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 Mind, Meaning, and
Mental Disorder:
The nature of causal
explanation in psychology
and psychiatry, Second
Edition

Derek Bolton
Jonathan Hill

OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS

Oxford Medical Publications
Mind, Meaning, and
Mental Disorder
International Perspectives in Philosophy
and Psychiatry
Series Editors
Bill (KWM) Fulford, Katherine Morris, John Z Sadler,
Giovanni Stanghellini

Volumes in the series:

Nature and Narrative: An Introduction to the New Philosophy of
Psychiatry
Fulford, Morris, Sadler, and Stanghellini (ed.)
Mind, Meaning, and Mental Disorder
Bolton and Hill
Forthcoming:
Concise Oxford Textbook of Philosophy and Psychiatry
Fulford, Thornton, and Graham
Postpsychiatry
Bracken and Thomas
The Philosophical Understanding of Schizophrenia
Chung, Fulford, and Graham (ed.)
Values and Psychiatric Disorders
Sadler
Handbook of Philosophy and Psychiatry
Radden (ed.)
The Vulnerable Self: The Clinical Phenomenology of the
Schizophrenic and Affective Spectrum Disorders
Parnas, Sass, and Stanghellini
Mind, Meaning, and
Mental Disorder
The nature of causal
explanation in
psychology and
psychiatry

SECOND EDITION

Derek Bolton
Jonathan Hill

1
1
Great Clarendon Street, Oxford OX2 6DP
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 Preface to New Edition

We have taken the opportunity of this Second Edition to make changes with
two main aims: to bring the text up to date in relation to literature that has
appeared since 1995, and to clarify further the main themes and proposals of
the book.
The task of updating has been potentially a very large one because the book
touches on many fields in psychiatry, psychology, and philosophy, and these
fields are large in themselves, and being worked on at an increasing rate.
However, in this edition, as in the first, we have not attempted to write com-
prehensive reviews of the relevant literature. The main purpose of the book
was, and remains, to argue for and elaborate a certain view of causal explana-
tion in psychology, biology, and psychiatry. The discussion of various litera-
tures is meant to provide a context for the themes of the book, and is therefore
selective, aimed at defining points of agreement and divergence with other
views, and giving substance to philosophical claims by reference to
scientific models and findings. In this context updating the literature has been
a more manageable task. We have attended to some significant relevant
changes in philosophical views in the past five years or so, though these are
relatively few, since the pace of change in philosophical theory is naturally
slow, certainly compared with scientific findings. We have updated the discus-
sions of scientific findings, particularly where recent studies bear closely on
the main ideas in the book.
We have also tried in this Second Edition to clarify further these main ideas.
We have reduced or removed some discussion that in retrospect may have
been too tangential to the main points, and we have made the relevance of
other considerations to the main points more explicit. We have also written a
synopsis of the main themes and proposals of the book. This has been joined
to the Introduction to the First Edition, which gave some historical context, to
make a new Introduction and Synopsis for this Second Edition.
Derek Bolton Jonathan Hill
London Liverpool
April 2003
 Preface to the First Edition

Philosophical ideas about the mind, brain, and behaviour can seem theoretical
and unimportant when placed alongside the urgent questions of mental dis-
tress and disorder. However there is a need to give attempts to answer these
questions some direction. On the one hand a substantial research effort is
going into the investigation of brain processes and the development of drug
treatments for psychiatric disorders, and on the other, a wide range of
psychotherapies and forms of counselling are becoming available to adults
and children with mental health problems. These two strands reflect a long
Western tradition of dividing body and mind, and attempting to resolve ques-
tions of the explanation of disturbance either in favour of the malfunctioning
brain, or the disordered psyche. It is crucial in determining the direction of
research and clinical practice to clarify whether these are competing incompati-
ble perspectives, or whether they are complementary and in need of integration.
However it is unlikely that philosophical ideas will illuminate central ques-
tions in psychology and psychiatry without themselves being informed by the
concepts and findings from areas such as learning theory, developmental
psychology, artificial intelligence and psychoanalysis. The book therefore
starts with a review of key issues in the philosophy of mind and philosophy
of science as they relate to questions of cognition, emotion, and behaviour.
Intentionality emerges as a central concept in human functioning, but we go
on to make the case that it is a distinguishing feature of biological systems in
general. Human psychological faculties then emerge as particularly sophisti-
cated elaborations of intentional processes, which create the conditions both
for intelligence and culture, and also for instability and disorder.
Throughout the discussion philosophical theories are brought to bear on
the particular questions of the explanation of behaviour, the nature of mental
causation, and eventually the origins of major disorders including depression,
anxiety disorders, schizophrenia, and personality disorder.
The book has been written for philosophers, and academic and clinical psy-
chologists and psychiatrists, but we would be delighted if anyone whose busi-
ness or interest is to understand human behaviour, were to make use of it. In
that it presents a particular thesis it is aimed at a postgraduate readership, but the
advanced undergraduate will find many contemporary themes in philosophy,
psychology, and psychiatry are covered, and provided the ideas proposed are
 PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION vii

treated with some caution under exam conditions, the more innovative content
may not prove too hazardous.
The authors came to an interest in philosophical problems in psychology
and psychiatry by different routes. Before training as a clinical psychologist
D.B. read philosophy and researched on Wittgenstein. J.H. read natural
sciences before training in medicine, psychiatry, and family therapy. We pub-
lished papers independently about ten years ago which overlapped in subject-
matter—meanings, reasons, and causes—and conclusions, whence came our
idea of co-writing a book. The book as a whole is co-written, though some
chapters were written mainly by one or other of us. Chapters 1 to 4 were written
mainly by D.B., 5 and 7 mainly by J.H., while 6, 8, and 9 have been co-written.
D.B.’s contribution was written partly during tenure of a Jacobsen Research
Fellowship in Philosophy at University College London during 1989–91, and
this author gratefully acknowledges this support. A different kind of support
came from Stacia, Henry, and Matthew, who for many years gave my attempts
to make time to write the book their whole-hearted backing.
J.H. would like to thank Judy, Susannah, Jessie, and Rosalind for their sup-
port, and belief that this book would be completed. Alison Richards helped in
the ordering of the ideas, and David Lyon provided valuable assistance in the
use of clear language. Dudley Ankerson and Bernard Wood provided inspira-
tion on broader but equally important fronts.
Both authors would like to thank friends and colleagues for their comments
and advice on all or parts of the work in various stages of completion, includ-
ing Simon Baron-Cohen, Chris Brewin, Andy Clark, Bill Fulford, Sebastian
Gardner, Peter Hobson, David Papineau, and Mick Power.
D.B., London; J.H., Liverpool, U.K. 1995.
This page intentionally left blank
 Contents

Introduction and Synopsis xv

1 Mind, meaning, and the explanation of action 01

1.1 The ‘cognitive paradigm’ in psychological science 01
1.1.1 Cognition in the explanation of behaviour 01
1.1.2 Cognition, affect and consciousness 12
1.2 Intentionality 16
1.2.1 Some definitions and some old theories 16
1.2.2 Intentionality based in action 19
1.3 Theory and theory of mind 27
1.3.1 ‘Theory’ in post-empiricist epistemology 27
1.3.2 Theory of mind and self-knowledge 33
1.3.3 Core beliefs: logic and psychologic 39
1.4 The inference to causality 43
1.5 Summary 47
Endnotes 49
References 52

2 Mind, meaning, and neural causation 59

2.1 ‘Encoding’ as a solution to the problem of mental causation 59
2.2 Objections to the encoding thesis (1): ‘Are there “sentences in the
head”?’ 64
2.3 Objections to the proposed solution (2): ‘(Neural) Syntax isn’t
enough for semantics’ 68
2.4 Objections to the proposed solution (3): ‘Neural syntax is enough
for causality’ 72
2.5 Objections to the proposed solution (4): ‘Meanings ain’t in the
head’. 76
2.6 Objections to the proposed solution (5): ‘‘Meaning is in human
activity, not the brain’. 84
2.7 Summary 87
Endnotes 90
References 93

3 Relativity 97
3.1 Intentionality is observer-relative 97
3.2 Theory of mind and empathy (‘mental simulation’) 99
x CONTENTS

3.3 Rule-following 104

3.4 Relativity and reality in the natural and bio-psychological
sciences 117
3.5 Summary 126
Endnotes 127
References 129

4 Functional semantics 133

4.1 Introduction 133
4.2 Hume’s analysis of causality and some standard elaborations 134
4.3 Causal semantics: meaning as a (standard) causal relation 139
4.4 Functional semantics: meaning defined in terms of systemic
function 145
4.5 Functional semantic causality: norms and necessity, generality
and agency 156
4.6 Summary 169
Endnotes 171
References 174

5 Two forms of causality in biological and

psychological processes 179
5.1 Introduction 179
5.2 Intentional causality: 15 principles 180
5.3 Non-intentional causality 186
5.4 The relationship between intentional and non-intentional
causality 188
5.5 Intentional causality cannot be replaced by non-intentional 189
5.6 The place of non-intentional causality in the explanation of
breakdown 195
5.7 Disruption of function and the conditions for non-intentional
causality 196
5.8 Biological processes: A further examination 197
5.8.1 DNA and protein synthesis 197
5.8.2 The haemoglobin molecule 199
5.9 Summary 201
References 201

6 Intentional causality, neurobiology and development 203

6.1 Introduction 203
6.2 Neurobiology 205
6.2.1 The basic units 205
 CONTENTS xi

6.2.2 The visual system 205

6.2.3 Representation and behaviour in animals 211
6.3 Early human psychological development 213
6.3.1 Introduction 213
6.3.2 The newborn infant 213
6.3.3 The first months 214
6.3.4 Attachment 216
6.3.5 Play 217
6.4 Rule multiplicity: selection and communication 220
6.4.1 The problems and forms of solution 220
6.4.2 Self and personality 221
6.4.3 Communication, metacommunication, and language 223
6.4.4 Cognition and commitment 225
6.5 Higher-order intentionality: the development of thought
and reason 229
6.5.1 Introduction 229
6.5.2 Origins in action 229
6.5.3 Cognitive maturation 230
6.6 Summary 235
References 236

7 Psychiatric disorder and its explanation 241

7.1 Introduction 241
7.2 The operation of intentionality in psychological
processes 241
7.3 The disruption of intentionality 244
7.4 Levels of explanation and the reduction of mental
processes 248
7.5 Medical disorder 252
7.6 Psychiatric disorder 255
7.6.1 Classification and diagnosis 255
7.6.2 Intentionality in psychiatric disorder 256
7.6.3 The search for non-intentional causal explanation 259
7.6.4 Interactions between intentional and non-intentional
causal processes 261
7.7 Genetics, ‘design’, and disorder 263
7.7.1 Introduction 263
7.7.2 Dennett, development and design 263
7.7.3 Genetic influences 268
7.8 ‘Biological’ psychiatry and psychology 272
7.9 Summary 274
References 275
xii CONTENTS

