Cuap. XI. ALLIGATORS. 311 
hundred yards. Meantime I had cut a strong pole from a tree, and as 
soon as the alligator was drawn to solid ground, gave him a smart rap with 
it on the crown of his head, which killed him instantly. It was a good- 
sized individual ; the jaws being considerably more than a foot long, 
and fully capable of snapping a man’s leg in twain. ‘The species was 
the large cayman, the Jacaré-uassti of the Amazonian Indians (Jacare 
nigra). 
On the third day we sent our men in the boats to net turtles in another 
larger pool, about five miles further down the river, and on the fourth 
returned to Ega. 
It will be well to mention here a few circumstances relative to the 
large cayman, which, with the incident just narrated, afford illustrations 
of the cunning, cowardice, and ferocity of this reptile. 
I have hitherto had but few occasions of mentioning alligators, 
although they exist by myriads in the waters of the Upper Amazons. 
Many different species are spoken of by the natives. I saw only three, 
and of these two only are common: one, the Jacaré-tinga, a small kind 
(five feet long when full-grown), having a slender muzzle, and a black- 
banded tail ; the other, the Jacaré-uassti to which these remarks more 
especially relate ; and the third, the Jacaré-curta, mentioned in a former 
chapter. The Jacaré-uassu, or large cayman, grows to a length of eight- 
een or twenty feet, and attains an enormous bulk. Like the turtles, 
the alligator has its annual migrations, for it retreats to the interior pools 
and flooded forests in the wet season, and descends to the main river in 
the dry season. During the months of high water, therefore, scarcely a 
single individual is to be seen in the main river. In the middle part 
of the Lower Amazons, about Obydos and Villa Nova, where many of 
the lakes with their channels of communication with the trunk stream 
dry up in the fine months, the alligator buries itself in the mud and 
becomes dormant, sleeping till the rainy season returns. On the Upper 
Amazons, where the dry season is never excessive, it has not this habit, 
but is lively all the year round. It is scarcely exaggerating to say that 
the waters of the Solimoens are as well stocked with large alligators in 
the dry season, as a ditch in England is in summer with tadpoles. 
During a journey of five days which I once made in the Upper Amazons 
steamer, in November, alligators were seen along the coast almost 
every step of the way, and the passengers amused themselves, from 
morning till night, by firing at them with rifle and ball. They were very 
numerous in the still bays, where the huddled crowds jostled together, 
to the great rattling of their coats of mail, as the steamer passed. 
The natives at once despise and fear the great cayman. I once 
spent a month at Caicara, a small village of semi-civilised Indians, 
about twenty miles to the west of Ega. My entertainer, the only white 
in the place, and one of my best and most constant friends, Senhor 
Innocencio Alves Faria, one day proposed a half-day’s fishing with a net 
in the lake,—the expanded bed of the small river on which the village 
is situated. We set out in an open boat with six Indians and two of 
Innocencio’s children. The water had sunk so low that the net had to 
be taken out into the middle by the Indians, whence at the first draught 
two medium-sized alligators were brought to land. They were dis- 
