Cochrane earned a comfortable, if small, place among nineteenth century traveler-explorers. His memoir includes important historical and naturalistic observations that are still quoted today. However, what drew my attention to him was an observation that hasn't received the attention it deserves. Heading west from Bogotá, he stopped for several days in the town of Cartago.
Jan. 12, 1824. In the evening made an excursion with Señor Zereso, Don Luis, and others, to a small hill commanding the town; when, the evening being tolerable, we had a fine view of a ridge of mountains, which divides this valley from the Pacific Ocean: their summits are entirely covered with snow. The smoke of a volcano is to be seen, which is situated on the other side of the summit of the mountains. From a small chain of hills, near to this range of mountains, with a good glass, have been seen numbers of the carnivorous elephants, feeding on the plains which skirt these frozen regions. Their enormous teeth have occasionally been seen: but no one has yet succeeded in killing one of these animals, or, indeed, in getting near to them. There are great quantities of wild cattle in these plains...
I've written about the idea of killer mastodons before. Their teeth are significantly different from those of mammoths and living elephants. Eighteenth century naturalists believed those differences indicated the mastodon was a meat eater. This idea had largely been abandoned by the time that Cochrane wrote but, obviously, still had some partisans. The more interesting question is, what on Earth were his hosts talking about? What animal had they seen on the neighboring plains that they thought fit the description of a killer elephant? I have no answers, but, if it is still out there, I hope we don't do anything to piss it off.
One wonders of the possibility of a sasquatch, of course... or a grizzly that had adapted to root out ants & termites with an extended snout...
ReplyDeletea great post! thanks ^..^