8 Intentionality in disorder 279

8.1 Two approaches: logic and biology 279
8.2 The logic and epistemology of disorder 280
8.2.1 Radical error, avoidance and re-enactment 280
8.2.2 A priori threats to action and thought 285
8.2.3 Higher-order intentionality: further possibilities
of disorder 289
8.2.4 Psychic defences: behavioural strategies, mental
analogues and elaborations 292
8.3 Intentional causality and disorder 299
8.3.1 Introduction: threats to the integrity of
intentional causality 299
8.3.2 Incompatibility between representation and action 301
8.3.3 The generalization and differentiation of
representations 304
8.3.4 The stability and testing of representations 305
8.3.5 The integrity of the meta-representational system 306
8.4 Psychological models of disorder and treatment 308
8.4.1 Introduction 308
8.4.2 Conditioning theory 308
8.4.3 Social learning theory 309
8.4.4 Cognitive therapy 310
8.4.5 Psychoanalytic theories 312
8.4.6 Family systems theories 314
8.4.7 Attachment theory 317
8.5 Summary 320
References 321

9 Psychiatric conditions 325

9.1 Introduction 325
9.2 Schizophrenia 326
9.2.1 Introduction: syndromes 326
9.2.2 Biochemical contributions 326
9.2.3 Neuropathology and neuropsychology 327
9.2.4 Neurodevelopment and psychological
development 329
9.2.5 Psychosis, certainty and action 332
9.3 Anxiety disorders 334
9.3.1 Intentionality, development and content 334
9.3.2 Obsessive compulsive disorder 343
9.3.3 Post-traumatic stress disorder and other cases of
recurring, intrusive, distressing thoughts 347
 CONTENTS xiii

9.4 Personality disorders 361

9.4.1 Introduction 361
9.4.2 Borderline personality disorder 362
9.4.3 Sexual abuse and borderline processes 364
9.4.4 Development, intentional and borderline processes 366
9.4.5 Protection and resilience 367
9.5 Conclusion 368
References 370
Index 377
This page intentionally left blank
 Introduction and Synopsis

The starting point of this book is the assumption that theories of the mind
need to provide an account of order and disorder, which have been tradition-
ally the domain of psychology and psychiatry; and that psychology and psy-
chiatry need to understand the nature of their explanations, which is the
province of the philosophy of mind and philosophy of science. Here and in
the first chapters of the book we review the philosophical issues and make
specific proposals that are in some respects novel. We then show how these
ideas can be applied to biological systems in general and to the mind and its
functioning both in order and disorder, and in the ground between the two.
In this opening section we set out to orient the reader to the issues in psy-
chopathology by reviewing how the questions are posed in relation to the
commonest adult mental health problem, depression, illustrating briefly the
links between the philosophical, research, and clinical issues. Depressive
episodes involve changes of behaviour, mood and thinking about the self, the
outside world, the past and the future. They may be understood in two contrast-
ing ways. In the first it is assumed that being depressed is like any other human
emotional state and that there is a reason for it, in a loss or threat or other
similar adverse external circumstance. In the second view, it is not part of the
person’s usual set of emotional responses to events, but is a form of illness. We
will be concerned in this book to make clear how either interpretation gives
rise to questions, to offer some solutions to those questions, and above all to
show how important it is to keep alive several lines of thought in the investiga-
tion and treatment of psychiatric or psychological disorder.
The difference between the two types of explanation, broadly speaking, lies
in whether or not they refer to the meaning of the mood, beliefs, and behav-
iours. In the first they are thought to be meaningful in relation to the rest of
the person’s life, their past and present experiences. Why is this problematic?
Where the precipitants are clear, such an account may be straightforward, but
often they are not. The person appears to have nothing to be depressed about,
or can think of no reason to be depressed. The depressed person does not feel
or seem to be his/her normal self. The depression is experienced as happening
to the person, rather than being part of them. In other words the experience
and the observed phenomena have the qualities of an illness that intrudes inex-
plicably and uncontrollably into the life of the individual. Many psychiatric
xvi INTRODUCTION AND SYNOPSIS

conditions have this quality, to a greater or lesser extent, of being experienced

as intrusive, or inexplicable, and some ways as alien.
A further question arises from the meaningful account, where we are able to
identify reasons for the depression. In what sense could a loss such as the
death of a loved one be the cause of the depression? We can describe in human
terms how that might be: because the two people had shared happy experi-
ences, had supported each other, confided intimate concerns; in short because
they meant a lot to each other. Does this mean that the loss caused the depres-
sion in the same sense that loss of support causes an apple to fall? Apples fall
off trees all over the world in the same way, following the same laws of nature,
yet the death of one person has a quite different emotional effect from the
death of another. The difference appears to be related to the significance of
one and not the other. We must conclude either that our concepts of meaning
and significance must be translatable into other terms more like those of
physics, or that different ideas of cause and effect are operating. If it is the lat-
ter, are cause and effect in the mind different from cause and effect in the rest
of the world? In the course of the book we shall argue that states of mind are
genuinely causal, that the causal processes are different from those of physics,
but not different from those in biology generally. We will also find that even
mental states that are experienced as intrusive, inappropriate, and uncontrol-
lable may arise from the experiences and personality of the individual. Then
the clinical and research implication is that therapeutic approaches should
address those areas.
We will see also that the second kind of explanation of depression, as a form
of illness, may be appropriate. We will not however be able to entertain that
possibility until we have addressed a further set of questions. If the constella-
tion of emotions, beliefs, or behaviours, seen in depression is not linked to the
rest of a person’s life or experiences, is there a difference between this and their
other mental states which we readily think of as meaningful? For instance if
I was happy last year because I got a good new job, and now I am depressed for
no apparent reason, was the job really the cause of my happiness, or was my
happiness as inexplicable as my depression? If I suppose that my depression
arose from an abnormality of my brain function, could I then put last year’s
happiness down to brain function? This has a certain appeal because it must
have involved alterations in brain function, but does that mean that the
new job was not really part of the causal chain? As we shall see attempts have
been made to argue that those meaningful events that we think of as causing
our feelings, thoughts, and behaviours do not really do that, and only brain
processes are genuinely causal. But these attempts do not succeed. The alter-
native is to suppose that different causal processes might have operated in
 INTRODUCTION AND SYNOPSIS xvii

last year’s happiness and this year’s depression. If this is the case we will need
again two forms of causal process. From the research and clinical perspectives,
the questions do not stop there. Even if we can elucidate two different kinds of
origin of mental events and behaviours, how do we determine when each is
operating separately or in combination? Our aim is to provide an approach to
this question, first through an analysis of causal processes in the operation of
the mind, then through a consideration of these within the context of biology
and development, and finally in an enquiry into the origins of some of the
major psychiatric disorders.
The problem area with which we are concerned of course has historical roots,
and an understanding of these helps to make the issues clearer. The distinction
between meaning and causality, and the related distinction between under-
standing and explaining, arose at the turn of the nineteenth century within the
new cultural sciences, the Geisteswissenschaften. The distinctions signified a
major problem, the apparent misfit between the phenomena studied by these
new sciences—human beings and culture, and specifically the meaning that per-
vades them—and the assumptions and methods of the natural sciences, devel-
oped since the seventeenth century. Meaningful phenomena show a particularity
(‘uniqueness’) uncaptured by general laws. They apparently cannot be sub-
sumed under causal laws of the natural sciences. Further, meaning bears a loose
relation to ‘hard facts’, so that understanding of it tends to appear subjective. It
seemed, therefore, that knowledge of meaningful phenomena could not be
accommodated by the methodology of the natural sciences, based in assump-
tions of generality, causality, and objectivity. Hence there arose a dichotomy
between the natural sciences and the sciences of meaning, implying the auton-
omy of the latter. This whole problematic, subsequently endorsed and elabo-
rated in hermeneutic readings of the cultural sciences, and evident currently in
various post-modernist critiques, was expressed by the turn-of-the-century dis-
tinctions between meaning and causality, and understanding and explaining.1
The problem of meaning in relation to scientific method and explanation as
it arose at the turn of the nineteenth century was recognized immediately as
relevant to the new psychiatry by Jaspers. His Allgemeine Psychopathologie2
attempted to construct a psychiatry that could embrace both causal explana-
tion in terms of material events and empathic understanding of non-causal
meanings. The tension between the two methodologies, however, was covered
over rather than resolved. Jaspers’ problem was psychiatry’s problem. He
anticipated what was to become a split within psychiatry between explanation
of disorder in terms of brain pathology and ‘explanation’ in terms of (extra-
ordinary) meanings. The former had no room for meaning; the latter became
subject to much philosophical stick, because of its pretensions to be science.
xviii INTRODUCTION AND SYNOPSIS

