Democratic Sentinel, Volume 22, Number 16, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 23 April 1898 — The Interior of Patagonia. [ARTICLE]

The Interior of Patagonia.

Professor J. B, Hatcher, of Princeton University, has newly returned from a femwiwWe trip of

hitherto unknown region of South Africa —namely, the wild Interior of Patagonia. He visited Washington a few days ago for the purpose of depositing with the Bureau of Ethnology a rich collection of objects illustrating the mode of life of the various tribes of aborigines in that part of the world. These natives are among the strangest and most picturesque savages In existehce, some of them being described as representing almost the lowest stage in the scale of human development. Their country, too, is Wore than ordinarily interesting, being associated since the earliest times with rumors of gigantic human inhabitants and an astonishing fauna. Quite recently some skeletons of birds that had heads as big as those of horses have actually been dug up. They stood at least nine feet high, and had short wings, claws like an eagle’s and a beak like a condor’s. It is likely that they attacked with success the largest mammals contemporary with them, being the biggest fowls of prey that ever lived; but they became extinct long ago, and so there was no opportunity for Professor Hatcher to secure a living specimen.