136 A NATURALIST IN THE GUIANAS 



occasion when a cartridge was thrown into the pool 

 at ' The Port ' and exploded before reaching the water. 

 The man who threw the cartridge was hurled to the 

 ground with violence ; we, who were further off, were 

 quite stunned by the concussion of the explosion and 

 suffered from deafness for hours afterwards. 



One of the most grotesque sights I ever witnessed 

 occurred in connection with dynamite fishing at the mouth 

 of the Cano Guayapo,^ where we spent a month in 1898 

 collecting birds. Our camp overlooked a deep pool in 

 which a large electric eel had taken up his quarters. We 

 saw a good deal of him as he floated lazily on the surface 

 of the water enjoying himself, a habit to which he 

 appeared to be addicted and which led to his meeting 

 with a violent end. One of my men, who had from the 

 very first regarded the eel's indolent happiness with an 

 envious eye, amused himself in a moment when time hung 

 particularly heavy on his hands by dropping a dynamite 

 cartridge into his premises, with the object he explained 

 of knocking the animal's electric battery out of him. 

 The result of his experiment was as diverting as it was 

 unforeseen, for the explosion of the dynamite roused an 

 old alligator whose presence in the pool no one had 

 suspected. For fully five minutes we were treated to the 

 most extraordinary display of aquatic gymnastics it has 

 been any man's lot to witness. One moment we saw the 

 alligator's tail and the next his head, the entire perform- 

 ance of the huge reptile in his dazed state being of a 

 most ludicrous nature. As clown he would have made 

 the fortune of the manager of an animal circus. While 



' Cano Guayapo is some distance above Puerto Antonio Liccioni, on the 

 left bank of the Caura. It is a stream which rises in the mountain range 

 of Hilaria. 