Psychoanalytic theory, as the main and uncompromising proponent of

meaningful explanation of disorder, has carried the burden of the problematic
status of meaning in relation to scientific method. Problems identified for it
included apparent lack of objectivity of data, the non-empirical character of
its hypotheses (alleged unfalsifiability), and the questionable assumption that
meanings are causes. The pressure, mounting in the 1960s, contributed to the
development of the hermeneutic readings of psychoanalytic theory popular in
the 1970s, which accepted, with more or less regret, the demarcation between
understanding and causal, or more generally, scientific, explanation.3 The
hermeneutic readings of psychoanalytic theory, important and presumably
inevitable as they were at the time, were relatively short-lived. In part this was
because of their implausibility: psychoanalytic theory, like all psychological
theories, did seem interested in the aetiology of behaviour, and not just in, as it
were, spinning meanings out of the air. But also and in any case, at about this
time, the terms of the problem were being transformed. In psychology, behav-
iourism was in process of being surpassed by a new kind of psychological
science, in which mental states played centre stage. This was of course the
‘cognitive revolution’ in psychology, which began roughly in the 1960s and
which continues apace.
The appearance of this cognitive paradigm has powerful implications for
the problems embodied in the traditional distinctions between meaning and
causality, and between understanding and explaining. The new paradigm
establishes mental states and processes as subjects for scientific enquiry, and as
having a role in the scientific explanation of behaviour. At the same time, the
working assumption is apparently that mental states are causal, or, to put the
point more fully, that mental states are invoked in causal explanations of
behaviour. Further, though here we encounter many problems and controver-
sies, the prima facie implication is that the meaning which characterizes mind
comes within the domain of scientific enquiry, implicated in mental causation.
Inevitably psychiatry has inherited all the philosophical or conceptual prob-
lems of psychology, including the problem of meaning and causality, but it
faces further specific ones of its own. There are certainly problems with con-
struing meaningful mental states as causes of behaviour already in the normal
case, but there is a further reason for doubting the relevance of meaningful
explanation in the case of disorder. The reason is simple, on the surface,
namely, that the notion of disorder is applied precisely at the point where
meaning comes to an end. Roughly, the question of disorder is raised when
there is (serious) failure of meaningful connection between mental states and
reality, or among mental states, or between mental states and action. In the
apparent absence of meaningful connections, we may posit different kinds of
 INTRODUCTION AND SYNOPSIS xix

mechanism, involving physical causation, mechanisms which have nothing to

do with meaning, with beliefs, desires, plans, etc. Given breakdown in mean-
ing, in mental order, it is plausible to suppose that we require explanation in
terms of non-meaningful processes, specifically disruption by some form of
biological abnormality. This a priori consideration lends weight to the so-
called ‘medical model’ in psychiatry, insofar as it seeks to explain psychological
disorder by reference to biological pathology.
The simplicity of this line of thought is overshadowed, however, because the
issue of where the limits of the meaningful lie presses hard. Psychological the-
ory may find meaning beyond the point at which common sense runs out.
Many controversies within and around psychiatry turn on this point. The var-
ious alternatives to and critiques of mainstream, medical psychiatry share in
common the charge that it has abandoned the search for meaning prema-
turely, has over-hastily opted for the lower-level form of explanation in terms
of biological causation, because of a poverty-stricken theory of meaning.
Freudian theory extended the limits of the meaningful beyond what was
envisaged by the common sense, and the psychiatry, of the time. The diverse
critiques of the ‘medical model’ which appeared in the 1960s and which came
to be known collectively as the ‘anti-psychiatry’ movement, likewise charged
psychiatry with having a blinkered perception of meaning. Szasz questioned the
legitimacy of the very idea of ‘mental illness’ as used in psychiatry, and attacked
the associated medicalization of what he described rather as (comprehensible)
‘personal problems of living’.4 Laing reframed madness, schizophrenia, as
being an understandable, indeed the only sane response to a confused and
contradictory family life.5 In examining the historical presuppositions of the
relatively recent idea of ‘mental illness’, Foucault sought to show that it arose
as an inevitable consequence of the excessive rationality of the Enlightenment,
as the mere negation of reason, meaning and validity, that this essentially neg-
atively defined madness was expelled, as it were, from consciousness, so also
geographically, out of the community, into the asylums.6 The general criticism
was that there is more meaning in so-called mental illness than meets the eye
of psychiatry, and behind that, of the culture in which modern psychiatry has
arisen.
Having surveyed from an historical perspective the problem space within
which we are working, we can sketch briefly our position. Concerning the cen-
tral problem of meaning and causality, we argue that explanations which invoke
meaning (meaningful mental states) are causal, but they are in critical respects
different from causal explanations of the sort found in the physical sciences. In
this way we draw a distinction between two varieties of causal explanation,
which we call the intentional and the non-intentional. This distinction differs
xx INTRODUCTION AND SYNOPSIS

from the distinction between meaning and causality obviously because it is

not drawn in terms of what is or is not causal. But also, the distinction we pro-
pose appears at a different place in the spectrum of the sciences, not between
the ‘hard’ natural sciences and the ‘soft’ cultural sciences, but rather between
the natural sciences of physics and chemistry, and the (equally natural) bio-
logical sciences. In the biological sciences we find concepts of function, design,
rules, information, and information-processing, which are the essential ingre-
dients of intentional-causal explanation as understood here. Marking the dis-
tinction at this point, between the pre-biological and the biological sciences
has the effect of assimilating biology to psychology, and indeed to the cultural
sciences. Our point can be put briefly by saying that meaning is akin to, or is
on a continuum with, the information that pervades biological systems and
functioning. This proposal stands in contrast to those which in one or another
way endorse a radical distinction between the meaning of mind, language, and
culture, and anything to be found in the natural sciences, biological or other-
wise. These alternative positions, which otherwise of course vary greatly
among themselves, include materialism and hermeneutics, and the views of
such contemporary philosophers as Quine and Davidson.
For psychiatry, which seeks models of aetiology and intervention, the explo-
ration of meaningful processes is of interest only insofar as meanings are
causes. Once this claim is defined and established in the first part of the essay,
though Chapters 1 to 6, we turn in the second part of the essay, Chapters 7 to
9, to explore breakdown of intentionality, and the nature and limits of inten-
tional explanations of psychological disorder. The notion of breakdown of
intentionality is also relevant to the first part of the essay, however. Intentional-
causal explanations, our whole way of conceiving the phenomena which they
explain, are permeated by concepts involving normative distinctions, such as
function, and hence dysfunction, design more or less suited to the environ-
ment and task, normal as opposed to abnormal environmental conditions,
true/false belief, adaptive as opposed to maladaptive behaviour, and so on. In
this sense themes concerning disorder and its explanation run through all of
the chapters.
While the philosophy of psychology has a long and familiar history, and is
currently flourishing, the philosophy of psychiatry has been relatively neg-
lected. The most thorough and influential analysis of the philosophical foun-
dations of psychiatry was Jaspers’, and the distinction between meaningful and
causal connections was fundamental to it. Since Jaspers it would be fair to say
that philosophical study of general psychiatry has been in limbo. Philosophers
have perhaps been wary of tackling the problems of psychiatry because of
unfamiliarity. In part this would be modesty appropriate in the philosophy of
 INTRODUCTION AND SYNOPSIS xxi

any science, art, or scholarly discipline, but a further factor here is probably
the one identified by Foucault, that in the modern age ‘madness’ became alien-
ated from culture, delegated then solely to the psychiatric profession. This has
been a result detrimental to all concerned. While the philosophical founda-
tions of psychiatry suffered from inevitable neglect, attention focused rather
on the two broad areas referred to earlier: the scientific status or otherwise of
psychoanalytic theory, and the diverse ‘anti-psychiatry’ critiques. The former
debate did not concern primarily the concept of disorder, nor, a related point,
psychiatry in general. The latter debates certainly were about psychiatry and
the notion of ‘mental illness’, but their problems were social, political, and
historical, not primarily philosophical. Controversy about the scientific status
of psychoanalytic theory continued, and mainstream, medical psychiatry
defended itself against the radical critiques.7
We do not attempt in this essay to weigh into these well-known though by
now dated debates. Our aim is rather as stated above, to examine some philo-
sophical aspects of the problem of meaning and causality, in the light of con-
temporary theory in philosophy of mind and cognitive psychology, and their
bearing on the concepts of mental order and disorder. This examination is rel-
evant to the controversies surrounding psychoanalytic theory, and the notion
of mental illness, but these are not the main focus. If the essay can claim alle-
giance to any ‘tradition’ in the philosophy of psychiatry it would be to that
represented by Jaspers. That said, we have no pretensions to follow Jaspers in
the non-philosophical direction of his work, concerned with the details of
psychiatric phenomenology and its classification. That emphasis belonged
with the idea that meaningful phenomena have no causal role: all that was to
be done, in this case, was to describe and classify them. By contrast, insofar as
meaningful phenomena are implicated in causal processes, the task is to try to
explicate some basic principles of their operation.
Having described some context, colloquial and historical, for the present
essay we turn now to a Synopsis of its main themes:–

Intentionality is critical in the regulation and prediction of action

Our everyday understanding of each other’s actions is in terms of mental
states, such as experiencing, feeling, believing, wishing, planning, and so on
and so forth. This ‘folk psychology’ was quite different from early experimen-
tal psychology based in principles of conditioning, but it seems on the surface
at least to be more like contemporary cognitive psychology, which, as described
in the first chapter, constructs explanations of behaviour inside and outside
the laboratory in terms of cognitive states. We characterize mental or cognitive
states in a standard way, using the technical concept of ‘intentionality’: such
xxii INTRODUCTION AND SYNOPSIS

states are typically ‘directed at an object’, and this ‘intentional object’ may be
non-existent in reality. Intentionality will be explored throughout the book,
not only in application to psychological processes but also, and more contro-
versially, in application to biological processes, with special attention to the
ways in which intentional processes can break down. In the first chapter we
argue for key interrelated points that underpin subsequent chapters, that
intentional processes are essentially involved in the regulation of action, and that
explanations which invoke such states are effective in the prediction of behaviour.
The idea that knowledge of mind serves for prediction is most plausible in
the third- (or second-) person case, while the position in the first person-case,
in self-knowledge, is less clear. It is proposed that second-order representa-
tions in the first-person case are indeed not used so much for the prediction as
for the production of action. This is consistent with the general point that
intentional states generally, whether first- or second-order, regulate action in
accord with them, and it qualifies the emphasis on predictive utility so that it
applies more to the third- (or second-) person case. It is proposed in a variety
of contexts through the essay that meta-representational capacity is essential
beyond certain levels of complexity of intentional processes, in order to main-
tain the integrity of action (including joint action), protecting against disar-
ray; at the same time however meta-representational capacity brings with it
further possibilities of disorder, arising for example from conflict between
first- and second-order representations. Second-order intentionality in the
first-person case—knowledge of one’s own mental states—is characteristic of
many psychological phenomena, and it is proposed that it—as opposed to
(first-order) intentionality—is what is likely to be critical in distinguishing the
psychological from the biological.

Intentional processes are causal

Our grasp of mental life enables us to understand one another and to antici-
pate one another, and hence to collaborate in joint activities. Our ‘folk psy-
chology’—notwithstanding errors—is remarkably effective at prediction,
good enough to support our social life. Prediction of course is also an aim of
science, and current behavioural science typically constructs its models in
terms of cognitive, or more generally information-carrying states. The predic-
tive power of folk and scientific psychology suggests that they are describing
causal processes. These causal processes however have characteristics that are
apparently quite unlike those envisaged in the physical sciences: they apparently
involve intentional processes, carrying information about the environment.
The conclusion of the first chapter that meanings are causes runs up against
various well-entrenched preconceptions, and raises many questions to be
 INTRODUCTION AND SYNOPSIS xxiii

picked up in subsequent chapters. How do meanings as causes relate to causes

of action in the brain? (In Chapter 2.) Does the relativity of meaning, shown
for example in the use of ‘empathy’ in recognizing meaning, exclude it from
the domain of proper empirical science? (In Chapter 3.) Can meaningful
causes be after all brought under the umbrella of physical causation? (In
Chapter 4.) What precisely are the distinctive features of causality that
involve intentionality? (In Chapter 5.) How do intentional processes develop
through the phylogenetic and ontogenetic scales, leading to, for example
second-order intentionality? (In Chapter 6.) How in general do intentional-
causal processes break down? (In Chapters 7 and 8.) These considerations are
applied in Chapter 9 to a variety of kinds of psychological disorder with which
psychiatry and clinical psychology deal.

