CHAP, i.] WEST INDIES. 19 



The crocodile, or alligator, is indeed sometimes disco- 

 vered on the banks of their rivers; but notwithstand- 

 ing all that has been said of its fierce and savage dis- 

 position, I pronounce it, from my own knowledge, a 

 cautious and timid creature, avoiding, with the ut- 

 most precipitation, the approach of man. The rest 

 of the lizard kind are perfectly innocent and inoffen- 

 sive. Some of them are even fond of human society. 

 They embellish our walks by their beauty, and court 

 our attention by gentleness and frolic; but their kind- 

 ness, I know not why, is returned by aversion and 

 disgust. Anciently the woods of almost all the equa- 

 torial parts of America abounded with various tribes 

 of the smaller monkey; a sportive and sagacious little 

 creature, which the people of Europe seem likewise 

 to have regarded with unmerited detestation; for they 

 hunted them down with such barbarous assiduity, that 

 in several of the islands every species of them has 

 been long since exterminated. Of the feathered race 

 too, many tribes have now nearly deserted those shores 

 w r here polished man delights in spreading universal 

 and capricious destruction. Among these, one of the 

 most remarkable was the flamingo, an elegant and 

 princely bird, as large as the swan, and arrayed in plu- 

 masre of the brightest scarlet. Numerous, however, 



o o 



are the feathered kinds, deservedly distinguished by 

 their splendour and beauty, that still animate these 



Ivan recesses. The parrot, and its various affiniti 

 from the macaw to the parroquet, some of them not 

 larger than a sparro\v, arc too well known to require 

 description. These are as plentiful in the larger i-,iand c ; 

 of the West Indies as the rook is in Euiv But the 



