Iron County register. [volume] (Ironton, Iron County, Mo.) 1867-1965, 1884-08-21
The Great vulture of the Andes.

High up among the towering snow
peaks of the Andes, you will find the
condor the huge carrion-vulture Of
South America. As you see him wheel
ing in circles three or four miles above
you, he looks like mere speck; you
would never imagine him Il bird stand
ing three to four feet high, often meas
ing rs much as twelve fe ct between tie
tips of his wings, and six feet or more
from beak to tail; with wings strong
enough to break one of your limbs,
and with beak and talons that might
we'll be a terror to the young lambs
and goats of the mountains. On his
feet. he is white-necked. brown-winged,
awkward creature that, like q sea-bard,
has to run a long distance before he
can fly; but when once he is in the
air. there is nothing more beautiful and
seem to be perfectly motionless, and
hour after hour he may be seen, with
apparently only tn head and neck in
action, ascending and descending in
spiral curves. and floating in mid-air
like paper kite. I.Little escapes the
far-rea hing eye and keen smell of the
condor. As they soar SO majestically
aloft. they seem to be ,asting a
greedy look upon the wayfarers
and the cattle feeding or wandering
among the mountains. They are ter
riby voraciouS birds and are pretty
sure, within a very short time, to pounce
upon those that fall down through
fatigue, exposure or mishap OF any kind.
Pictures on the old Peruvian vases rep
resent children struggling in the grasp
of condors, and so one might suppose
that these gluttonous creatures would
even attack man; but we know of no
case TO prove this, or the stories that
tell of them Selling young animals and
bearing them upon their backs to their
rocky haunts twelve or thirteen thou
sand feet above the sea. They do at
tack lambs and goats, first picking out
the eyes, and then tearing out the en-
trails with their dagger-like beaks; and
it is as much rs the shepherd dogs can
do 10 protect their charge. The mere
sight Of living man, however, is enough
to keep them at distance. They will
follow in sweeping circles high above
you. as Won and your donkey struggle
along the valleys and snow-bloeked
paths: but YOU will have to use all man.
ner of precautions to bring them even
with n gunshot. If you should fall
over and pretend to be dead, they
would sweep down on You
in an instant. Thousands of
these birds frequent the pre-
cipitous cliffs of the Uspallata pass.
VIII. eh is the great highway over the
Andes for travellers and cattle from the
Argentine republic into Chilli. Her
during the winter months, storms rage
and many a one is lost in the SHOWS or
sinks, down from exhaustion. Here and
there the roadside is strewed with the
clean-picked bones of horses. mules.
oxen; nd occasionally the remains of a
human skeleton, tell of some poor fell
low over whose fate the ravenous con- I
dcrs have rejOiced. Some of the battle
fields of the late war, where hiiians
and Teruvians fell in such numbers,
bear evidence of the quick and thor
oush work of these great birds: and in
the copper regions of Chill the sides
OF the paths down which the
mules bring their pack-loads of ore, are
covered with the bones of the poor ami
mails that have fallen down exhausted
under their burdens. In certain parts
of South America the condor feeds al
most entirely on the carcass Fof the
puanaco-a kind of wild llama that
lives i'm constand dread of its murder
Gus enemy-the puma. The latter an
imal after eating its till. covers its vic
m over with bushes and then watches
it. In the wild retreats of the Andine
valleys when you see great ffocks OF
condors wheeling round spot and
suddenly gliding up and down, you
NAV be pretty sure that they are dis
pufine with the puma over the guanaco |
that he has just killed.
The Gillian Government has deter
mined TO treat the condor as an enemy
70 the republic. A price varying from !
five TO twenty francs has been put upon /
his head. so that condor hunting nDN |
combines profit and sport. There &c
two or three ways of catching the con-
doris. One is to lie in wait at night |
near a recently killed animal. As soon