The intentional processes that regulate behaviour are encoded

in the brain
We start in the second chapter by noting that cognitive behavioural and neuro-
sciences have incorporated the idea of causation by meaningful, information-
carrying states by using the notion of encoding: the information (or meaning)
that regulates behaviour is encoded in states of the brain. The rest of the chap-
ter defends and explicates this way forward. While the behavioural and brain
sciences are happy to proceed in this way, the encoding thesis, at least insofar
as it is applied to meaning, has come in for much philosophical criticism. The
philosophical criticisms are complex, turning on lines of thought such as the
following. The brain basically consists of physico-chemical processes, following
physico-chemical laws. As such they may well be able to instantiate ‘symbols’
and ‘syntax’ sufficient for computational purposes, but they never could pos-
sess genuine intentionality, which essentially involves a subjective understand-
ing of their meaning. Or again, the causes of behaviour, of muscle contraction,
must be local to the effects, and what is local are the physico-chemical, syntac-
tic processes. Meaning, by contrast, is not local to the brain and behaviour, but
essentially involves the environment.
The arguments used to defend the idea of encoding in the face of considera-
tions such as the above all turn essentially on the assumption, already pre-
pared in the first chapter, that there is a logical, conceptual connection
between meaning and its expression in intentional activity. This broadly
Wittgensteinian approach to meaning, though currently somewhat unfash-
ionable in the philosophy of cognitive science, in fact can do a great deal of
constructive work in this area. Its effect is to ground meaning in the (higher-
level, intentional) interactions between the living being and its environment,
and this avoids prevents problematic definition of meaning in other terms
xxiv INTRODUCTION AND SYNOPSIS

that are too subjective (for example consciousness) or too objective (an envi-
ronment to which we are not sensitive).
It becomes clear in this kind of defence of the notion of ‘encoding’, however,
that it needs to be interpreted in a quite specific way. In particular, ‘encoding’
should not be understood as implying that meaning is ‘in the brain’; rather, if
meaning is anywhere, it is distributed over the interactions between the living
beings and their environment and among each other. The claim is not that
meaning is ‘in the brain’, but exactly that it is encoded in the brain. The concept
of encoding serves among other things to explain how events non-local in
space or time function as proximal causes in the production of behaviour.
Further, what meaning is encoded is to be understood essentially in terms of
what behaviours—in varying conditions—it plays a role in producing. —The
second chapter begins on the basis of the familiar division between brain on
the one hand and meaningful, mental states on the other. But this division
ceases to be of primary interest as the arguments are developed. What is cru-
cial to the regulation of intentional behaviour is that intentional (meaningful,
information-carrying) states are involved, whether conceived as mental or
cognitive states, realized in the brain, or as brain states, encoding meaning.
The neural causation of intentional behaviour is in this way not only not
incompatible with causation by intentional states, but is in fact an alternative
expression of the same point.

Intentionality involves relativity, but can be part of

science nevertheless
One long recognized problem of meaning in relation to science is that its
recognition involves subjectivity and relativity, and this is considered in the
third chapter. Our general approach is to endorse this relativity, however, as
opposed to trying to wriggle out of it. We endorse it as an integral part of a
philosophy and science that is based in the notion of action, which means
interaction, and hence involves relativity. What is lost—the absolute object,
represented by the absolute measure—we can do without. Relativity in knowl-
edge of mind and meaning is apparent in the very old idea, recently revived in
philosophy and developmental psychology, that it involves ‘empathy’, a kind of
cognitive-affective perspective-taking. A much broader approach to the problem,
concerning representation and knowledge in general, is found in Wittgenstein’s
influential discussion of rule-following. The notion of rule-following serves to
capture the concept of order in reality and thought, as being through time, in
activity, as opposed to being static, in the form of objects. The negative conclu-
sion of Wittgenstein’s analysis of rule-following is that the rule is not laid down
in advance; the positive implication is that it is created in practice. This may be
Exploring the Variety of Random
Documents with Different Content
"The squall had now more or less spent itself, so we ran in close,
gaining some small shelter from a promontory which ended in a big
boulder.
"To attain such shelter as the promontory offered it was necessary to
make our way through a group of rocks. This we did, and the wind
sinking, Cattle and I scrambled ashore with the axes and fell to work
while Bernardo remained on board.
"Before, however, we had gathered half the required quantity of
wood a second squall, more heavy than the first, came screaming
across the lake, tearing the launch from her anchorage and almost
driving her upon the beach. We stripped off some of our clothes and
waded down into the water, and after a ten-minutes hard struggle
we succeeded in getting her back into deep water, where she again
dropped anchor.
"We returned to our work ashore, and cut and piled a good store of
fuel, almost as much as we needed, on the shingle ready to carry
aboard, but the violence of the waves put all hope of embarkation
out of the question for the time. This was about 10 A.M., and all day
the wind increased in violence. A stately procession of icebergs
began to float down from the northerly arms of the lake and squall
succeeded squall. Soon it became evident that the launch was
drifting again, and I shouted to Bernardo, who was now within
hearing distance of the shore, to break up an oar and use it for fuel.
Luckily he had kept up fire in the furnace and steam in the boiler,
and as the weather was growing rapidly worse, I ordered him to
steam up over the anchor, and afterwards to take the boat a quarter
of a mile out and there drop anchor with all the length of chain out
that we possessed.
"What followed gave to us, I think, perhaps the most heartbreaking
moments we experienced throughout the whole trip. While Bernardo
was getting up enough steam to carry out orders, the launch, still
drifting, swooped nearer and nearer a reef of submerged rocks. As
she was in deep water, Cattle and I could do nothing to help; we
were compelled to watch helplessly from the shore and rage at our
own impotence. We called to Bernardo to keep her off with an oar,
and while he was unlashing one the stern of the launch and, more
than all, her precious propeller barely escaped being smashed to
pieces as she rose and fell on the rollers. To us, looking from the
shore, it seemed as if her last hour was come, and it appeared hard
indeed that she should have run safely through so many perils only
to end her existence in the lake before we had had time to carry out
any part of the exploration on which we had set our hearts.
"At the crucial moment, however, Bernardo managed to pole her
clear and give her steam. She moved slowly out and anchored far off
shore.
"Evening drew on, but the wind showed no signs of dropping, as it
usually did at the rising or setting of the sun. There was nothing for
it but to make up our minds to a night ashore. We found ourselves
in a dilemma, for we had our whole supply of food on shore, while,
with the exception of my poncho, which I brought with me to dry,
Bernardo had all the rugs and blankets in the launch. However, we
made the best of it by building up a big shelter of drift-wood and
bushes. Then we lit a huge fire, for our clothes were soaking, and
essayed to dry them.
"Meantime the launch was riding out the storm as well as could be
expected, but taking a good deal of water aboard all the same. It
grew dark and the last we saw of her that night, her anchor was
holding and a big sea was racing aft. Bernardo had got on the
hatches and gone to bed, we supposed, for we did not see him the
whole time save once, and then he was bailing furiously."
The sky was black with the promise of rain, so we heaped up the big
fire, filled the cooking-pots with water, and spreading the poncho on
the ground took our places upon it. It was not such a very bad night
after all. Things rarely fulfil their promise of disagreeableness—
things of this kind anyway. We passed the night somehow with the
help of our pipes and an occasional brew of sugarless tea. I never
desired sugar so much as then. Sugarless tea is far less warming
than sugared. Sleep was well-nigh impossible. It was too cold for
that, and, besides, one or other of us was always up and trying to
pick out the launch from the surrounding mass of spindrift and
tumbling black and grey waters.
In those latitudes the wind generally rises or falls, as the case may
be, with the setting or rising of the sun, and eagerly we waited to
see if the dawn would bring any change in our uncomfortable
position. But at dawn it was blowing, if anything, harder than ever.
The launch, however, was all right, although there was no sign of
Bernardo. We were driven to make a breakfast of berries from the
califate-bushes, of which a few mean specimens grew sparsely on
the hillside. It is a desolate place, that northern shore of Argentino.
When the sun came out we lay down and slept in its liquid rays. A
little after midday we cooked some fariña with mutton fat and ate it.
The gale was still tearing across the water, and we began to count
over our resources. We still had the greater part of the ostrich which
the hound Moses had killed on the way to the River Santa Cruz, but
it was an immature bird, and would provide us with no more than
three meagre meals. A couple of handfuls of fariña were yet in the
bottom of the bag, we had a half-tin of tea and three-parts of a plug
of tobacco.
As for Bernardo, he had now been nearly thirty hours without food;
indeed, to be accurate, he had been fifty hours without food, thirty
of them in the launch, for we had started work on a maté. If we
could have made him hear, he might have attached a line to the life-
buoy and floated her off, and we could have sent him back supplies.
We had made certain of another night of discomfort, so we gathered
another big pile of firewood. Cattle's leg, that he had strained on the
previous day, was giving him much pain. But when the sun was
already dipping behind the summits of the Cordillera the storm
began to lull. We had little hope that Bernardo could stand out much
longer against starvation, so after half an hour, as the seas were
going down, we thought it well to try and get off to the launch.
We went down to the beach, and, after much hailing, roused the
Swede. By signs I told him to come in as close as he dared, which
meant to within twenty or twenty-five yards of the shingle. This time
he got her in a better position, and we stripped and waded in with
the wood. It took us about forty journeys, and the water was
abominably cold. I do not think two men ever worked much harder
during the time we were at it, so before very long we were on board
with everything.
Fearing to remain near the shore we got up steam, and with
exceeding thankfulness bade good-bye to that inhospitable beach. I
asked Bernardo how much longer he thought he could have held
out. He said two days, and, in fact, appeared to think he had been
better off with the blankets and his pipe and the warmth of the fore-
hatch than we with food on shore. First and last he was a fine
fellow, patient, quiet and hard-working. As to his being better off
than Cattle and myself, that was a matter of individual taste, I
suppose. As a rule, indeed, the average man will, as far as my
experience goes, sacrifice his food to his bed nearly every time,
especially when the wind is blowing out of the snows.
Evening soon settled down into night, and we ran on by starlight to
our next anchorage, an almost land-locked bay, where we made
merry on the remains of the ostrich. I also discovered some flour in
the afterhold which had been overlooked, enough to make three
small dampers. We were uncommonly glad to resume our rugs that
night.
On the 24th we gathered more wood and put to sea. We meant to
reach the southern shore of the lake on the Burmeister Peninsula,
and there put in to a good anchorage not far from Cattle's
headquarters. But to do this it was necessary to pass across Hell-
gate, the opening to the north arm or North Fjord of the lake,
always a difficult stretch of water owing to the fact that squalls
perpetually blew down upon it from the funnel formed by the
winding gorges of the upper lake. We soon saw the two dark bluffs
beyond which the water wound away behind the outlying buttresses
of the mountains, whose snow-caps glimmered against the wintry
sky. We did not escape scot-free, for a squall duly caught us, and
the tossing sent everything in the launch adrift. We ran by five
icebergs and once the pump refused to act, and things looked
awkward, but in the end, to make a long story short, we steamed
into our shelter, which we called Cow Monte Harbour, and tied up the
launch with no small thankfulness, for she was leaking badly through
the cracked plate I have before referred to.
As the grass was dry we could not, with safety, make a fire
sufficiently large to signal Burbury to bring up the horses, as had
been arranged, so we sent on Bernardo with a message. He started
off in his big boots and we had no idea of the mischief he was to
drop into before we saw him again. He was accustomed to the
pampas round about the town of Santa Cruz, where you can light a
fire with impunity, but amongst the high grass growing in the valleys
of the foothills of the Cordillera a fire is certain to spread over an
immense area. Finding the way long, perhaps, Bernardo sent up a
brace of smokes as signals. We saw them, and knew at once what
was likely to happen.
 THE FIRE

