SINGULAB LEGENDS. 
271 
jnonkey of America. There are certain regims where this 
belief is particularly prevalent among the people ; such are 
bhe banks of the Upper Orinoco, the valley of TJpar near 
bhe lake of Maraeaybo, the mountains of Santa Martha and 
°f Merida, the provinces of Quixos, and the banks of the 
-Mnazon near Tomependa. In all these places, so distant 
°ne from the other, it is asserted that the salvage is easily 
recognized by the traces of its feet, the toes of which are 
burned backward. But if there exist a monkey of a large 
in the New Continent, how has it happened that for 
bhree centuries no man worthy of belief has been able to 
procure the skin of one ? Several hypotheses present them- 
s elves to the mind, in order to explain the source of so 
jUtcient an error or belief. Has the famous capuchin mon- 
“Uy of Esmeralda (Simia chiropotes), with its long canine 
lee th, and physiognomy much more like man’s* than that 
2^ the orang-otang, given rise to the fable of the salvage ? 
,1 is not so large indeed as the coaita (Simia paniscus) ; 
but when seen at the top of a tree, and the head only 
('sible, it might easily be taken for a human being. It may 
b® also (and this opinion appears to me the most probable) 
rhat the 1 man of the woods ’ was one of those large bears, 
h e footsteps of which resemble those of a man, and which 
believed in every country to attack women. The animal 
Wled in my time at the foot of the mountains of Merida, 
an d sent, by the name of salvage, to Colonel Ungaro, the 
governor of' the province of Vannas, was in fact a bear with 
^ a ck and smooth fur. Our fellow-traveller, Don Nicolas 
l'to, had examined it closely. Did the strange idea of a 
Priiitigrade animal, the toes of which are placed as if it 
ulked backward, take its origin from the habit of the real 
“: lV; |ges of the woods, the Indians of the weakest and most 
^uud tribes, of deceiving their enemies, when they enter 
t , ^rest, or cross a sandy shore, by covering the traces of 
feet with sand, or walking backward ? 
though I have expressed my doubts of the existence of 
Unknown species of large monkey iu a continent which 
J’pears entirely destitute of quadrumanous animals of the 
uuly of the orangs, cynocepliali, mandrils, aud pougos ; yet 
I,.. whole of the features — the expression of the physiognomy ; but 
HOt ‘he forehead. 
