108 



LEAVES^FROM THE NOTE-BOOK OF A NATURALIST. 



Vultures devour them both in the egg and on their 

 exclusion^; and ravenous fishes thin their ranks as 

 soon as they reach the element in which those who 

 survive are to pass so much of their existence. 



The flesh of alligators is eaten by the Indians, 

 and I have been assured by those who have par- 

 taken of it, that the tail of a young alligator sliced 

 and treated like veal cutlets bears no distant 

 resemblance to that dish. 



Of their ravenous and ferocious disposition 

 there can be little doubt, and stories illustrative of 

 it are not uncommon. Bontius relates, that a 

 man who had conducted a horse to drink was fierce- 

 ly attacked by an enormous one, and if the latter 

 had not suddenly sprung away, both man and 

 horse would have been in danger of their lives. 

 Acosta records the brasery of an Indian father, 

 whose little son had been seized by an alligator 

 that plunged with his pry into the depths of the 

 river. The father, a strong and skilful swimmer, 

 armed with a short sword, leaped in after the rep- 

 tile, dived under it, and by a succession of vigor- 

 ous stabs in the belly compelled the monster to 

 make for the bank, where it deposited the child 

 half-dead. Mr. Waterton is not the only rider 

 who has bestridden one of these river Bucephali. 

 He mounted an alligator. Adanson witnessed and 

 shared in an engagement with a true crocodile. 

 The negroes, it appears, in the neighborhood of the 

 river Senegal, boldly attack these monsters ; and 

 on one occasion a negro discovered a crocodile, 

 seven feet long, asleep, among some bushes at the 

 foot of a tree near the banks of the river. The 

 negro stealthily crept up, and inflicted a deep 

 wound on the side of the reptile's neck. The 

 crocodile with one sweep of his tail knocked the 

 negro off his legs ; but he rose instantly, and 

 slipped a rope over the crocodile's muzzle, while 

 one of his companions secured the formidable tail. 

 Then Adanson leaped on the crocodile's back, and 

 kept it down while the negro drew out the knife 

 which he had left sticking in the wound, and cut 

 off his antagonist's head. Another author men- 

 tions one of the garrison of Fort St. Louis who 

 used frequently to amuse himself with these duels, 

 and always with success ; till at last he was so 

 terribly wounded in one of those combats, that he 

 must have been killed outright if some of his 

 comrades had not come to the rescue. 



Sir Hans Sloane was offered the stuffed skin 

 of an alligator nineteen feet long when he was at 

 Jamaica, but he could not accept of it on account 

 of its size, " wanting room to stow it." The story 

 of its capture, as related by him, is curious. 

 The people in the neighborhood of the bay be- 

 tween Port Royal and Passage Fort having suffered 

 great loss of cattle by its depredations, a dog was 

 used as a bait, with a piece of wood tied to a cord, 

 the further end of which was made fast to a bed- 

 post. The reptile, coming round as usual every 

 night, seized the dog, was taken by the piece of 

 wood, which stuck across his throat, in his strug- 

 gles drew the bed to the window, and waked the 

 people, " who killed the alligator which had done 



them much mischief." Sir Hans also records that 

 there was " a pottle of stones" in the belly of one 

 nine feet long. Ravenous as the alligators are, 

 they are, like serpents and tortoises, capable of 

 enduring a very long fast. Browne, in his Natu- 

 ral History of the same island which Sloane so 

 ably illustrated, remarks that they are observed to 

 live for many months without any visible suste- 

 nance ; which experiment, he says, is frequently 

 tried in Jamaica by tying their jaws with wire, and 

 putting them thus tied up into a pond, well, or 

 water-tub, where they often lie for a considerable 

 time, rising to the surface from time to time for 

 breath. He also asserts, that on opening the an- 

 imal the stomach is generally found charged with 

 stones of a pointed oval, but flattened shape, to 

 which they seem to have been worn in its bowels. 



Doubtless (adds the worthy doctor) it swallows 

 them, not only for nourishment, which is evident 

 from the attrition and solution of their surfaces, but 

 also to help its digestion, and to stir up the oscilla- 

 tions of the slothful fibres of its stomach, as many 

 other creatures do. Some people think it swal- 

 lowed them to keep them easier under water at 

 times ; but how reasonable soever this conjecture 

 may seem to some people, it will not take with such 

 as are better acquainted with the nature of aquatic 

 animals. 



Catesby* thus draws their portraits : 



In Jamaica, and many parts of the continent, 

 they are found above twenty feet in length ; they 

 cannot be more terrible in their aspect than they are 

 formidable and mischievous in their natures, spar- 

 ing neither man nor beast they can surprise, pulling 

 them under water, that, being dead, they may with 

 greater facility, and without struggle or resistance, 

 devour them. As quadrupeds do not so often 

 come in their way, they mostly subsist on fish ; but 

 as Providence, for the preservation, or to prevent 

 the extinction, of defenceless creatures, hath, in 

 many instances, restrained the devouring appetites 

 of voracious animals by some impediment or other, 

 so this destructive monster, by the close connexion 

 of the joints of his vertebrae, can neither swim 

 nor run any other ways than straight forward, and 

 is consequently disabled from turning with that 

 agility requisite to catch his prey by pursuit. 

 Therefore they do it by surprise, in the water as 

 well as by land ; for effecting of which Nature 

 seems, in some measure, to have recompensed their 

 want of agility, by giving them a power of deceiv- 

 ing and catching their prey, by a sagacity peculiar 

 to them, as well as by the outward form and color 

 of their body which on land resembles an old dirty 

 log or tree ; and, in the water, frequently lies float- 

 ing on the surface, and there has the like appear- 

 ance by which, and his silent artifice, fish, fowl, 

 turtle, and all other animals, are deceived, suddenly 

 catched, and devoured. 



Catesby also mentions their habit of swallowing 

 stones and other hard substances, not, as he thinks, 

 to help digestion, but to distend and prevent the 

 contraction of their intestines when they are empty. 

 In the greater number of many which he opened 

 nothing appeared but chumps of light wood and 

 pieces of pine-tree coal, some of which weighed 



* Carolina. 