When the horses arrived we bundled on to them and rode away to

try and stop the conflagration. There were two fires raging, and our
only chance lay in being able to arrest their spreading beyond the
shores of a dry lagoon, which mercifully extended between them
and the summer-dried, well-grassed marsh lying under Mount
Buenos Aires and Mount Frias, where Cattle's pioneer-farm was
situated. It would have been a distressing return for his co-operation
and help had one of my men raised a fire to sweep over his land and
destroy his whole stock of horses, sheep and cattle, a result that
was for a time imminent.
We all provided ourselves with sheepskins and began our attempt to
beat out the fire. It was raging in bone-dry grass and thorn and the
flames leaped up and scorched our faces. Every blow with the
sheepskin sent up a shower of sparks that got into one's eyes and
ears, and it appeared as if we should never make headway against
the blaze. We might clear ten feet for a moment, but as we turned
away the flames would eat their way back and, rekindling, flare up in
waving tongues and roar again. Of course we were to windward, on
the lee side the smoke rolled away in a solid cloud. I do not know
how long we worked on that upper ring of fire, but slowly we
succeeded in beating it out by sheer weight and repetition of blows.
The wind had by this time dropped a little, and the course of the
main blaze set downhill. At length we had beaten out a half-circle
and came to the crux of the affair. If we could but blot out the fire to
the south, where it was burning savagely among high bushes and
dry thorn, it was probable the situation would be saved.
We took a short rest of four or five minutes and began again. The
smoke was gathering and rolling in great gouts, and we could see
nothing save the flames on the one side of us and the black blinding
dust on the other. As for ourselves, we were as black and scorched
as singed rats. We knew that the next ten minutes would decide the
matter.
Beside the fire ran a meandering cow or game track, and it was at
this line that we meant to try and cut off the flames, which were
rapidly spreading and getting out of hand. One was conscious of
nothing but the thud of the sheepskins and the figures of the
workers leaping in and out of the smoke and flame. I have never
witnessed a wilder scene. The men shouted as they worked. It was
like a battle-picture seen in a dream. All along the cow-track, where
the fire lipped it, the sheepskins rose and fell. A dense dun-coloured
cloud rolled out and up, lit every moment by explosions of sparks.
Presently it became a race for a spot some 200 yards ahead, where
a line of green damp grass might stop the fire and force it in another
direction. To cut it off at this point would make the remainder of our
task more easy. But just on the nearer side of the grass line a
number of high bushes were growing, and their strong roots and
lower branches gave the flames a definite hold. Now and again, too,
one had to run back and stamp out some sudden recrudescence of
the flame. There is no need to describe the last half-hour; only,
when the yellow circle of fire had given place to a smouldering black
ring, we were ready to lie down on our blackened sheepskins and
feel neither glad nor sorry but only wearily tired.
To beat out a fire is about the hardest sort of effort a man can
make, for no spell of rest can be obtained without losing the results
of previous labour. Afterwards, when we made a round of the fires to
make sure of safety, we found them sinking sullenly into black
deadness.
We were especially lucky in the direction taken by the fire, as, had it
burnt along any other line, it is almost certain that our camp and all
that we possessed would have been destroyed. Such a disaster
actually occurred to Cattle some years ago in the north of the
country. He was then journeying with two companions, when a half-
breed boy he had with him was foolish enough to allow a camp-fire
to spread among the surrounding grass. The pioneers were able to
save nothing but a pair of boleadores and a Winchester rifle with the
seven cartridges that happened to be in it. The party fortunately
possessed several hounds, by whose efforts the stock of meat was
kept up, otherwise it is more than likely that their case would have
been a serious one.
The interval between the time of our starting for Lake Viedma and
our return was in all but eleven days. During those eleven days
much happened that brought back most vividly to me old boyish
dreams of travel and romance. I had realised some of them, but risk
and adventure, which enchant us in the glamour of far-off
contemplation, are apt on nearer view to lose in romance what they
gain in reality.
On the same day of the fire, news, brought by some wandering
Indian or Gaucho, reached us; rumours passing from mouth to
mouth as they will in a wonderful manner over the most sparsely
populated country. The first we heard was a report of war, a real
war-scare, such as might have originated from the fertile imagination
of a Haïtian journalist. The Russians were said to be marching upon
India, and France had joined hands with them against England.
It was but the barest outline, yet it shook and excited us out there in
the ends of the earth just as if we had formed items of a crowd in
Fleet Street.
Following on this came that other heavy tidings indeed, the death of
the Queen. We took off our hats, and at first nothing was said. The
news struck each man of us. There was a sense of loss and of the
blankness of a personal calamity, which expressed themselves at last
in a few odd homely words.
There, 7000 miles away, the abstract idea of the nation became
concrete. One had no picture in one's mind of England that did not
bear in the foreground, filling the heart and eye, that gracious, royal,
simple, noble figure, which for so long had drawn out towards itself
the highest patriotism of the race. The tumult of a nation's mourning
was taken up and echoed feebly here as in other remote corners of
the earth. Thousands of pens have borne witness to the world-wide
sorrow. No need to say more, but while I write the scene comes
back, as some moments of one's life will and do come—the broad
blue heavens, the wide lake, the wind, the smell of grass and
califate-bushes, the grasping after shattered fancies, and the heavy
acceptance of the hour assigned.
 CHAPTER XVI
WILD CATTLE

Denseness of forest—Wild cattle originally escaped from early settlers—Grown

somewhat shaggy—Indians will not hunt them in forest—Patagonia not a big-
game country—Hunting wild cattle—Disappointment—Hunters paradise—Twelve
blank days—Sport on Punta Bandera—Big yellow bull—Losing the herd—Baffling
ground—Charge of bull and cow—A shot at last—Hunting in forests on Mount
Frias—String shoes—Winter hunting—Shoot bull—Shoot huemul five-pointer—
Wild-cattle hunting first-class sport.

Very different to the easy sport afforded by the huemul was our
experience of hunting wild cattle in the forests which clothe more or
less densely the ravines and slopes of the lower Andes. These
forests, which in some parts are absolutely impenetrable in the
spring, because at that season the pantanos are saturated with the
rains and melting snow, give shelter to many scattered herds of wild
cattle.
Captain Musters,
writing in 1871, speaks
of hunting these
animals under the
Cordillera, but their
existence in a wild state
dates from a far earlier
period—in fact, from
the time of the first
Spanish occupation,
when cattle escaped
 FORESTS UNDER THE from the Valdez
SNOWS WHERE Peninsula, and roaming
WILD CATTLE BREED over the pampas at
length reached the high
grass and sheltered
places of the Cordillera.
Finding these entirely to their liking, they have ever since lived and
bred in that region; their numbers, no doubt, being from time to
time increased by deserters from the unfenced farms on the east
coast of Patagonia. It is a strange thing that cattle which escape
almost invariably head north-west towards the Cordillera. This fact
has been commented on to us by many different Gauchos and
cattle-owners up and down the east coast.
The older herds have lost the smooth aspect of domesticated
animals and thrown back to the shaggy front, longer horns and
rough-haired hide characteristic of wild cattle. As to the special parts
of Patagonia in which wild cattle are most plentiful, it would be of
little use to give a list of them. Should a herd stray in the plains, the
Indians will soon make them change their quarters and return to
take refuge among the woods and ravines of the foothills. Inside this
forest-land the Indians will never venture, and there the
emancipated bull thoroughly enjoys himself. Even the beasts
belonging to the farmers lead a wandering life, and at a short
distance from the settlements are shy of the approach of man, and
have to be rounded up by mounted Gauchos. Those of them that
have been inside a corral and regained their liberty are every whit as
wild as the wild cattle proper. Being caught with a lasso and branded
is by no means an experience calculated to instil any deep
confidence in mankind into the mind of a calf.
In the Cordillera the herds are extremely wideawake. When a point
is disturbed, they always go higher up into the mountains, and
almost invariably leave that particular neighbourhood under cover of
the ensuing night. Their climbing powers are extraordinary.
Wherever a guanaco can go, a wild bull can follow him. Their tracks
are regularly and clearly marked, and they appear to move along
precisely the same paths from feeding-place to feeding-place. The
snows of winter force them to lower ground, but in my opinion the
herds never penetrate very deep into the Cordillera. Precisely how
far they go it would be hard to determine, but they seldom ascend
to the higher levels, preferring to wander about the outer spurs of
the lower hills. There is a spot on the south side of the Lake Rica
where they appear to make their way farther into the recesses of the
mountains than in any other district.
Patagonia, as the reader will by this time realise, cannot be called a
big-game country in the sense of affording any variety of large
animals for the benefit of the sportsman. But whoever goes into the
Cordillera will find the wild bulls of their forests well worthy of his
attention, for they give as excellent sport as any big game in the
world. A point which must tell greatly in their favour in the eyes of
some people is the fact that the pursuit of them is a pleasure by no
means unattended by danger.
The first day on which I attempted to find wild cattle we sighted two
herds, one about half way up the hillside and the other higher,
almost upon the snow-line. We had gone out rather with the idea of
prospecting, having but little hope of being so lucky as to get a shot.
Mr. Cattle, Burbury, and myself made up the party, and while Cattle
hid in the direction towards which the herd might be expected to
break, Burbury and I undertook the stalk. We separated, and I finally
got within two hundred yards of a dun-coloured bull; but his position
was so bad that it seemed a pity to shoot. The herd ultimately
moved into a strip of forest high on the shoulder of the mountain,
and we failed to locate it again.
Upon this followed a period when the memory of the shot I might
have taken rankled as a thorn in the flesh. The difficulty of finding a
herd was very great. We went out several days in succession and
failed to catch sight of a single horn. For twelve days we searched
from dawn to dark and found nothing. Yet these days, which
resulted in a total bag of two huemules, were infinitely more
sporting than were those in the neighbourhood of the River de los
Antiguos, where a large number of animals might have been
secured. On four occasions fresh tracks were found, and in that keen
invigorating air the hunting of such a quarry was a sport for the
gods.

