, though not 

 a puma-skin, was quite as large as the skin of the common silver-grey 

 puma generally is. I myself saw a very large otter in the River Senguerr,. 

 but unluckily had not my rifle with me, and although I returned as quickly 

 with it as I could, all trace of the otter had vanished. 



Taking into consideration the amphibious nature attributed by the 

 Indians to the lemisch, there seems to be little reason to doubt that the 

 real animal underlying the rumours of a mysterious monster is a sub- 

 species of the large Brazilian otter {Lutra brasiliensis). 



To return to the possible survival of the Mylodon, as far as our travels 

 led us both north and south on the eastern side of the Cordillera, we 

 could discover no trace whatever either by hearsay or from the evidence 

 of our own experience to warrant the supposition that it continues to 

 exist to the present day. But there are hundreds of square miles of 

 dense forest still unexplored along the whole length of the Patagonian 



