Not a minute could be squandered on slumber; we walked all night. When the sun rose, I realized that Gibear, who usually trotted along neatly at my side, had vanished! Fear seized my heart: What if a snake or some other desert creature had claimed him? All of the porters fanned out through the Valley, calling: “Leoncito! Leoncito!” (or “Little Lion! Little Lion!”—their nickname for Gibear).
Just then, a dust cloud billowed up on the horizon and swirled toward us. The gunmen reached for their revolvers. When the cloud came within shooting distance, I spied a black shadow in its midst. Suddenly a Gibear-shaped form appeared through the dust, galloping toward us as fast as he could on his stumpy little legs. He threw himself down at my feet, panting; water dripped from his fur onto the ground.
“Why, this little rascal appears to have been swimming!” I cried. “There must be an unmapped stream or river nearby.”
Then I noticed something strange tangled deep in Gibear’s fur: a small, glinting pebble of gold! The porters let out a great cry and ran their hands through Gibear’s thick coat; more gold pebbles and flecks showered the ground. One of the porters shouted that Gibear’s stream must be “flowing with gold.”
We traced my pet’s tracks to the little river. That porter had been right: so much pure yellow gold lined Gibear’s Gold Creek (or El Río Oro de Leoncito, as the porters named it) that it shone like the high-noon sun. We actually had to blindfold one of the porters before he could venture into the water and retrieve a bucket of drinking water for us. At dusk, the porters leaped into the creek, dredging up gold with their bare hands and building great piles on the banks. They had started our journey as paupers, and would now return to Mexico City rich as kings.
No one believes me when I say this, but I have always been most disdainful of riches. The pursuit of treasure has led to many of the world’s great miseries—for people and nations alike. So I filled a sack with gold pebbles for myself—just enough to fund future expeditions—and then sat on the creek’s bank, picking the last of the gold from Gibear’s fur.
Suddenly one of the porters let out a terrific shout and pointed to the riverbed. There, nestled amidst the gold pebbles and running water, stared a human-looking face of pure gold. I jumped into the stream and began scooping the gold debris away from the face. Soon I uncovered an entire gold body, and then another, and yet another. Each of these corpses had a powerful chest and six arms jutting from its torso, and almost comically short legs.
Of course I immediately began an excavation of the entire area and, to our astonishment, found another graveyard not far from the stream. The fossilized creatures in this cemetery exactly resembled the six-armed bodies in the creek, except they were not cast in gold. Instead, thick, leathery hides had covered their bodies, and many were missing limbs and appeared to have suffered from terrible animal bites. Very curious indeed!
The surrounding Valley also shows evidence of a great number of predator beasts, and I suspect that, in its early days, the six-armed tribe had been comparatively defenseless. The skulls of the non-gold mummies sported herbivore teeth, and with their short legs, they could hardly have outrun hungry carnivores. This must be why many of the non-gold bodies had been so mangled!
Yet it obviously occurred to the tribesmen at some point that their local gold-filled creek could be used to defend themselves. We found all sorts of buried weapons forged from gold, ranging from primitive little axes to very fancy swords and shields; over time, the tribe had become very skilled at creating instruments of war. The tables turned, the Valley’s beasts must have shuddered and run when they saw the tribesmen coming, wielding a gold knife in each of their six hands!
None of this reasoning explained why the other half of the tribe had been covered in gold, as though dipped in a molten vat. I could not make heads or tails of the mystery, and finally decided to slice open one of the mummies to see if its fossilized innards could offer any clues.
To my horror, I found that its stomach was filled with solid gold.
They had clearly melted down the gold and swallowed it for some reason, which would, of course, doom any living creature to death: ingestion of metal in this quantity would have been terribly toxic and led to extreme metal poisoning.
My explanation: once the species had turned the gold creek to their advantage, their thoughts turned from self-defense to ruling the roost. And then came notions of making themselves invincible. They created head-to-toe gold armor (some of which we found buried in the desert), but this wasn’t enough. So they poured molten gold over their leathery hides, until it appeared that they were made of gleaming metal. But this still apparently was not enough. As sinister as it sounds, I believe that they decided they had to be made of gold inside and out to be considered truly indestructible and god-like. Just imagine the scene:
A grand bonfire is lit, a cauldron of gold placed above it. Slowly the gold river pebbles melt into a silken, bubbling liquid. The Gold Creek Tribesmen gather around it, cup their gilt hands, and dip them into the cauldron. Then, all at once, they drink that molten gold.
I have dubbed them Goldeaters, in honor of their grisly demise.
As Mother Wiggins used to say, when it comes to riches, there’s no such thing as knowing when to stop. And now we know that has been true for quite some time.
11. Café con leche means “coffee with milk” in Spanish.
12. Some estimates say that humans have inhabited Mexico for twenty thousand years, including the Maya, Aztecs, and Olmecs. Many of their temples still stand today and are popular tourist attractions.
13. After a long, bloody war, Mexico won its independence from Spain in 1821. Then, from 1846 to 1848, Mexico went to war with its neighbor the United States, to which Mexico lost nearly half of its territory. Violence continued to wrack the country afterward.