A GLADE IN THE LAKE RICA FOREST

There is a picturesque sentence in one of Mr. Kipling's writings, in

which he speaks of a life "spent on blue water in the morning of the
world." Each savage of us has, I suppose, some such ideal
existence, and if that be so, mine would be passed in hunting some
great horned quarry upon frozen hills in a land where no wind too
strong should blow, and where the views of water and of peaks
should be in all shades of separate and glorious blue. What a
splendid place such a happy hunting-ground would be! Quite
different to the happy hunting-grounds of the North American
Indian, the Tehuelche or the Eskimo—the latter, by the way, looks
forward to a paradise where he will lie for ever upon the sleeping-
bench in the warmth and eat decomposed seals' heads! The nomad
hunter races kill to eat in any manner or by any means, the romance
of sport is in one sense lacking in them; but in my happy hunting-
ground there will be Irish elk with mighty spreading horns upon
those wondrous hills....
We have wandered far away from our subject. I think it may be said
that during those twelve blank days every method of hunting wild
cattle had a fair trial. Upon the northern slopes of Mount Buenos
Aires (which, I must mention, is very far distant from Lake Buenos
Aires, being, in fact, surrounded on three sides by the waters of
Lake Argentino) there is comparatively little wood, although there is
much thick high brush, so that—as in Sardinian moufflon-shooting—
one may spy the ground two or three times in the day, and yet fail
to discover a herd hidden in the brush or in one of the many water-
worn ravines. Nevertheless, this place was the most open ground
which we hunted, and was far superior to the Lake Rica side of the
mountain, upon which cluster dense forests of antarctic beech,
through which it is impossible to see more than twenty or thirty
yards, and often not so far.
Once or twice I tried sitting up for bulls at their drinking-places, but
never with any success. The fact is, that the forests they range
through are so well watered with streams, pantanos and springs,
that they have a score of drinking-places to choose from, therefore
the chances are twenty to one against getting a shot. But in a
district where water is scarce, it seems to me that this plan might
meet with success. The best sport was undoubtedly that which we
enjoyed towards Punta Bandera, a headland forming the north point
of Mount Buenos Aires.
It was here, upon the thirteenth day of my hunting, about an hour
and a half before dark, that I perceived a fine point of seventeen
upon the hillside in front of me. They were, however, in a spot
utterly impossible of approach, in the centre of a bald ridge upon the
summit of which they were silhouetted against the black background
of the mountain beyond them. Deep gullies cut up the intervening
ground, and after advancing as near as might be, I lay down and
possessed my soul in patience, waiting until the moment when the
herd should choose to move. They had left me time enough and to
spare for observing them through the glasses. Three black bulls, a
yellow one and a red were the pick of the herd, there were some
cows and well-grown calves also, and these last began to proceed
very leisurely down a cow-track, which would ultimately lead them
on to ground where they might be stalked. I had tied up my horse in
a hollow among some bushes of Leña dura. It was a glorious
evening and the shadows stood out very distinctly, so much so that
from the slightly higher ground I could see with the telescope the
movements of the shadows of the bulls. The bases of the mountain
were steeped in clear still dusk, there was no wind, and the whole
scene lived again fantastically in the smooth waters of the lake.
When one is shooting, no matter how intent one may be upon the
game, it is natural to observe these things and enjoy them, in a
secondary sense possibly, but none the less keenly. Anyway, there
was plenty of time to observe, for the herd took it easy, and now
and then one of the big bulls would come to a standstill and stare
about him. The yellow bull especially took my fancy, the spread of
his horns must have been over four feet. At length, however, the last
of the herd disappeared into a gully and I hastened forward. About a
mile separated me from the point, and this I covered at good speed;
the final bit necessitated a crawl, which ended on the edge of a low
rocky plateau. Here I peered through some fuchsia-bushes. To my
disgust the herd had quickened their pace, and were a little beyond
range upon a space of level land beneath me; they lingered here for
an uncommonly long time, giving me ample opportunity to study the
surrounding cow-tracks and the grass-bare wallows. Meantime the
precious light was fading, and the reflections of the snow-peaks
were beginning to blur and darken in the mirror of the lake. Ahead
of the herd were a number of tracks, which ran parallel with each
other for a certain distance, but afterwards branched into different
directions. I could see them dimly through the telescope. Should
they happen to take the lowest of these, they would be delivered
into my hands, for it led immediately under a cliff over which I could
get within a few yards of them. This track finally emerged upon the
shore of the lake. Under the leadership of a yellow cow, the whole
point began presently to descend this very track. As soon as the last
of them was out of sight, I rushed on to secure my shot. On the way
I spied from behind a boulder on high ground the coveted old yellow
bull knee-deep in the lake, drinking. Over the first part, which was
high, I had to be very careful, but once this spot was passed,
coming to the conclusion that as the light was fading so fast the race
would probably be to the swift, I hurried. Alas! a deep gully again
blocked my way, and it was necessary to make a détour of about
half a mile through breast-high bushes. While passing amongst the
brush much care had, of course, to be exercised to avoid the
breaking of twigs or branches, as the herd was not far off. When at
last I arrived at the cliff above the spot where the herd had
disappeared, I could not see the sights of my rifle. I would have
given much for two minutes of moonlight, for I could hear the noise
of the bulls moving within twenty yards, and the smell of them was
distinctly perceptible to my senses, sharpened by months of a
natural life. The whole herd had packed pretty close together on the
edge of the shingle, but it was already too dark for me to shoot, so I
retired after a while, comforting myself with the prospect of
following the herd in the morning.
Yet although I followed, I never found. The herd, as was to be read
from the tracks, struck upwards after leaving the lake and entered a
wide piece of forest, in which no day was ever long enough to find
them. Several times after this we were on the tail of a herd, and
again and again lost them in the dense forests. The ground over
which one had to move was extremely baulking to success; it was
covered with broken sticks, dead trees, and branches, dry, rotten,
and ready to snap beneath the smallest pressure. Sometimes after a
long stalk one found oneself in a patch of dry dead bushes, the
breaking of any bough of which would certainly spoil all chance of
success. Again, one could not see more than from twenty to fifty
yards ahead, and in thick forests much less. A herd will stand quite
still till within thirty yards if you have not perceived them, but the
moment your eye catches one of theirs the animal makes off, taking
his companions with him.
A bull, if you wound him and he charges, will charge but once, and if
he misses you, will pass on. But a cow is quite another affair. She
will return to the charge again and again, and will kneel down in
order to horn her antagonist. She is at least twice as formidable an
antagonist as a bull.
The next time I saw wild cattle was once again upon Punta Bandera,
and upon this occasion I had my first shot. It was early in the
morning when I made out the point with the glasses, feeding about
half-way up a spur of the mountain-side. Determined this time not to
be disappointed, a whole day was spent in a series of very careful
manœuvres. All went well until I entered a patch of dry dead
growth, so thick as to make it impossible to move without giving
audible indication of one's presence. While lying among this stuff
debating what course to pursue, to my delight a black and white
bull, evidently the leader of the herd, rose, grunted once or twice,
and, followed by the whole of his companions, began to come
towards me. He got to within 150 yards, and there coming upon the
edge of the dry stuff among which I lay hidden, turned tail and
moved slowly in the opposite direction. To shoot through the
undergrowth, which was about five feet high, was, of course,
impossible. Yet there was no chance of the animals, while roving in
search of pasture, reaching any better position with regard to me,
while any movement on my part to approach them must have been
through the dead bushes. There was nothing for it then but to stand
up and take the chance of a shot. A twig snapped in my rising and
the herd charged furiously away. A red bull, which had travelled
higher than his fellows upon the slope of the mountain, gave very
much the best chance as he raced along nearly broadside on.
He turned a complete somersault to the shot and lay so still that I
thought I had killed him. As I went towards him, however, he
scrambled to his feet and galloped after the retreating herd, and
although upon their tracks for the greater part of the evening, at no
point on the way, nor at the spot where he had fallen, did I find any
traces of blood. I therefore concluded that he had put his foot in a
hole, and that I had missed him clean. Since my return I have heard
the end of the history. The red bull was found dead quite close to
where I had shot him. He was, I understand, hit through the lungs.

The Father of the Herd.

