Page:Researches into the Early History of Mankind and the Development of Civilization.djvu/323

Rh much less probable, did their traditions reach back to the time when America was still inhabited by these gigantic animals, whose petrified skeletons are found buried in the marly ground on the very ridge of the Mexican Cordilleras?" It may be worth while to notice in connexion with Humboldt's remarks, that when Mr. Bates showed a picture of an elephant to some South American Indians, they settled it that the creature must be a large kind of tapir.

Attempts have been made by other writers to connect the memory of animals now extinct, with mythological tales current in the regions to which they belong. Dr. Falconer is disposed to connect the huge elephant-fighting and world-bearing tortoises of the Hindoo mythology with a recollection of the time when his monstrous Himalayan tortoise, the Colossochelys Atlas, the restoration of which forms so striking an object in the British Museum, was still alive. The savage tribes of Brazil have traditions about a being whom they call the Curupíra. Sometimes he is described as a kind of orang-utan, being covered with long, shaggy hair, and living in trees. At others he is said to have cloven feet, and a bright red face. He has a wife