The Neihart herald. [volume] (Neihart, Mont.) 1890-1901, 1895-10-19
CURIOUS INSTINCT OF THE LLAMA.
South American Animals Which AIways
Hunt Up One Dying Place.

hunt Up tne Dying Piace.
1t is we'll known that at the south
ern extremity of Patagonia the qua
nacos have "a dying place, a spot to
which all individuals inhabiting the
surrounding plain repair at the APP
proach of death to deposit their
homes. Darwin and Fitzroy first re-
corded this strange instinct in their
personal narratives, and their obser-
vations have since been fully con
firmed by others. Tho best knownr {.
these dying or burial places are u
the banks of the Santa Cruz and Cal.
legos rivers, where the river valleyi
are covered with dense primevtl
thickets of bushes and trees Of stun.
ed growth. There the ground is COW.
cred with the bones of countless de-
generations.
1.-The animals, " says Darwin, I'll
most cases must have crawlcd befoi,
dying beneath and among the busl.
es.' A strange instinct in crcatu (
SO pre-eminently social in it's habits,
a dweller all its life long on tla
open, barren plateau and mountain
sides. What a subject for a painter,
the gray wilderness of dwarf thorn
trees, aged and %grotesque and scanty
leaved, nourished for 1000 years il
the bones that whiten the stor;
ground at their roots, the interiG.
lit family with the rays of the do
parting sun, chill and gray, and 81.
lent and motionless-the guanacos'
Golgotha! In the long centuries,
stretching back into a dim immeas.
urable past, so many of this race
have journeyed hither from tho
mountain and the plain to suffer the
sharp pang of death, that. to the
imagination, something of it all
seems to have passed into that hush.
ed and mournful nature. And now
one more, the latest pilgrim, hal
come, all his little strength spent in
his struggle to penetrate the close
thicket, looking old and gaunt and
ghostly in the twilight, with long,
ragged hair, staring into the gloom
out of death dimmed sunken eyes.
To this account of the animal'sdy-
ing place and instinct Darwin adds,
II do not at all understand the rea-
son OF this, but l may observe that
the wounded guanacos at the Santa
Cruz invariably walked toward tho
river"
1t would no doubt be rash to affirm
of any instinct that it is absolutely
unique; but, putting aside some
doubtful reports about a custom of
the Asiatic elephant, which may
have originated in the account Of
Sindbad tho sailors discovery of an
elephants burial place, we have no
knowledge of an instinct similar ia
that of the guanacos in any othe:
animal. So far as we know, it stands
alone and apart, leading up or sug-
costing any family likeness to it. But
what chiefly attracts the mind to it
is it's strangeness. 1t looks, il fact,
less like an instinct of one of the in
ferior creatures than the suIersti.
tious observance of human beings.
who have knowledge of death and
believe in a continued existence after
dissolution of a tribe that in past
times had conceived the idea that
the liberated spirit is only able to
find its way to its future abode by
starting at death from the ancient
dying place of the tribe or family,
and thence moving westward or sky
ward or underground over the well
worn immcmorlal track invisible to
material cycs.--Land and Water