CONDOR. 
19 
when they come in search of food and warmer weather: they 
then obtain the bodies of large fishes or marine animals, such 
as Whales or Seals, and the prospect of finding these is their 
principal attraction to the shore: they arrive here at evening, and 
as a journey of several hundred miles requires for them but little 
time or exertion, as soon as their meal is digested, and they begin 
to feel lighter, they return to their favourite rocks, often during 
the following day. They have sometimes been killed at sea, 
floating on the dead body of a Whale which they were tearing for 
food. They exhibit the common propensity of their tribe for 
carrion, and nothing but the urgent stimulus of hunger can bring 
them to attack living creatures, and then their cowardice will not 
allow them to meddle with any but the feeble or diseased which 
are incapable of defending themselves. They will also combine 
together to overpower their prey, if they see the least danger of 
resistance. A single Cougar, or even a courageous bird, will drive 
from their prey a whole troop of Condors, which however seldom 
amounts to more than five or six, as they do not collect in such 
numerous bodies as their fellow Vultures. When feeding on a 
Cow, a Guanaco, or a Paco, they first pick out the eyes, then tear 
away and devour the tongue, and next the entrails, at last picking 
the flesh from the bones. Smaller animals they generally swallow 
whole. Guided by their amazingly acute faculty of smell, the 
Condor will arrive, performing circular evolutions, from the 
highest regions of the atmosphere upon a carrion, and often, 
trusting to their powers of digestion, they swallow bones and flesh 
together. The Indians, too indolent to keep clean their butchering 
or similar places, and often neglecting to bury their dead with 
sufficient carefulness, have a great veneration for this bird and 
others of its kind, to which they trust to rid them of such nuisances. 
The regard with which they are treated makes them so familiar, 
that Humboldt relates his being able to approach within two 
