Lives in Cricket No 26 - HV Hesketh-Prichard

43 measured footprints and droppings of a mylodon. The correspondent of the London Express has offered the Welsh people at Chubut a large sum if they will find him one. He can see half a dozen of them if he will drink a little of genuine imported whiskey manufactured at the Boca, and if he will keep at it for a week he will see an entire menagerie of wonderful unknown monsters. The Welsh settlement in Patagonia seems to have survived improbably unchanged until now, still Welsh speaking, even if Patagonia never actually became the Welsh Vietnam as imagined by Malcolm Pryce. 25 But it shows the hold of Patagonia even to this day as a dark and mysterious place. The expedition also apparently attracted imitators. The Buenos Aires Herald remained unimpressed: ‘A Russian gentleman who lives near Chubut tells us that he is plagued with mylodon hunters. They call every week and stay as long as the flour and caña run out . ’ One might note here that a fairly brief survey of the internet will show that many people still believe – or hope. Hex’s great-grandson, Charlie Jacoby, led an expedition in 2005 funded by the History Channel – which is still arguing that perhaps mylodons are still out there somewhere – and you can find any number of pictures. Sadly, though, the Facebook page for mylodon has attracted no friends at all. The expedition seems to have given Conan Doyle the idea for a story, though The Lost World did not come out until 1912. Busy as ever, Hex named a lake Pearson for his sponsor – the name has now vanished from the map – and a river Katarina, after his mum, and discovered a new sub-species of puma, felis concolor pearsoni , native to Argentina. He also brought back some plants which were written up in the Royal Horticultural Society’s journal, though not until 1905. 25 Malcolm Pryce, The Unbearable Lightness of Being in Aberystwyth, Bloomsbury, 2009. Portsmouth and Patagonia Map of 1901 of part of Santa Cruz province, Argentina, near the border with Chile, showing Lake Pearson, Rio Katarina and Mount Millais. The area became part of a large estate in 1914 and only the name Katarina has survived.