June 1854
Territory of New Mexico14
In Which I Discover … Hapless Vampire Glow Bats
(Ineptus Lamia Excandesco Chiroptera)
Using our newly acquired gold to pay our way, Gibear and I left Mexico to investigate the famous Grand Canyon—and it is more magnificent than I ever could have imagined. I can hardly believe that it was called “altogether valueless” by an earlier explorer—what a fool!15 It is one of the world’s greatest wonders—and has been home to humans for ten thousand years. At least that is what today’s scientists say, although of course I now know that it has been home to a huge variety of creatures for much longer than that.
We decided that the best way to survey the area was to sail down the Colorado River—which cuts through the full length of the Canyon.16 Finding the right boat was quite a task: after all, a regular flat-bottomed wooden boat likely would have been smashed to bits by the River’s rapids. So Gibear and I bartered with a local Native American tribe to buy one of their canoes, whose sides are made from flexible hides.
No price would budge them. I offered them a nugget of gold from our stash, but they were unimpressed. I then offered them a silver-handled dagger, made by the Queen’s finest silversmith in London. They couldn’t have cared less!
Then one of them pointed at Gibear, whose fur looked particularly fluffy in the hot, dry clime of the New Mexico desert.
“Oh, no,” I sputtered. “This creature is most certainly not for sale.”
The native kneeled down in front of Gibear, plucked out a tuft of the animal’s fur, and held it up in front of my face.
An hour later, Gibear was as bald as a Mexican Chihuahua—shaved clean by yours truly—and we owned a genuine animal-hide Native American canoe. Away we went.
At first, our trip was without major incident. Our canoe bobbed through rapids as lightly as a leaf; I found some marvelous Pueblo ruins, but since they likely dated from around AD 1185, they were far too recent for my taste. At night, we docked our canoe on the banks lining the River and slept on the sand.
Several days into our voyage, I woke up early to a strange rumbling sound. “Hurry, Gibear,” I said,
half-asleep. “We’ll miss the train.” Gibear opened one eye and then closed it again.
I sat straight up. Train? What train? We were in the middle of the Grand Canyon! Suddenly a tributary from one of the side canyons upstream began to gush red water into the River. I knew what this meant: a flash flood! We had to reach high ground—and quickly. I stuffed bald little Gibear into my rucksack and began to heave myself up the Canyon’s wall. (Oh, how had I remained so fat on this journey? The climb was quite an ordeal.) The rumbling grew louder and louder until suddenly a red flood burst out of the side canyon and flooded the Colorado, sweeping away our little camp and canoe in the rush.
A little cave hovered in the cliff above; I dragged myself into it and lay there, gasping for breath. The River below rose to just beneath the cave’s entrance and rushed by with a mighty roar.
Gibear wriggled out of the rucksack and ran to the center of the cave, barking toward the ceiling. There appeared to be a series of hams hanging there, as though a butcher had set up shop in the middle of the Grand Canyon! I cut one down; it fell to the ground with a thud.
To my astonishment, the object unfurled in front of us and revealed itself to be a great leathery bat—with teeth as long and sharp as knives. Mercifully, it was quite dead and well preserved by all of that dry desert air—and so were all the others up there in the ceiling. From investigating the bat’s crumbling carcass and nosing around the cave, this is what I learned about them.
They were fairly young—fifty thousand years old, to be exact (this I could tell from the layers of dirt caking them). Usually I would not have paid much attention to such a recent species, but what else was I going to do? After all, I was quite stuck in this cave, with only a strange hairless animal to keep me company. Anyway, at first glance, these creatures seemed to have it all: huge, powerful wings and razor-sharp teeth—enough assets to terrorize the Canyon each night. Yet surprisingly few fossils of blood-drained carcasses resided in the cave’s floor, indicating that perhaps the bats had not been very successful hunters.
It appears that Mother Nature had played a little trick on this species: instead of making them black and stealthy like today’s bats, she covered the Canyon bats’ bodies with a shockingly brilliant yellow skin—so bright that they had shimmered and glowed in the dark. (One can ascertain the original color of the fossilized skin by its texture and capillary structure.) Just imagine how much this would have hindered their nighttime blood raid: I am certain that the yellow glow instantly alerted would-be prey and ruined any prospects of a sneaky attack. Instead of being grand terrorists, the Glow Bats grew famished and skinny and weak. Something needed to be done, or they faced certain starvation—and extinction.
Well, Mother Nature had shortchanged these creatures in more ways than one. For not only did these creatures suffer from the burden of an unfortunate hue, they also appear to have been rather dim-witted. They decided to change their hunting habits, which ended up having unexpected consequences. How I envision the unfolding scene: the starving creatures held a Vampire Glow Bat council in their cave to settle upon a course of action.
“I have a solution,” I imagine that one of them said. “Let’s look at the facts. We are supposed to be nighttime predators, but our bright yellow glow gives us away every time we try to make a kill.”
The other Vampire Glow Bats nodded dismally.
“But what else is yellow and glowing?” continued the first Glow Bat. “Sunshine. So why not make daytime raids instead? We’ll blend right in.”
