Chap. IV. ALLIGATORS. 267 



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 cay- 

 man. I once spent a month at Caic,ara, 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 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- 

 engaged 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 and I lending a helping 

 hand, and each time drew a number of the reptiles 

 of different ages and sizes, some of them Jacare-tingas ; 

 the lake in fact, swarmed with alligators. After taking 

 a very large quantity of fish (I took pains to count the 

 different species, and found there were no less than 





