The more secluded woods towards the north are the haunts of this animal,
which the Spaniards call the Anta, or _La gran bestia_. In size it
resembles a full grown ass: in shape, if you except its eyes, head, and
feet, a pig. It has rather short ears, inclining towards the forehead,
very sharp teeth and lips, like those of a calf, the upper part of which
somewhat resembles a proboscis, and is thrust forward by the animal when
he is angry. The fore feet are cloven into two hollow nails, the hind
feet into three. A smooth unhairy appendage supplies the place of a
tail. The skin is of a tawny colour and extremely thick, on which
account it is dried in the air by the Spaniards and Abipones, and used
for a breast-plate to ward off the blows of swords and arrows, but is
penetrable to shot and to spears. This beast flies the sight of man,
though possessed of such extraordinary strength as, when caught with a
rope, to drag along with him in his flight both horse and rider. It
generally sleeps in the day-time, and by night, wandering up and down
the recesses of the woods, feeds upon herbs; it frequently betrays
itself by the rustling noise it makes in breaking the branches of shrubs
and trees as it walks about the woods. The Indians who inhabit the woods
lay traps, made of stakes, to catch the antas, or concealing themselves
in some thicket, imitate the sound of their voices, and pierce the
beasts on their arrival with arrows; for their flesh, either fresh or
hardened by the air, is continually eaten by the savages, though its
toughness renders it rather unpalatable. In the stomach of the anta lies
a pouch, which is often found to contain a number of bezoar stones,
scarce bigger than a hazle-nut, not oblong nor oval, but polygonous, and
of the colour of ashes or lead. These are thought by physicians superior
to the bezoar stones supplied by other beasts, and more efficacious as
medicine. Arapotiyu, the young Indian whom I brought from the woods of
Mbaeverà, which the savages call the country of the antas, gave me a
heap of these bezoar stones:—"Take, father," said he, "these most
salutary little stones, which I have collected from the antas I have
killed." On my inquiring what virtue they attributed to them, and how
they were used in the woods, he replied—"Whenever we are seized with a
malignant heat, we rub our limbs with these antas' stones, after warming
them at the fire, and receive immediate relief." This use of the bezoar
stone I submit to the judgment of physicians, for it must be confessed I
never made trial of its virtues. The nails of antas are much esteemed by
the Spaniards, as remedies for ill-health, and worn by them as amulets,
to defend them from noxious airs: they are said to be sold in the
druggists' shops in Europe, for various medicinal purposes, especially
for persons afflicted with epilepsy, small-pox, and measles, as is
related by Woytz in his Medico-physical Thesaurus, where he affirms that
antas are often afflicted with epilepsy or the falling-sickness, and
that, to relieve the pain, they rub the left ear with the nail of the
fore foot. The truth of the fact must be looked to by those who have
affirmed it, and have hazarded the assertion that the anta is called by
the Germans _elendthier_, the miserable beast, because it is subject to
epilepsy. But in reality it was called by the old Germans _elck_, by the
Greeks αλκη, and by the Latins _alx_ or _alce_. As it appears from all
writers, that elks are horned in the northern countries of Europe, and
as I myself saw, that those in Paraguay have no horns, I began to doubt
whether they were not a different animal altogether, and only bore the
same name on account of some similitude.
I do not agree with those who call elks _equi-cervi_, mongrel creatures
born of a stag and a mare. This cannot be imagined for a moment of the
Paraguayrian antas, which inhabit the roughest and most rugged forests,
not only unknown but almost inaccessible both to horses and stags. The
antas choose plains full one hundred leagues distant, where they can
never meet with either of those animals. However this may be, I advise
giving credit to those who, in the present age, have written more fully
on natural history from authority.