All of the other Glow Bats were stunned by the brilliance of this idea. Yet having never been outside during the day, they did not understand how sunshine works; as any child knows, while the darkness of nighttime hides you, the brightness of sunshine has the opposite effect: instead of blending in, you stand out, regardless of how yellow and glowing you are.
Needless to say, the daytime hunting experiment did not fare well.
That is, it did not fare well for the Hapless Vampire Glow Bats. A nearby flock of giant vultures likely could not believe their luck when the tasty flock of yellow bats came in their direction; they swooped in and chomped most of the Glow Bats up, right there in the air above the Colorado River. (We found a couple of their fossilized carcasses, too, just outside the mouth of the cave, containing the sad remains of chomped-up bat wings and the like.)
The tattered surviving Glow Bats flapped back into their cave, curled up in their sleeping positions dangling from the ceiling, and slowly starved to death. And that is where they have remained for fifty millenniums—forgotten by all, until an Englishman and a strange Amazonian creature came across them quite by accident.
Since this discovery, I have pondered the fate of the Vampire Glow Bats and wondered why Nature had been so mean-spirited to them. But in the end, I chose to think that it was just a reminder that no one is perfect. We can get close to perfect—but no one ever has it all, no matter what he or she might tell you.
The floods subsided after a couple of days. Weak with hunger, Gibear and I climbed down the cliff, stood on the soaked bank below, and puzzled about what to do next.
Suddenly, a canoe rounded the bend. Inside sat the native from whom we had bought our own ill-fated canoe. He paddled over to our bank, and we gratefully climbed in. As we sailed down the River, I noticed that our rescuer wore a newly woven cape of familiar-looking fine black fur.
Gibear simply looked in the other direction, with as much dignity as he could muster.
14. Today the area explored by Dr. Wiggins is known as Arizona; the United States took possession of most of Arizona at the end of the Mexican-American War in 1848. It officially became a state in 1912.
15. In the mid-1800s, Lieutenant Joseph Ives led an army survey of the region; afterward, he declared that the area was “altogether valueless” and a “profitless locality.”
16. History books have often claimed that explorer John Wesley Powell was the first to raft the Grand Canyon, in 1869. He and his party of nine traveled a thousand miles in wooden boats, losing three men to rapids and overwhelming heat. We now know that Dr. Wiggins’s journey predated Powell’s expedition by fifteen years, and that Dr. Wiggins’s decision to use a Native American canoe was a brilliant stroke of explorership.
December 25, 1854
Territory of New Mexico
Gibear’s Christmas Surprise
It is Christmas, and here I am, still in the desert, foraging for fossils. Last night, I dreamed of figgy pudding, snow-covered pastures, and gleaming candle-covered pine trees. And in this gauzy dream, I was just about to tuck into a particularly juicy roast goose when I felt quite a sharp pinch.
“Mother!” I yelled. “Stop that. It is Christmas. I am allowed to eat all the roast goose and figgy pudding I want.”
“What are you pecking on about?” hollered Mother Wiggins’s voice. “I’m in the kitchen, making popovers.”
“Who’s pinching me if not you?” I demanded. Then I woke up and discovered the answer.
In my sleep, I had rolled over into a batch of fire ants; they were crawling all over my legs and giving me the most dreadful pinchy little bites.
Well, that was a low point, I tell you. I have not missed England for a second since I left—until now. I am ashamed to admit that I began to blubber like a little boy. Just then, Gibear nudged me with his nose. He trotted away, and turned back to look at me. Feeling rather sorry for myself, I got up and lumbered after him.
Down a rocky hill we went, and around a bend—and suddenly I stopped dead in my tracks.
There in the middle of the desert bloomed a glorious red rosebush. Yes, I know that sounds impossible—but there it was, as fine as any that the Queen would have in her palace. Giii-bear! barked Gibear, standing next to it proudly.
I could hardly believe what happened next. Right in front of my eyes, Gibear’s fur turned bright red—the same color as the blooms on that wondrous desert rosebush. I almost fell right down on the ground. But instead I picked him
up and examined him with great concern—had he eaten something off the ground? Was this the result of some sort of poison? But the animal seemed happy as a clam and gave my hands many great licks.
Since that moment, I have arrived at two conclusions:
1. This was Gibear’s way of giving me a Christmas present (what a thoughtful, spectacular little creature he is!).
2. When it comes to the imagination of Nature, nothing is impossible.
My homesickness has been banished, and once again, I am filled with purpose. Merry Christmas to all.
(And PS—what is Gibear? Will I ever get to the root of the mystery?)
May 1855
The Cool Forests of Northern California17
In Which I Discover … Giant California Sloths
(Gigantius Californius Megatherium)
Why, everyone seems to be flocking to California these days! This is, of course, thanks to the Gold Rush of ’49.18 I, however, was most certainly not going to the gold-filled hills; I had seen quite enough gold in Mexico. Plus, those gold camps are absolutely riddled with bandits, and I had the welfare of my stash of fine, precious English wax and my rare, very covetable pet to consider.
The Wondrous Journals of Dr. Wendell Wellington Wiggins Page 4