After this shot on Punta Bandera, the herd left that locality, as they
invariably do, and most of the remainder of our hunting took place
upon the Lake Rica, or southern side, of the great mountain. One of
the pleasantest days we enjoyed was upon Mount Frias where a
large point of cattle had gone up beyond the snow-line. On that
occasion, when above the snow-line, I saw a pampa-fox, some
guanaco and a few ostriches. Quite a number of small birds that I
was unable to identify, as I could not shoot them, were feeding upon
a red berry which grows beneath the snow.
I think of earthly situations I would choose that for the location of
my happy hunting-ground where life throbs and quickens in the keen
air, and where, in the shelter of the black forest of antarctic beech-
trees, one can hear the wind from the snows moaning and crying
among the tree-tops, and dropping the leaves, painted with red and
yellow, upon the soft mossy mid-forest carpet.
While on Mount Frias my attention was drawn away from the cattle
by what I took to be an instance of albinism in the guanaco. There
was an immense herd of five hundred or perhaps more in an open
hollow, and among them I observed a very white specimen, but on
looking at it through the glasses it proved to be piebald rather than
truly white.
My next excursion was made on much lower ground in the direction
of Lake Rica. We had observed some spots to which a herd returned
night after night.[24] The success with which the herds can pick their
way over bad ground such as this and through trees, and most of all
across the giant trunks, decaying and rotten, many of which must
have fallen years ago, is extraordinary. Had it not been for the
openings broken by the passage of the cattle, we should have been
unable to penetrate the denser parts of the woods without axes. In
spite of his being such a heavy brute, a bull can always overtake a
horse in these spongy swamps, or indeed in most cases over very
bad ground.
In the winter, which was now only too quickly coming upon us, wild-
cattle shooting becomes, as does the shooting of all game in
Patagonia, much easier than it ever is during the rest of the year.
The herds descend to the low ground, being driven downwards by
degrees while the snows creep day by day lower on the mountain-
sides. As they desert the heights the area in which one may expect
to meet them naturally becomes smaller, and on the more level
country they can be followed with less trouble. The hunting in this
big forest was quite different to that on Punta Bandera, the sole
method here being to find comparatively fresh tracks and follow
them up, there being no possibility among that dense growth of
spying animals from a distance.
One day I had entered an extremely wet and boggy strip of forest
and came upon new tracks, which I followed in and out among the
trees for some hours. At length they led me up another hill into
another belt of forest. I remember that under the hill I took a
"spell," and at that moment, although I could not see them, the
cattle were within one hundred and fifty yards of me. Fortunately I
was very quiet and did not light my pipe, but presently went on.
Arrived at the top of the hill, I peered through the branches and saw
a fine brindled bull just in the act of rising to his feet. One of the
outlying cows had winded me and had given the alarm. My bull was
off at a gallop, and there was nothing to do but to send the heavy
Paradox bullet into the only part of him that was visible as he
dashed away. The shot took effect, he staggered but the second
barrel brought him down in good earnest. A third hit him in the
centre of the forehead, which is a deadly shot indeed, but with a
smallbore rifle one must be careful to place one's bullet clear of the
shaggy curl. The first shot had, I discovered, gone forward and
upward, touching the backbone; the second was a fair behind the
shoulder shot. I write this to illustrate the amount of shooting that a
wild bull will sometimes take.
 AS IT WAS IN THE BEGINNING

There are few higher joys in a sportsman's life than the pipe which
he smokes after a successful shot, but the skinning of the quarry
that comes later is a very different matter. This is especially the case
when the animal has dropped in such a spot that one cannot turn it
over owing to its weight.
 EDGE OF FOREST

For this forest shooting a 12-bore Paradox or jungle-gun is as good

as any. I had one which was made for me by Jeffrey and Co., and
with it one could make a very decent pattern at seventy yards. In
open ground I generally used a Mauser, but this rifle was, of course,
not heavy enough for forest shooting at a dangerous quarry, where
most of the shots were within forty yards.
Once again on Punta Bandera I saw the big yellow bull. One day I
watched the great herd of wild cattle straggling slowly down the
opposite hillside, the cows with their calves trotting alongside them,
and the magnificent yellow bull bringing up the rear in solitary state.
They were in a hopelessly unget-at-able position, so that one could
only watch them. The air was so clear that, with the telescope, it
was possible to make out the tracks of each separate animal as the
herd descended the incline.
While I was still engaged in watching the cattle, I saw something
brown move on a knoll above me and about four hundred yards
distant. A huemul doe had appeared upon it. She was not
frightened, and was entirely unaware of my proximity. Soon she was
joined by a buck, a four-pointer with nice clean horns. There were
now two sporting interests in the landscape, the greater and the
less. The cattle had turned and were moving relentlessly upwards
over bare ground where a stalk was out of the question. I turned my
attention therefore again upon the huemules, from whom I found
myself separated by two deep gullies.
In an hour's time the cattle had diminished to mere specks upon the
side of the mountain, and a strong wind having arisen, which blew
from the huemules towards me, I thought I might safely try a shot
at the buck. It knocked him clean head over heels. He proved to be
in fine coat, and I at once set to work to skin him. By the time I had
finished it had grown quite dark. As for the herd, they were too
clever for me. I never sighted them again, but that big yellow bull I
shall often see in dreams. Perhaps I may be permitted to meet with
him when I attain to the happy hunting-ground of my desires.
Apart from the rifle, there are other ways of hunting wild cattle, but
in the practice of these open ground is naturally a necessity.
Boleadores will rarely stay on a bull, but the lasso is an efficient
weapon, and on horseback a Mauser pistol will take a lot of beating.
In the last instance the hunter gallops level with his quarry and
trusts to his horse to carry him clear of danger in case of accident.
As a rule, wild cattle avoid open ground, and if they chance to be
away from the cover of the forest keep a sharp watch. Their hides
are worth about £1 more or less when sold in the settlements, a
value which is enough to turn every man's hand against them, were
there any men in those districts whose hands might be so turned.
But the wild cow will long continue to breed in her chosen solitudes,
and indeed she is well able to take care of herself. From all I saw of
wild cattle, they yield the palm as a sporting animal to few others in
the world.
 CHAPTER XVII
ON THE FIRST ATTITUDE OF WILD ANIMALS TOWARDS MAN

Opportunities for observation rare—Migration of guanaco limited—Guanaco and

man—Upright and crawling attitudes—Will allow approach with horses—Tame
near farms—Easily domesticated—Curious—Shyness of ostrich—Huemul curious
and confiding—Instances—Easily rendered timid—Puma cowardly—Attacks upon
man—Tame cubs—Cordillera wolf—Very fearless—Instances—Pampa-fox also
fearless, but in less degree—Résumé of evidence.

It will be conceded that few subjects have more interest than the
attitude assumed by wild animals towards man on first acquaintance
with him. I think it may be claimed that we had exceptional
opportunities for the study of this very important question. In most
other districts into which white men have passed for the first time,
they have usually been preceded by aborigines, who have made that
declaration of war which must invariably be given forth between
men and feræ naturæ. But in Patagonia, when the beat of the
Tehuelches is left behind, there are many places to which one may
penetrate where the animals have never before seen man. We here
come to a question which is as old as the world—what were the
original relations existing between man and beast? On man's side we
know the position; on that of the wild animal we can rarely obtain
evidence at first hand, especially in these latter days, when the earth
is overrun and populated in almost every habitable region.
It will be seen from the description given of Patagonia that some of
its remoter portions offer a unique field for observing the effect of
man's appearance on the behaviour of animals that have had no
previous knowledge of him. These places present some of the few
localities left untouched by the presence of human beings. The value
of any evidence still obtainable as to the bearing of wild creatures
when brought into contact with human beings for the first time can
therefore hardly be over-estimated. The chances of observing details
of conduct and the spontaneous attitude of animals under these
conditions have unfortunately become exceedingly rare and are daily
growing rarer. Soon there will be no spot where such facts can be
collected. Knowing this, I made every effort to gather all the data
possible.
Large herds of guanaco patrol the country in all directions; how far
they are local in their habits it is not easy to decide, but I was
informed by several people that such and such a marked guanaco
had been in such a district since such and such a winter, therefore I
am led to conclude that the guanaco are more or less local in their
movements. In the summer they are to be found on the high
pampa, and in the winter the herds descend to the lower ground.
But all the evidence that I could gather pointed to the fact that this
periodic migration is limited in extent, and that certain herds belong,
as it were, to certain districts and live and die within a comparatively
small area.
During peculiarly hard winters, however, they will gather in very
large herds and travel a good distance to the low grounds, where
water and some pasture are still to be procured.
The guanacos that we met with on the basalt plateau to the south of
Lake Buenos Aires probably visit the shores of the lake during the
winter time. In the inverse order of things no travellers ever cross
the basalt plateau in summer, nor do they visit the lake in winter; we
may therefore conclude that the guanaco were in that region
unacquainted with man. The following is taken from my diary while
we were crossing the plateau:
"December 28.—To-day we saw great numbers of guanaco, many of
which have in all probability never before beheld a human being.
They were about as tame as English park deer, allowing us to
approach on foot to within seventy or eighty yards, and, in the case
of the old bucks, to within fifty yards. The females were, of course,
much shyer. It was a beautiful sight to watch the great herd leaping
up and down the hillside and dashing through the outcrop of black
fragments of basalt. The bucks almost invariably kept between us
and their females. On some occasions, when I came suddenly round
a hill upon a herd, the old buck would gallop up between me and
the herd and stalk along, uttering his peculiar neighing cry. There
were numbers of young guanacos among these herds. These very
quickly attain considerable speed, and at a fortnight old give the
hounds some trouble to overtake them. Young guanacos, when cut
off from the herd, can be approached by man. This morning I
succeeded in galloping between one and the herd to which it
belonged. He allowed me, on horseback, to come within six yards,
but on a dog appearing in the distance he at once dashed away.
Young guanacos, when separated from the herd, will follow a troop
of horses, running fearlessly beside the riders."

