U4 



dimensions, as well as the number of eggs found therein. It 

 was not -without some difficulty that I at last got my people to 

 come and help me to bring the spoil to the boat. 



I muet confess that when warned of the danger I was 

 rushing to, I could not help recollecting, with some sense of 

 anxiety, that -when I was a little boy on our old " Peru Estate," 

 in Mucurapo, my uncle coming from bathing in the sea, at the 

 mouth of A little ravine called "' Quimbois," was, before he had 

 time to put on his clothes, chased by a good sized alligator, or 

 babiche, and had to run pretty hard to make his escape, actually 

 in naivralibus. 



But to return to the eggs, a few were blown by me for my 

 collection, and the rest left to hatch near a little fountain in ray 

 garden, in Clarence Street. 



After a few days the hatching took place, and it was as 

 curious, as interesting to see the little alligators, still adhering 

 to the shells by their umbilical cords, briskly showing fight 

 when approached, dragging the shell behind them and rushing 

 with open jaws at any thing presented to them and madly 

 biting it. 



After this perhaps too long digression, I must come to some 

 of my alligator shooting expeditions and experiences. 



In the year 1854, whilst with aparty of seven friends shooting 

 parrots in the great Oropouche Lagoon, then abounding in wild 

 birds, I, for the lii'St time, had a chance of witnessing the fearless 

 impudence of our alligators. .Clouds of deafening screeching 

 parrots, (how different now !) flying over our boat, in the 

 middle of Godineau's Canal, there was of course au interrupted 

 Tolley of shots from our eight double barrel guns, when to our 

 amazement, in spite of the rattling noise, and of our presence in 

 the boat, we saw a fair sized alligator quietly slide from one of 

 the banks, and deliberately make for a wounded parrot which 

 had fallen in the water between the boat and the shore. 



All our guns were, at once, simultaneously levelled and 

 discharged at the bold intruder, which apparently unmoved, 

 sunk in time, and diving under the parrot coolly snatched it 

 down and disappeared with it. 



A similar feat Avas witnessed by me in 18G1, in the Caroni 

 River. 



Having been requested by His Excellency the Duke of New- 

 castle, then Secretary of State for the Colonies, to make a 

 report on the possibility of canalising the Caroni River, I took 

 with me my friend Lieut. Lo Mesurier, (now Colonel) of the 

 Royal Engineers.' 



We were in a bumboat, in the middle of the stream, at one 

 of its broadest bends, when LoMesuricr having shot a '•'Tchoque"' 



