The Neihart herald. [volume] (Neihart, Mont.) 1890-1901, 1895-10-26
CURIOUS INSTINCT OF THE LLAMA.
South American Animals Which Always
Hunt Up One Dying Place.

Bouth American nina Which Always
Hunt Up One Dying Place.
1t is we'll known that at the south
ern extremity of Patagonia the gua-
nacos have a dying place, a spot to
which all individuals inhabiting the
surrounding plain repair at the ap-
proa,h of death to deposit their
bones. 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. The best known {.
these dying or burial places are CT
the banks of the Santa Cruz and Gal.
legos rivers, where the river valle,i
T covered with dense primev;l
thickets of bushes and trees of stunt,
ed growth. There the ground is GOV.
cred with the bones of countless de;
generations.
1.-THE animals, says Darwin, al
most cases must have crawled bofol,
dying beneath and among the busl.
es." A strange instinct in creatue
80 pre-eminently social in its habits,
a dweller all its life long on til
open, barren plateau and mountai,
sides. What a subject for a painter,
the gray wilderness of dwarf thorn
trees, aged and g%rotesque and scant,:
leaved, nourished for l, 900 years il
the bones that whiten the ston,
ground at their roots, the interio,
lit family with the rays of the de
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 the
mountain and the plain to suffer tho
sharp pang Of death, that. to the
imagination, something of it all
seems to have passed into that hush.
ed and mournful nature. And nov,
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 animals dy-
ing place and instinct Darwin adds,
II do not at all understand the rea-
son Of this, but 1 may observe that
the wounded guanacos at the Santa
Cruz Invariably walked toward the
river"
It 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 the 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 its 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 pasi
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 eyes. Stand and Water
$500 - ----------