GUANACOS ON SKY-LINE
In contrast to the above I give a record of another meeting with
these animals at a later date. I find in my diary on May 13, 1901,
written in the cañadon of the River Katarina at the upper end of the
north-west arm of Lake Argentino, as follows:
"I saw two herds of guanacos, which were certainly unacquainted
with man. They were extremely wild, not allowing me to approach
within six hundred yards. I to-day hunted these guanacos with the
idea of observing whether they would take to the water, or perhaps
pass into the forest, which was plentiful in patches. They did neither,
but kept to the bare cliffs on the edge of the peninsula, and when
driven away from the cliffs at one end simply sought the shelter of
the cliffs at the other."
Again, on the tableland between the River de los Antiguos and the
River Jeinemeni the guanacos were extraordinarily tame. Only one
traveller had been there before us (Mr. Waag). The guanacos
permitted us to advance to within two hundred yards, and one,
which was lying down, allowed me to come within sixty paces
walking upright. At this distance I determined to see what effect the
crawling attitude would produce, and for this purpose I retreated
and again approached, this time on my hands and knees. I was still
one hundred and fifty yards from the animal when he got up, and I
had not proceeded many steps nearer before he bounded away.
From this instance it may be deduced that while the herd evidently
understood and feared the approach of predatory enemies in a
crouching attitude, man upright in his natural position inspired
relatively little fear but rather curiosity, for the guanaco remained
lying down and staring at me as long as I appeared walking towards
him.
On yet another occasion in the cañadon of the River Katarina, the
first sight that a herd, seventeen strong, had of us, was when we
were on board the launch. They raced up to the bank of the river
and stared at us, only darting off ten or twelve paces when the
irrepressible Bernardo saluted them with a whistle. Shortly
afterwards we anchored and went ashore, but the guanacos would
not allow us on foot to approach within half a mile, although when
we were hidden they returned to the neighbourhood of the launch
without fear. In the evening they retired far up the valley, where I
again saw them upon the following day. They were very timid, and I
could get no nearer to them than three hundred yards, although I
made one or two attempts to do so.
There was one point which was distinctly noticeable, and which
these observations bear out. Guanacos, unacquainted with man, will
allow him to approach in the first instance much closer if he happens
to be accompanied by a troop of horses, as was the case with us in
our experience of the herds on the basalt plateau. In fact, guanacos
will reconnoitre a troop of horses, even though there may be men
among them, at a very much shorter distance than they will venture
upon with regard to a camp or a group of men without horses.
Districts where the Indians hunt the guanaco may be passed over as
having no bearing on the subject in hand. There the herds are, of
course, extremely wild and hard of approach. But it is interesting to
note that near the coast, where there are numbers of guanaco, they
are comparatively tame. Shepherds on horseback from the farms
pass and repass within sight of the herds, who grow accustomed to
the experience and become easy of access to within one hundred
yards.[25]
One day in the October of 1900, when at the farm of Mr.
Greenshields at Bahia Camerones, I took a long ride through the
cañadones where the shepherds were wont to pass. Again and again
the guanaco herds allowed me to ride up close to them, and I
invariably found that a single animal was shyer of approach than a
herd.
Guanacos are very easily domesticated, and in time become
obtrusively playful and affectionate. It is a favourite trick with them
to come behind their human friends rearing and striking them in the
back with their knees, which results in a more or less painful fall.
Curiosity is a largely developed mental characteristic in the feræ
naturæ of Patagonia. The first and overwhelming impulse of nearly
all the wild creatures (the ostrich, Rhea darwini, excepted) appeared
to be to investigate the aspect and actions of man. Upon the coast-
farms the guanaco, grown blasé by familiarity, will not take any
interest in man's movements unless he indulges in some unusual
and fantastic antics, such as lying on his back and kicking his legs in
the air. Then an otherwise indifferent herd will gather and watch the
proceedings with much attention.
As far as my experience goes, no wild creature, save the ostrich, on
first beholding man, straightway travels out of sight. All the others,
according to whether they naturally are shy or the reverse, retire to
a more or less remote distance, and from there watch the doings of
the intruder upon their solitudes.
Of Patagonian game the least hunted is the deer of the Andes
(Xenelaphus bisulcus). We came in contact with these animals both
near Lake Buenos Aires and Lake Argentino. At the former place, my
friend, Mr. Waag, had marched through the Gorge of the River de los
Antiguos, where most of my observations were made. As he was
working very hard on his geographical surveys at the time, he did
not shoot much, and I think it more than probable that man was an
unknown factor of existence to the huemules of that region before
we came upon the scene.
My observations of huemules consistently show that their first
attitude towards man is one of curiosity and confidence. I instance
some cases to bear out this assertion.
On December 9, 1900, I had just shot a guanaco upon the western
shore of the River de los Antiguos, when a huemul buck about a
year old, no doubt startled by the noise, dashed past me within
twenty yards, and, catching sight of me, stopped quite still and fixed
his eyes upon me. As I remained motionless, he advanced several
paces and again halted, looking at me. I was sitting upon the body
of the guanaco I had killed, the wind happening to be blowing from
the deer towards me. We kept these respective positions for about
five minutes. I then lit my pipe. At the scraping of the match he
retreated a little, but gathering courage soon paused again. I rose
slowly to my feet and advanced steadily towards him. He waited
until I was quite close before he sprang away and disappeared from
sight up the barranca.
Again in May 1901, being then in the cañadon of the River Katarina
near Lake Argentino, I saw from the boat what I took to be the
horns of a huemul against the background of the low forest. I
landed and crossed the swamp in the direction of the thicket. Here,
coming into an open space, I saw the buck to whom the horns
belonged. Behind him the head and shoulders of a doe were visible
projecting from a bush. I continued to walk on till I came within
something like one hundred yards, when I sat down behind a
fragment of rock and hid myself from their view. The sun was, I
remember, but a hands-breadth above the Cordillera, and I made up
my mind that I would not move until its lower rim had dipped
beneath the snow-peaks. At the time I had set for myself I peered
round the edge of the rock very carefully—as slowly as one peers
when one is observing the movements of a gaggle of Scotch grey-
lags. Imagine my surprise when there, not ten yards away, appeared
the face of the doe, her gaze fixed upon mine! On seeing me thus
suddenly she ran back to the shelter of the undergrowth from which
she had originally emerged, and from which the buck during the
interval had not stirred. The shades of evening were fast falling, and
I was obliged to make an end of my watching for lack of light.
But undoubtedly the most remarkable example of the natural
tameness of the huemul occurred on May 9. I was in the same
cañadon, and on this occasion had the luck to secure a photograph
of the doe as she went away. It was about noon that I, being on my
way up the cañadon in a northerly direction, heard a stick break in a
thicket near by, and a moment afterwards a huemul buck came into
view. Fortunately I had not caught his eye, and he remained looking
out from a patch of bushes, wondering, I suppose, what strange
animal this could be that was coming towards him. Pretending that I
had not observed him, I threw myself down among the high grass
and waited for developments. The buck snorted twice or thrice and
advanced to within thirty yards of where I lay. He stood upon the
side of a hummock, flanked by his two hinds. They were shortly
joined by a third, which came up out of the hollow behind them. I
lay perfectly still. The buck halted, but the hinds came on till within a
few feet of me. The buck now approached on the right; he was a
four-pointer. The does had winded me. Two of them were mature,
the third a half-grown hind. Before five minutes were over the hinds
had come so near as to be almost touching me. Presently the half-
grown hind sniffed my boot and started back, taking the other three
with her. They drew nearer a second time, the buck coming within a
yard of me, and dropping his horns as though to turn me over. I did
not quite like the action, as it might have meant more than a mere
push, and therefore raised myself gently to a sitting position. The
deer retreated about thirty yards, and there stood, not taking their
eyes from me for a considerable time. Seeing that no further
approach of the deer was likely, I finally got up and went my way.
The does followed me for fifty yards or so, the buck remaining
stationary, and then all four bounded off into the woods whence
they had come.
In spite of this original confidingness exhibited by the huemul to
man when unknown, he appears to be readily rendered wild and
timid. Burbury saw some of these animals near the Engineers' camp
above Lake Buenos Aires. They had probably been hunted by Mr.
Waag's party and were excessively wild, flying on the farthest
glimpse of man. This observation was confirmed by Humphrey
Jones, who told me that the huemules living in the woods near the
Welsh colony of The 16th October are wilder than any other
creature, and that to shoot one is a feather in the caps of the local
hunters. I cannot say whether they are easily tamed when in
captivity, for I came across no instance of a huemul kept by man.
So far, then, my observations on the huemul.
Concerning the puma, I have never heard of any man being
attacked near the settlements by this animal, and, indeed, authentic
instances of its acting as the assailant are very few and far between.
All those of which I gathered reliable evidence occurred in remote
places, distant from the beat of man. Mr. Waag told me of a puma
which did not retreat from his party in the Cordillera, but gave
manifest signs of anger and a readiness to attack. Another case is
that of Dr. Francisco P. Moreno, who, upon the banks of the River
Leona, a river which flows between Lake Argentino and Lake
Viedma, and is seldom visited, was attacked by a puma. He was, he
informs me, walking wrapped in the skin of a guanaco, and he
fancies the animal may have mistaken him for a guanaco. It sprang
upon his shoulders and tore him under the chin with its claws, but
was luckily beaten off by his companion and killed. This puma was
found to be in milk, a fact which, arguing the presence of her young
near at hand, probably accounted for the unusual outbreak of
fierceness. The young were searched for but not discovered.
A third instance is that of Mr. Arenberg, one of the Argentine
Boundary Commissioners, who was mauled by a puma in the
neighbourhood of Lake Buenos Aires, at a spot probably hitherto
unvisited by man. He was seriously wounded in the face. As a rule,
the puma is a cowardly animal, and is frequently killed by the
Indians with a bolas.[26]
 THE HUEMUL DOE WHICH TOUCHED THE
AUTHOR. PHOTOGRAPHED WITH SMALL
CAMERA AS SHE RETIRED

Although, during the whole of our journey, we were constantly

coming upon evidences of the presence of pumas round and about
our camps, it was not until we had entered the Cordillera that they
actually reconnoitred the camp. In a forest near Lake Argentino, one
moonlight night, two pumas circled round our camp, and for
upwards of half an hour kept uttering their peculiar cry. Pumas often
stampeded our horses and left plain tracks near the camp, but in
spite of this they killed no animal, not even a dog, belonging to us.
Puma cubs in captivity become very tame. One settler whom I met
had two cubs about a year old. They were attached to their new
home, and though they would follow a horse for two hundred yards
or so, they invariably returned after a short distance to the shanty of
their owner. Another puma cub had been kept by Mr. Cattle at Lake
Argentino. This cub was wont to fight battles royal with the hounds,
but in the cold of winter would lie among them for warmth. All these
cubs were those of Felis concolor puma. So long as they were well
fed they were docile, but when hungry their fierce nature reasserted
itself. Mr. Cattle had finally to shoot the cub that belonged to him.
Mr. Waring, however, still had his at the time of my departure. I
heard these two killed a colt in the month of May
The study of the Cordillera wolf (Canis magellanicus) from the
present point of view is exceptionally interesting. To this animal man
is practically unknown, and it manifested the most utter
fearlessness, when brought into contact with human beings, during
our expedition. This wolf will advance within five or six yards of a
man in open daylight; it will walk over him when asleep in camp.
They haunted our camps about Lake Buenos Aires, lurking about all
the night through and eating everything that came within their
reach; then, instead of departing when daylight came, they usually
remained crouching near by, and put in an appearance during
breakfast-time with an absolute disregard or ignorance of probable
danger from the neighbourhood of man.
On the River Fenix one of these wolves came into Rosy Camp during
the night, stole a duck and a goose, and further gnawed my rifle-
slings within a few feet of where I was sleeping. We only discovered
our loss at dawn, and while we were still discussing it, I perceived
the animal itself lying under a bush close at hand calmly watching
us. Deprived of breakfast, I had no thought of mercy, and shot her
with a Mauser. She was an old female. That night her mate paid us a
visit, and frightened the horses, who seem to fear the large
Cordillera wolf almost as much as the puma. I was rather crippled at
the time with an injury to my knee, and was sitting by the fire. I
happened to look up and caught sight of the wolf standing within a
few yards of me. He quietly returned my look but made no
movement to run away. In a moment or two I got up and limped
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