| OCR Text |
Show ANNOTATIONS AND ADDITIONS. 101 xolotl, servant or slave). On American dogs, see Smith Barton's Fragments of the Natural History of Pennsylvania, p. i. p. 34. The result of Tschudi's researches on the American indigenous races of dogs is the following. There are two kinds almost specifically different: 1. The Canis caraibicus of Lesson, quite without hair, except a small bunch of white hair on the forehead and at the point of the tail, of a slate gray color, and silent; it was found by Columbus in the Antilles, by Cortes in Mexico, and by Pizarro in Peru, where it suffers from the cold of the Cordilleras, but is still abundant in the warmer parts of the country, under the name of perros chinos. 2. The Canis ingre, with pointed nose and pointed ears; this kind barks : it is now employed in the care of cattle, and shows many varieties of colors, from being crossed with European breeds. The Canis ingre follows man to the high regions of the Cordilleras. In ancient Peruvian graves, his skeleton is sometimes found resting at the feet of the human mummy. We know how often the carvers of monuments in our own middle ages employed the figure of a dog in this position, as an emblem of fidelity. (J. J. v. Tschudi, Untersuchungen tiber die Fauna Peruana, s. 247-251.) At the very beginning of the Spanish conquests, European dogs became wild in the islands of San Domingo and Cuba. (Garcilasso, p. i. 1723, p. 326.) In the prairies between the Meta, the Arauca, and the Apure, voiceless dogs (perros mudos) were eaten in the 16th century. Alonso de Herrara, who, in 1535, undertook an expedition to the Orinoco, says the natives called them "Majos" or "Auries." A well-informed traveller, Giesecke, found the same non-barking variety of dog in Greenland. The Esquimaux dogs pass their lives entirely in the open air; at night they scrape holes for themselves in the snow: they howl like wolves, in accompaniment with a dog that sits in the middle of the circle and sets them off. In Mexico the dogs were subjected to an operation to make them fatter and better eating. On the borders of the province of Durango, and farther to the north on the Slave Lake, the natives, formerly at least, conveyed their tents of buffalo skins on the backs of large dogs when changing their place of residence with the change of season. All these traits resemble the customs of the 9* |
