Personal Narrative Of Travels To The Equinoctial Regions Of America During The Years 1799-1804 - Volume 2 - By Alexander Von Humboldt And Aime Bonpland.
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On the hind feet, at the upper end of
the metatarsus, there is a callosity three inches long and three
quarters of an inch broad, destitute of hair.
The animal, when seated,
rests upon this part. No tail is visible externally; but on putting
aside the hair we discover a tubercle, a mass of naked and wrinkled
flesh, of a conical figure, and half an inch long.) Its flesh has a
musky smell somewhat disagreeable; yet hams are made of it in this
country, a circumstance which almost justifies the name of water-hog,
given to the chiguire by some of the older naturalists. The missionary
monks do not hesitate to eat these hams during Lent. According to
their zoological classification they place the armadillo, the
thick-nosed tapir, and the manatee, near the tortoises; the first,
because it is covered with a hard armour like a sort of shell; and the
others because they are amphibious. The chiguires are found in such
numbers on the banks of the rivers Santo Domingo, Apure, and Arauca,
in the marshes and in the inundated savannahs* of the Llanos, that the
pasturages suffer from them. (* Near Uritucu, in the Cano del Ravanal,
we saw a flock of eighty or one hundred of these animals.) They browze
the grass which fattens the horses best, and which bears the name of
chiguirero, or chiguire-grass. They feed also upon fish; and we saw
with surprise, that, when scared by the approach of a boat, the animal
in diving remains eight or ten minutes under water.
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