470 

 THE ALLIGATOR OF THE ANTILLES. 



BY R. H L.* 



GOING down from Puerta Plata, a town on the north eastern coast 

 of Haiti, to the bay of Isabella, to trace the remains of the first 

 settlement made by Europeans in the new world, I was particularly 

 struck by the multitude of alligators, or caimans, that infest the 

 Bajabonico, a considerable river, watering the plain in which that 

 ancient city stood. This feature in the scenery leading me to insert 

 in my journal a note on the habits of this reptile, which I think may 

 serve, if not to correct some vulgar errors respecting it, at least to set 

 old truths in a new light, I send you the extract of it, as a trifling 

 addition to what is already known of this curious monster. 



I must premise, that the ancient city of Isabella stood a little away 

 from the Bajabonico. A good trackway winds among low thickets 

 along the stream. The plain expands, marshy, green, and grassy, 

 a sort of lake being made by a broad reach of the river, called the 

 " Vuelta Larga." The mixture of meadows and water is pleasing, 

 but wild, and not a little of this wildness is increased by the swarming 

 alligators there, the largest I have any where seen. * * * * When 

 the hard toils, the privations and mortality which attend a new 

 settlement in the wilderness, with a multitude of morbid and irritable 

 passions, spread a curse over the scenes of this first city of the 

 Europeans, till its green fields seemed all pestilence, and its sunny 

 waters the Stygian bourne that separated the dead from the living 

 world, it became desolate and deserted as soon as the golden harvests 

 to be reaped in the luxurious lap of the Vega Real, a finer and more 

 fertile plain of the interior, induced them to build another and more 

 splendid city there. From that time till now the alligator has had an 

 undisturbed possession of the wastes arid wilds. 



I have never understood why the early Spanish writers in noticing 

 these events, overlooked so remarkable a feature in these wild, marshy, 

 river scenes, as this peculiar animal. Peter Martyr, who has given in 

 his Decades *, so full and so spirited a summary of the natural 

 characteristics, as well as the productions of Haiti, after mentioning 



" We are exceedingly obliged by R. H L'S very interesting conimuni- 



nications. EDITOR- 



t P. Martyr, Decad. 3, lib. xi. 



