The Neihart herald. [volume] (Neihart, Mont.) 1890-1901, 1895-12-14
CURIOUS INSTINCT OF THE LLAMA
south American Animals Which Away
Hunt Up One Dying Place.

Hunt Up One Dying Place.
1t is well known that'at the south.
err extremity of Patagonia the qua
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 then
bones. Darwin and Fitzroy first re.
corded this strange instinct in their
personal narratives, and their obser-
vations have since been fully con.
frmed by others. The best known OF
these dying or burial places are O!
the banks of the Santa Cruz and Gal.
legos rivers, where the river valleyt
arc covered with dense primevsl
thickets of bushes and trees Of stunt.
ed growth. There the ground is COY.
cred with the bones of countless deal
generations.
1.-THE animals, says Darwin, I'll
most cases must have crawled beforS
dying beneath and among the bush.
es.' A strange instinct in a creature
30 pre-eminently social in its habits,
a dweller all its life long on tie
open, barren plateau and mountain
sides. What a subject for a painter,
the gray wilderness of dwarf thorn
trees, aged and grotesque and scantj
leaved, nourished for /, 900 years il
the bones that whiten the stony
ground at their roots, the interio,
lit family with the rays Of the dc
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 ACC
have journeyed hither from the
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
ore more, the latest pilgrim, has
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 I may observe that
the wounded guanacos at the Santa
Cruz invariably walked toward tho
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 other
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 ii
Is its strangeness. 1t looks, IN fact,
less like an instinct Of one of the in
ferior creatures than the surersti.
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 thai
the liberated spirit is only able t.
End 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 vel
worn immenlorlal track invisible tt
material eyes, Land and Water