Variations: Andura

Tenochtitlan, the great city of Mexico, is built on pilings on Lake Texcoco, much like Venice. In that lake is found numbers of the fish known as Hoga by the natives of the land and the Spaniards, and as Andura (vampire bat!) by natives further south.

A hoga has a head and ears very like those of a hog. It is the size of a seal or porpoise. There are five half-foot-long barbels around its mouth. When swimming it seems to change color from red to yellow to green like a chameleon. It gives birth to live young like a whale does.

Hogas are omnivorous. They live close to the shore where they feed on the leaves of the hoga tree. They are highly aggressive, as dangerous as the velachif, and will kill and eat animals larger than them, which is why they are hunted relentlessly. Their flesh is delicious and tastes like albacore.

The hoga skin in Thevet’s possession was destroyed by vermin, but fortunately he claims to have seen the creature alive in person.

Delaunay believed the lake not to be Lake Texcoco, but rather the nearby Lake Chalco. The Hoga could not be positively identified.

References

Paré, A. (1614) Les Oeuvres d’Ambroise Paré. Nicolas Buon, Paris.

Paré, A.; Pallister, J. L. trans. (1982) On Monsters and Marvels. University of Chicago Press, Chicago.

Thevet, A. (1575) La Cosmographie Universelle. Guillaume Chaudiere, Paris.