He apparently forgets that Commodore Byron lived in a time
when the painful accuracy and excessive minuteness we are accustomed to
was not expected from a writer, whenever he happened to touch on any
matters connected with zoology.
This kind of criticism, which seizes on a slight inaccuracy in one
passage, and totally ignores an important statement in another--as, for
instance, that of the "great beast" seen in the woods--might be extended
to other portions of the book, and Byron's entire narrative made to
appear as purely a work of the imagination as Peter Wilkin's adventures
in those same antarctic seas.
Mr. J. W. Boddam Whetham, in his work _Across Central America_ (1877),
gives an anecdote of the puma, which he heard at Sacluk, in Guatemala,
and which strangely resembles some of the stories I have heard on the
pampas. He writes: "The following event, most extraordinary if true, is
said to have occurred in this forest to a mahogany-cutter, who had been
out marking trees. As he was returning to his hut, he suddenly felt a
soft body pressing against him, and on looking down saw a cougar, which,
with tail erect, and purring like a cat, twisted itself in and out of
his legs, and glided round him, turning up its fierce eyes as if with
laughter. Horror-stricken and with faltering steps he kept on, and the
terrible animal still circled about, now rolling over, and now touching
him with a paw like a cat playing with a mouse.
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