740 



THE NATURALIST ON THE RIVER AMAZONS. 



^were used, and at the end came a sudden 

 "" Pa ! terra !" when the animal was van- 

 quished by a shot or a blow. Many myste- 

 rious tales were recounted about the Bouto, 

 as the large Dolphin of the Amazons is 

 called. One of them was to the effect that a 

 Bouto once had the habit of assuming the 

 shape of a beautiful woman, with hair hang- 

 ing loose to her heels, and walking ashore 

 at night in the streets of Ega, to entice the 

 .young men down to the water. If any one 

 was so much smitten as to follow her to the 

 water-side, she grasped her victim lound the 

 waist and plunged beneath the waves with a 

 triumphant cry. No animal in the Amazons 

 region is the subject of so many fables as the 

 Brmto ; but it is probable these did not 

 originate with the Indians, but with the Por- 

 tuguese colonists. It was several years be- 

 fore I could induce a fisherman to harpoon 

 dolphins for me as specimens, for no one 

 ever kills these animals voluntarily, although 

 their fat is known to yield an excellent oil 

 for lamps. The superstitious people believe 

 that blindness would result from the use of 

 this oil in lamps. I succeeded at length with 

 Oarepira, by offering him a high reward when 

 his finances were at a very low point ; but 

 he repented of his deed ever afterward, de- 

 claring that his luck had forsaken him from 

 that day. 



The next morning we again beat the pool. 

 Although we had proof of there being a 



freat number of turtles yet remaining, we 

 ad very poor success. The old Indians told 

 us it would be so, for the turtles were " la- 

 dmo" (cunning), and would take no notice 

 of the beating a second day. When the net 

 was formed into a circle, and the men had 

 jumped in, an alligator was found to be in- 

 closed, No one was alarmed, the only fear 

 expressed being that the imprisoned beast 

 would tear the net. First one shouted, " I 

 have touched his head ;" then another, " he 

 iias scratched my leg." One of the men, a 

 ianky Miranha, was thrown off his balance, 

 and then there was no end to the laughter 

 and shouting. At last a youth of about four- 

 teen years of age, on my calling to him, from 

 the bank, to do so, seized the reptile by the 

 tail, and held him tightly until, a little resist- 

 ance being overcome, he was able to bring 

 it aslibre ; the net was opened, and the boy 

 slowly dragged the dangerous but cowardly 

 beust to land through the muddy water, a 

 distance of about a hundred yards. Mean- 

 time 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 instant- 

 ly. 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 Jacare-uassu of the Amazonian Indians 

 (Jacare nigra). 



On the third day we sent our men in the 

 boats to net turtles in a larger pool, about 

 five miles farther down the river, and on the 

 fourth returned to Ega. 



It will be well to mention here a few cir- 

 cumstances relative to the large cayman, 

 which, with the incident just narrated, aftord 

 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 ef the Upper Ama- 

 zons. Many different species are spoken of 

 by the natives. I saw only three, and of 

 these two only are common : one, the Jacare- 

 tinga, a small kind (five feet long when full 

 grown), having a long slender muzzle, and a 

 black-banded tail ; the other, the Jacare- 

 uassu, to which these remarks more especial- 

 ly relate ; and the third the Jacare-curua, 

 mentioned in a former chapter. The Jacare- 

 uassu, or large cayman, grows to a length of 

 eighteen or twenty feet, and attains an enor- 

 mous 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 indi- 

 vidual 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 livdy all the year 

 round. It is scarcely exaggerating to say 

 that the waters of the Solimoens are ate well 

 stocked with large alligators, in the dry sea- 

 son, 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 

 Caigara, a small village of semi-civilized In- 

 dians, 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, Seiihor Innocencio Alves Faria, one 

 day proposed a half-day's fishing with 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. Then were disengaged 

 from the net and allowed, with the coolest 

 unconcern, to return to the water, although 

 the two children were playing in it not many 

 yards off. We continued fishing, Innocencio 

 a.nd I lending a helping had. and each time 



