Lives in Cricket No 26 - HV Hesketh-Prichard

42 Portsmouth and Patagonia Even more, an Argentinian geographer, Ramón Lista, claimed to have caught a glimpse of a live mylodon in the forest. Then in June 1900 the director of the Natural History Museum, Professor Ray Lankester, had gone further in a lecture to the Zoological Society: ‘It is quite possible – I don’t want to say more than that – that … [the mylodon] still exists in some of the mountainous regions of Patagonia.’ All this was enough to excite the Daily Express . So in August 1900 Hex set off for Patagonia, arriving in Buenos Aires early in September, and on the 10th set out on the Primera de Mayo for Patagonia, leaving Kate in Buenos Aires in the Phoenix Hotel. The hotel is still there and described by one traveller as ‘a delightful old-style hotel in the heart of the city’. But a hundred years ago it might not have seemed quite so old-style. They had introductions in Buenos Aires, which had a substantial British commercial presence at that time. Kate had her own plans to sail round Cape Horn to Chile, but had to return home because of problems with a tenant in Horsham. This was a major expedition. Hex took 60 horses and eight men, shooting guanacos (a species of llama which lived in large herds on the pampas) for food, mostly shooting them himself because, Kate laments, ‘there was not another decent shot in the party’. He had a fair amount of insubordination to deal with – which apparently he did. As early as September 1900 he had written a piece about it for the New York Sunday Herald. He came back from darkest Patagonia to Santa Cruz, then set out again in January 1901 and did not sail for home until the middle of the year, arriving home at the end of June. It would seem that he was fairly early convinced that the giant sloth no longer survived but kept exploring. By the end he was pretty sure: ‘I personally became convinced – and my opinion was shared by my companions – that the mylodon does not survive in the depths of the Andean forests.’ The expedition attracted widespread attention around the world. In November 1900 the Coshocton Daily Times reported that The Hesketh-Prichard expedition is causing great interest in the Argentine Republic, the belief being that the giant sloth will be found, says a Buenos Ayres correspondent. A Scotch gentleman affirms that while hunting in Patagonia last year he shot at an animal like the giant sloth, and from descriptions he has seen of the animal he feels sure it was the identical animal. Many other hunts are going on in consequence of Mr Prichard’s offer of £5,000 for the mylodon . Coshocton, Ohio, had a population of about 6,500 at the time. It must sometimes have been a problem filling a daily paper. And had there been an offer of £5,000, presumably from Pearson rather than Hex? Or did that just make things more interesting? Locally, the Buenos Aires Herald was a little more sceptical: On Friday the English tourist in search of the mylodon set out from Trelew for Lake Buenos Aires. They have 40 horses and seven peones who know the country. An infantry lieutenant at Chubut has seen and